NOTE: If you have not played through Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time or Warrior Within, this preview will contain quite a few spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Every gamer remembers certain moments in their gaming lives forever. One of my personal favorites is the first time I ever saw the original Prince of Persia in action. My friend's dad had taken us to see Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego? live. Afterwards we swung by a local CompUSA because I'd never been there before. We perused countless aisles of generic games before we saw it: a lone Macintosh running a really awesome looking game at the end of an aisle. We played it for about an hour before my friend's dad finally hauled us back to the car. Two weeks later, I had the game for PC, and I've been a devout follower of the Prince series ever since.

Prince of Persia has certainly had its ups and downs, but the rejuvenation of the series—and of action-adventure gaming in general—with 2003's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time brought the series back to the big time. While many were disappointed with the direction that 2004's PoP: Warrior Within took, it was my personal opinion that the core of the game was built on what makes the PoP games so great in the first place: awesome game play. On December 1st of this year, the Sands of Time trilogy will come to an end with The Two Thrones, and after sitting down to talk with Ben Mattes, a Producer over at Ubisoft, I am not only confident that Two Thrones will satisfy not only action-adventure fans, but Prince of Persia fans as well.

As stated above, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones is the culmination of Ubisoft's PoP trilogy that began with Sands of Time. The story picks up right after the ending of Warrior Within. The prince and Kaileena have entered Babylon, but his home is not quite the way he remembers it when he left. The city has been ravaged by war, and his people are being slaughtered. He enters the city a fugitive, and must discover who—or what—is behind the devastation wracking Babylon.

While excitement is pretty high for Two Thrones, many fans have (understandably) grown concerned that it won't be anything new; just more of the same things that we've seen over the past two years. What can you expect in the way of new features? Plenty. Under the hood, TT has undergone many AI tweaks to present tons of new challenges for returning players. What kind of tweaks? Well, how about an entirely new AI system? Mattes says that the rework "is based around two major elements: enemy awareness to their environment and the Sand Gate system. The [Two Thrones] enemies are now able to see the prince coming from afar, hear him as he comes close by or when he disturbs a volley of pigeons, for example, in which case, they will turn to an awareness behavior and investigate the issue further. If a real threat turns out to be found, they can trigger the alarm and call for reinforcements using the Sand Gate system."

Combat has always been lots of fun in PoP titles, and Two Thrones will be no exception. TT is set to re-employ the free form system used in WW in order to keep the creativity used in selecting weapons and killing with them. A balance has been sought between Sands of Time and Warrior Within in terms of combat versus puzzle solving. This has been done to sate the players who felt that SoT focused too much on puzzle solving while providing boring combat, whereas WW provided too much combat and not enough puzzle solving. Mattes believes that "What makes POP games very special is their balanced mix between different gameplay elements: combat, platforming/exploration and puzzles. In POPT2T we're keeping this mix, so we're definitely not heading towards an all-puzzle game or a hack-n-slash!" Even if you weren't a fan of the combat system of either game, an interesting element has been added into the mix to spice up the fighting engine a bit: Speed Kills.

Speed Kills are another new addition to the series. "The Speed kill System will allow you to inflict a very dramatic and athletic move that will take down your enemy in a single shot," says Mattes. "This new system will come with a whole new AI and a lot of new spectacular moves." In addition to looking pretty sweet, Speed Kills introduce an element of strategy to the killing. When the player spots large clusters of enemies, he or she will want to make certain to take down the stronger baddies first before they've detected the player's presence. Once they've been killed, the other enemies will most likely be alerted to the player, but the threat will have been lessened to a degree. Entirely new enemies and bosses have been created for players to defeat, and each Speed Kill has its own unique animation, guaranteeing that players won't get bored killing similar enemies over and over again.

One of the most exciting new features is the addition of a new playable character: the Dark Prince. According to Mattes, "The Dark Prince is a "corrupt" version of the Prince who has been infected by the Sands of Time." He's a manifestation of the darker traits of the prince, such as ruthlessness. And ruthless is something the Dark Prince can do very well. He is very violent, and takes a lot of pleasure in excessive brutality. The DP adds to the dynamic of the prince's character because though he is viewed as a separate entity, he is still the prince himself. The prince will have to learn to control his darker emotions, or else fall prey to them.

As different as they may be, DP and the prince do share common goals: to discover the identity of whoever is responsible for attacking Babylon and stealing their throne. DP "will often provide the Prince with advice and direction, helping to keep him focused on the mission at hand."