Prince of Persia Producer Dismayed by Lack of 'Pats on the Back,' Wonders If Gamers Want Innovation

Innovation?! That's precisely what the game lacked!

Take the moves of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, simplify them to four timed button presses.

Take Assassin's Creed's engine and simplify it heavily with a focus on shiny glowing lights.

Take the themes and atmosphere of Shadow of the Colossus and americanise them, then remove all compelling mystery, depth or plot ambiguity with a fine sieve.

Serve as a barely interactive movie with the freedom to progress in whatever order you please, with the caveat that it doesn't in any way -matter- which order you complete your tasks in.. And make it short and repetitive.

I enjoyed playing, for the most part - it was relaxed, simplistic and laid back, pleasant to play in company without commitment or thought - A true 'casual game'.

But what the hell risks did they take? It's a standard third person exploration with no challenge and a lot of old mechanics rehashed and simplified until a three year old could effectively play and complete the game.

.. Whiners.

Merry Christmas =D

I'm still waiting for this one to go to the bargain bin. I don't think it's worth the full price tag with the amount of play you get.

I'd say they fell short of their goals. Let me cover a few of the points he makes:

Inability to die. This is actually good. Not so much as far as difficulty goes but for the same reason the rewind mechanic worked so well in the original, and the narrative mechanic worked. It eliminated the hit to suspension of disbelief that the typical die/load cycle causes. That's a very good thing. I would argue that the Sands of Time mechanic actually does a better job of it than the one in the new game, and even that Assasin's Creed's silly sci-fi-esque plot thing does a better job of it, so there's no real innovation to be lauded here.

Graphics. I pretty much hate the visual style and play the game despite it. The heavy outlines and flat-ish appearance produce what, to my eye, is actually a weird aliasing/shimmering/distortion effect that is very unappealing. I much preferred the Sands of Time trilogy's visual style, or Assasin's Creed's.

Platforming. This is pretty much my biggest gripe with the game. I don't like the crumb trail mechanic at all. I really enjoyed Sands' platforming-as-requirement for navigating a crumbling, fantastic castle mechanic. I don't much enjoy trying to figure out how to get somewhere to reuse an area to get the last breadcrumb. I hate missing things in games and this ups the frustration and irritation factor immensely.

Combat system. I think the combat mechanics are ok, but as near as I can tell it is very easy to get by with button mashing. Frequently I will do a combo that is out of the tutorial and it'll have different results than I am expecting. I would have a preferred a much more precise, unforgiving combat system to the one they have.

Conversation system. This is a big step backwards from Sands of Time. Where previously, much of the conversation was in the form of a funny monologue or automated dialogue that just kind of happened as the game went along, the new system requires you to stop and mash a button to hear it. I'd rather it just played in the background without requiring me to do anything. As such, the new system actually has the exact opposite effect they wore hoping in that it is much more intrusive to the gameplay experience. I probably shouldn't complain that much because the voice acting and writing in the new one is notably less charming than Sands of Time and I really don't care about it nearly as much as I did in Sands of Time. Although that's more a condemnation of the quality of the dialogue than anything.

It's not a bad game, but it is nowhere near the breath of fresh air that the original Sands of Time was and seems to go backwards in a number of ways. I don't mind taking risks but it appears they failed to understand exactly why things which were good about the previous titles were good and explored some ideas which, on playing, are obvious steps backwards.

Whats so innovative besides the new visual style for the series, how about some f*ing gameplay.

Not another one of these guys. These fucking devs who think they invented video games. Fuck them. You made a game that wasn't as good as it shoudl've been. Now you're pissed that people aren't saying it's awesome. Get over yourself.

You made the game too easy, you DIDN'T REMOVE THE COMBAT (why don't they get this?), you added in fucking dialog (which I know of no one that wanted that), and you removed the rewind mechanic, and did some weird cel shading thing that went out of style a few years back. Congratu-fucking-lations!

I didn't see it yet, so here's Yahtzee's retrospective on the Prince of Persia series from Sands of Time onward: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/183-Prince-of-Persia-Retrospective

I think it could have been phrased better, and say what you want about this game (I am loving it to pieces despite the fact it's far too easy), but the developer has a point.

The average gamer is an idiot that just wants another Call of Duty or generic fantasy grindfest or what have you fed to them every year. Look at all the people raging over the unmistakably gorgeous art in this game. They'd rather have everything be like Gears of War, gunmetal gray and rust brown. People tell me that series has good graphics and gameplay, but I simply can't understand them. That said, Gears of War is widely loved because it's so "safe", it's familiar and doesn't challenge ANY perceptions of the status quo.

I mean for God's sake people, you whine about games and their death/save systems, wanting every challenge to be served to you on a silver platter, and then when a game finally finds an elegant solution which honestly doesn't change the difficulty at all on its own, you whine even more.

It doesn't help people see the past through rose coloured glasses either. I got too bored to finish Sands of Time because of the fact it was so easy, and yet people seem to deliberately change their memories of it just to suit their current argument. You all need to get over yourselves.

Prince of Persia has a great art style, some nice fluid mechanics and feels like a fresh PoP game. I like the companion Elika.

But I don't think it's high on innovation. they seemed to target a much more casual audience, you can't die, you get a glowing orb that tells you were to go etc.. I don't think there is anything wrong with this

As for gamers wanting innovation? Call of Duty World at War is a pretty clear example that we don't. We want sequels, we want the same mechanics, we want better graphics, more maps, gimmicky weapons and items. I think it partly comes back to gamers taking risks when buying a game from a new franchise, with a sequel you can be fairly sure on gameplay and quality

I recently bought Sands of Time through Steam. Thought it was great, played it all the way through. But oh wow, Warrior Within is absolutely horrible. Painfully horrible. That game is so bad I'm scared to buy Two Thrones and I'm almost offput from buying this new one. Worst game sequel ever.

My copy arrived yesterday and I've been playing it the whole day, here are some thoughts:

- The art direction is my favourite part of the game, the scenery really is quite breath taking if you just stand and look around, reminds me of Myst a lot.

- "Not being able to die" is actually false in a sense, if you think about it, there is no game where you "die". The only thing that happens in games is you get punished for making a mistake. Prince of Persia does that, if you make a mistake you have to re-do that part of the sequence again.

So Prince of Persia does in fact have "dying", but while other games use a quick-save /quick-load feature to make players manually go back to the events prior to their death, Prince of Persia does this automatically, which makes the game a lot more enjoyable.

- Combat quicktime events can burn in hell, but it's not a big deal, otherwise the combat is very fluid and when it feels great when you can pull off a long combo.

- AI is also quite clever, you'll never be able to do the exact same thing again and again, they will change their tactics, or go into a defensive position more. This makes fights always have just the right amount of challenge.

- Did I mention how pretty the game is? It's pretty, really pretty.

- Having to go back and collect shiny orbs actually rarely feels like "going back" because the landscape looks so different. But you're still collecting shiny orbs, which is a very cheap way to extend the game. Even so, if you enjoy running around on walls at full speed, collecting the stupid little things while admiring the world around you isn't a terrible experience. And most of the time they are in your path anyway, so collecting most of them is pretty easy.

- Unlike the other PoP games, the environments seem a bit too gameplay-forced, as in: they were made for jumping around, you won't play this for realistic architecture, the characters themselves joke about this.

- Which brings me to the interaction between the Prince and Elika, I was annoyed at the start by some of the dialogue, but as the game progresses they become quite funny and interesting, the voice acting is great too.

There are a few little innovating things in the game, overall I wouldn't call it innovative, but if you want a pat on the back for making a very solid and enjoyable game, well, I think I did that when I bought it.

What I will pat you on the back for is the lack of DRM, and I mean any kind of DRM, there isn't even a disk check. I bought the game, I installed the game and I'm now free to play it without any DRM related issues. I hope you continue along this path: *pat on the back*, attaboy.

Pats on the back for making a boring game? what the hell do these guys expect?

Yes what PC gamers want is innovation and Prince Of Persia is NOT innovative in any way shape or form. We don't want repetitive dumbed down console games disguised as PC games. Ubisoft is a shit publisher that consistently disappoints like only they and EA can. The only good thing I can say is it looks as though they are polishing their games more which is more than I can say about EA.

I'll buy a Wii if I want the most simplistic, dumbed down form of gaming on the planet.

If by 'innovation', he means making the game so simple that my six-year-old nephew can beat it, having neverending instructions on the screen that cannot be removed, fighting one enemy at a time, and giving players infinite attempts at every single platform maneuver in the game, then yes, it's 'innovative.'
However, most people have a different definition.

In order to get a "pat on the back", you have to make the game fun to play and not repetitive as crap. It comes down to the quality of the product and not the innovations. I think the biggest problems were the steps BACKWARD that the game took:

-Movement is less fluid
-One on one battles only
-Not linear enough to feel like you're progressing
-Very boring/repetitive, more so than other PoP's

Yeah where exactly did you innovate here? I mean single enemy fights are cool but they're not a new thing, nor is a non linear world. These are both things that you already saw done well, and knew worked in Shadow of the Colossus. You could only make them work better, and you did. PoP is quite a fun game but hardly a flawless one. I enjoyed the combat and I enjoyed the platforming, but none of it was a particularly new experience.

Taking risks means not having the player fight one enemy at a time, that just requires you to make fighting one enemy interesting and challenging, which is what a boss is, and what beatemup games have been doing for a long time. That is also not a new place to draw inspiration from for POP as this series has tried to meld beatemups and platforming for a while now, and with only variable success. Warrior Within was no Ninja Gaiden when it came to combat. Not even close.

PoP's combat is intelligent, I like it a lot. But it's not really something new.

Now what would be innovative if that is not? I dunno, Mirror's Edge would be innovative if it truly was a platformer in first person and they said "okay, your character can't hold a gun at all" - completely changing the meaning of an enemy not as an obstacle you go through, but one you overcome with interesting moves. They were probably gonna do this in the first place, but then someone must have insisted that no one would want to play a first person game without having to shoot something, so you get closed rooms with five guys all blowing holes at you at once.

On the other hand Portal doesn't have that problem. Portal has the same objective as Mirror's Edge - interacting with an environment in a distinctly non combat way. Portal's a puzzle game and not really a platformer as Mirror's Edge, so the mechanics are not the same, but the objective is. And the reason Portal succeeded in theirs is because they committed to it without reservations.

PoP is not a game without reservations.

I haven't played any of these Prince of Persia games, but they don't really seem to be targeted at the hardcore gamer base. Why do they expect this user base to even notice what's going on in this franchise?

I hated the graphic design of the game. It damn near ruined it for me. The rest was ok I guess but nothing ground breaking.

i must admit that ubisot did a great job with this one especially in the artistic direction but the whole girl-friend thing and jumping using quake jump pads or other things felt kind of silly and some how like a japanese hack-and-slash game and the combat is great, how they've focused on fighting each enemy as he was a boss but the fighting system is way too easy and gets horribly boring after a couple of fights. I still believe that Sands Of Time is the best among them all.

Note to game developers: if you can't fail, you can't succeed.

it was fun for a bit, but the lack of any challenge kept me from coming back.

sad thing is they could probably easily fix it with a patch. change the number of elika rescues to 3 and then death, or something along those lines.

wow they don't have to get so emo about it. Hardcore gamers hated the hand holding. The casual gamers they were going after could care less about the prince of persia line. What else does he want to know?

I havent played the game so I wont comment on whether its worthy of praise or not, but I do know one thing, if people are not praising you, its not their fault, its yours. If your game is really that innovative and fun, the praise will come, if you "innovate" something that people dont care for, dont expect everyone to gush over you. Innovation for the sake of innovation is pointless.

I really loved this game, despite a few niggles. There wasn't any real punishment for dying in the game which lead to the game being far to easy for its own good. Also the game is under 12 hours long, thats if you don't collect all 1001 Lightseeds.

I enjoyed the puzzles, as few as there were. They weren't to tough and required you to think just a little which I like in platform games.

The save system was a bit messed up, when i fought against the Concubine I saved during Mid-Battle which caused a bug in the game. Basically I loaded the game and the concubine vanished which meant I couldn't progess and had to reload from previous save.

Story for me was awesome, I never played Ico or SoTC. The ending was really well fleshed out and just what the game needed after all the dialogue you hear in the game.

All in all i'd give it an 8 or 9 out of 10. I'd easily reccomend it to anyone with an interest in platforming or in nice fantasy settings with a good dose of decent story telling.

who is this fucktard?

ah yes the considerable risk of creating a franchise, linear platformer. can someone please blow the entire dev team before we miss out on such groundbreaking, trial blazing game design?!

I haven't played it, but it seems like this game desperately wants to retro-fit Ico and Shadow of the Colossus into the Prince of Persia series. Why can't Prince of Persia just BE Prince of Persia?

here is a prince of persia product i would buy, and I know it is complete tangent to what they have been doing currently: take a look at the original Prince of Persia, look at what made it fresh and interesting, the 60 minute time limit, the fluid animations, the adrenaline/fear of death and the puzzles, walking into a spike trap, also some of the solitude of the dungeon parts.
..while we're back then, take a look at out of this world too for ambience.

now take a look at mirrors edge and what it does well and what makes it fresh for something "next gen"

combine it and focus on all the small personal details that you would experience in the world, and communicate all that to the player as best you can. make interacting with the game feel good, make the game always have possibility of an adrenaline rush, with so many different routes and ways to save the princess, but with moment to moment (or encounter to encounter) challenges on a small, direct to the player scale.

i guess it is just personal opinion, but i'd much rather see games that scale back in size or at least simplify themselves to a few strong concepts rather than a bunch of things forced into a linear stretch and use technology and next gen aspects to just make the experience richer and evolve everything in the game around the player or players.. L4D would be a good example of that in some ways but not all.

While it is commendable that they didn't use drm and the like.... he wants virtual pats on the back?

Dude.... your patted on the back if your game dazzles and amazes your audience. It is completely regardless of the risks you take. You could program this while your shirt was on fire, and want a pat on the back... but you don't get any if the game isn't good.

Were glad you did it in in a new and innovative way. Some of it worked... some of it didn't.

We don't have to appreciate your risks unless they make it more fun for us, and we like what came out of those risks.

The risk is yours to shoulder. If they pay off, great. If not, tough shit. In your case... they were kind of neutral.
Learn from it.

I haven't played it, so someone please explain to me what was so innovative.

Ah yes, the innovative new dialogue control feature. It's called the "escape key."

PoP's producer sounds very naive. He should not be surprised that the "innovative" games don't sell super well. If you want to succeed in just raw sales, then make yet-another-space-marine-FPS-game-with-aliens-and-1998-circa-gameplay. Generally, Joe Sixpack isn't going to put the time in to learn a new model of controlling characters, no matter what the payoff is. There are exceptions, obviously, such as the Wii and Rock Band/Guitar Hero. But even both of those are appealing largely because they use existing metaphors and now make them valid within the context of games. Did you laugh at people when they tilted the controller to turn in Mario Kart? Well, now that *is* how you drive in the Wii version. In that sense it is brilliant, because new players don't have to construct a model of, "I push that button and the character does this...but only in these conditions."

Ultimately, he is right. You can either make consumable games meant to appeal to the widest possible audience (and inevitably end up very mediocre by definition) or you can cater to a smaller crowd within that and succeed there. There will always be a sect of artsy games, just like there is in music and movies. The games that do succeed within this crowd (fairly hardcore gamers) are the ones that innovate and take the concept and run with it, but not sacrificing the other parts of the game for it. It still has to be fun (Mirror's Edge's failing for a lot of people), have good production values (sprites and MIDI won't cut it anymore), and have what is perceived as a fair difficulty.

...innovation? Hmm, I need to play this game to comment but I've not heard about any innovative features yet. Just QTE complaints and lack of difficulty, albeit very beautiful and fun.

I bought the game because Sands of Time was awesome, and its sequels were at least fun in terms of their puzzles.

The new Prince of Persia is monotonous. It's basically a series of quick-time events, most of which are at such regular intervals you might as well be playing Guitar Hero on easy. All the new moves are just different versions of jump pads, and the fights take forever even if you never miss. The comic book style involves a nice edge detection filter I haven't seen before, but in the end I think the lack of definition in the background (as opposed to the characters) makes all the detail blend together. The dialogue is boring as hell (please stop using American accents!), and I could really care less about the story. The ability not to voluntarily talk to Elika is better than being forced to hear useless dialogue, but that's hardly deserving of congratulation. I'm about half-way through the game because I was hoping it would get more interesting, but I probably won't touch it again.

"Pat on the back" eh? Hm, where's Jade when you need her?

Oh I'm sorry guy, i'm busy (and broke) from playing all the good games released this fall.

I finished PoP yesterday and I loved it. I have a hard time sitting down with games these days because so many of them just suck but I kept going back to PoP. I do like the no dying thing, beats reloading. I loved the lack of focus on enemies and more focus on exploring the world, I just wish the game had a bit more "skill" involved moving around the world (this does not mean an addition of some stupid gimmick).

Beautiful game, I will be going back to play it again. I rarely every go back to a game.

Is it a prerequisite to be a douche when applying as a producer for Ubisoft?

Aw, dude. :-( Whining is never attractive.

A game where you have to collect 1001 orbs, brilliant. *kicks feet up on desk* Pat me on the back guys. Tell me how good I am. I want to hear it. C'mon..

Boo hoo..... Does this guy know what innovation is? If he doesn't know, then he should get Shadow of the Colossus, Grand Theft Auto 3, Assassins Creed, Portal, Tomb Raider, etc.

Huh. All I can read in this article is *WHINE WHINE WHINE*. Maybe it's a misprint.