courtesy of ign
For glory and a father's praise the noble Prince of Persia plunged an ancient dagger of untold power into a mystical Hourglass to free the very grains of Time itself.
"Power and beauty," the treacherous Vizier promised. "Open the Hourglass and behold the greatest wonder in the world." But from that broken prison the Sands of Time spilt forth to work unspeakable horror on the land.
Before his eyes, trembling, his father the king retched and turned from stalwart ruler to a waking nightmare of ash and dark magic. Thereafter every man and beast caught in the cloud of Time's deadly wake transformed into a similar being of mindless malevolence. But the Prince was not to be cast aside so lightly. And least of all by some unruly beach.
With dagger in hand and unlikely partner in tow, he battled against the many ravages of Time, a sultan's perilous palace, and even the Vizier and his reckless ambition. He is the Prince of Persia. It fell to him to right his own wrongs and undo the inadvertent crime he had committed.
In the end the Prince recaptured the Sands and reversed the flow of Time to a point before the catastrophe spun forward. He vanquished the Vizier and secured an honest future for himself. Peace at last, it would seem.
But fate was not to be cheated.
The Prince's life was promised -- his death foretold. No man or noble can rewrite what has been written. So out of a celestial void beyond the sight of mortals came an unstoppable warrior: the Dahaka. Dark and powerful, the invincible fist of fate was ruthlessly single-minded. It crushed the Prince's defenses and chased his grace across the breadth of this world. Day and night it hunted to claim Fate's prize, to kill the Prince of Persia. He was meant to die when the Sands escaped, and Fate would settle for nothing less than death now.
But the Prince had proved himself a champion and feared no enemy. For ten years he warred. For ten years he was hunted. Battle hardened, the Prince and a group of loyal men sought the Empress of Time herself. If possible, he'd travel far back before she created the Sands and prevent his eventual undoing from ever being made.
The adventure wasn't easy, but the Prince prevailed, slew the Dahaka, and found himself a new passion, the Empress Kaileena herself. Then it ended.
No more fighting. No more pitfalls. No more traps. No more beasts. No more villains. No more monsters. No more Sands. Ahead was home and nothing but rest and life. After so many years of death he would at last return to his people and the land he loved. To Babylon he sailed. There he'd live and eventually claim his kingship over his liege lords and their bannermen. But the Ocean of Time was disturbed and the ripple traveled further then even he could see...
His sails unfurled in the light wind and his cutter's bow pitched gracefully over the soft waves that rolled into Babylon's port. He sailed true between the massive juts of cliff that protected his city from the open sea. Stone as old as the world marked the entrance to his home. The sprawl of Babylon and its signature tower that reached toward the seat of God appeared before him.
Something is wrong.
Suspicion grew to panic when his small vessel was met not by cheers and the embrace of family, but by fire and arrows. The walls of his homeland stretched up against him then, vicious and foreign. He was not safe, nor was Kaileena beside him.
Moments passed, but each carried a new volley of rock and wood and his ship soon heaved and broke beneath the assault. Both heir and empress fell into the swirling sea and once again our Prince found himself drifting helplessly toward some unknown fate, only now lost to the bay of his upbringing and missing the hand of his beloved.
One instant of fire and sea and peril reawakened the champion. He came home seeking respite and found only terror -- terror that will either kneel before him or become his undoing. For this is his city and his kingdom. He is its heir. No one takes it. And some dirty bastard is going to pay for that boat, too.
That is how The Two Thrones, Ubisoft's third and final entry in the Sands of Time trilogy, begins.
The Prince never screams "bitch" and there is no inappropriately rocking music. The developers, you see, are retrieving Sands of Time's wonder that Warrior Within lost. While that game focused largely on the self-centered exploits of a brooding gymnast, Sands of Time was plainly classic. Warrior Within's Prince wanted little more than personal salvation, but Sands of Time's tried on several occasions to sacrifice himself for others. Now we're back to that. Now the Prince is once again fighting to save his city, his family, his people, and his kidnapped love. He's the hero and not some random jerk.
Seconds after the cutscenes end players are swept through a broken city. The Babylonians are scattered, but battle can be heard raging deep within the many intricately designed streets. Off in the distance the clatter of steel and wood and flesh breaks the deep menacing silence that has encircled the Prince. The initial levels are made to create a sort of lifeless horror. But soon enemies will appear clad in unfamiliar armor.
Who is it that dares war against Babylon? Part of the game's allure is unraveling that mystery -- finding out who's fighting your people and why. Of course, the Prince could have just asked somebody, but then that'd take the fun out of stabbing people in the neck.
When Ubisoft kicked off Two Thrones it asked itself, "Will people really need the Sands from the beginning?" Probably not. So like Warrior Within and Sands of Time, Two Thrones starts our Prince off without any superpowers. Gamers even begin weaponless! Eventually we'll find ourselves caught in another Sand-driven catastrophe that tears into the heart of Babylon and corrupts the Prince. That one scene includes major plot twists that'll all tie up some 12 to 15 hours later when the game ends.
At certain points throughout Two Thrones the Prince will lose control to the Sand corruption that takes him and the Dark Prince will arise. A brutal monster, this entity has been designed by Ubisoft to assist in slowly revealing the mystery behind the Prince of Persia by highlighting his darker motivations and comparing them against the lighter, more conventional hero we've known for years. We learn about Dr. Jekyll by seeing more of Mr. Hyde.
The two disparate Princes should create a very compelling story, narrated now by the non-Monica Bellucci Kaileena and accented by the excellent in-game vocals of Sands of Time's Yuri Lowenthal. The Princes also add a new layer of gameplay. Light Prince was designed with a sense of urgency and immediacy built into his character's segments. He's a champion, to be sure, but he's alone in his own city and hunted by an unknown army. The Dark Prince, on the other hand, is the hunter. He assaults enemies, ripping the sand right out of them to replenish his own life much like Warrior Within's Wraith did.
Dark Prince also comes with the dagger-tailed chain, a whip-like weapon he uses to mercilessly hack and slash foes, choke and suffocate the unaware, swing from high poles and ledges, and even latch onto faraway blocks. The Prince, though, is still the main character. And now that he's back to being truly heroic, he's been outfitted with some new moves to enhance his base set of skills. We're talking specifically about the quick kills.
The integration of quick kills directly into level design creates an appreciable sense of empowerment that really excites us. Prince will leap and run through conventional platforming segments and then gracefully extend a very satisfying flow by initiating the quick kills. In this way they accent the base gameplay, not usurp it.
Quick kills are built off a contextual sneaking mechanic with one simple rule: if they don't see you, they can be killed immediately. Since most of the game uses a great deal of multi-planed environments with varying heights, they usually won't see you, which means the quick kills happen quite a bit.
No. It's not Splinter Cell. It's not a slow, methodically paced game of cautious forward movement. Please feel free to run around like a maniac cutting people into pieces. Wall-run, vault over a chasm, land with your dagger in somebody's neck, and continue. Be fast, be quick. Just go, go, go.
It's even possible to wrap two quick kills together, which offers twice the reward. The speedy deaths and emphasis on finesse play off the Prince's acrobatic qualities without feeling like a cumbersome addition of more action simply because such games apparently need more.
There are still Sand Powers and two-weapon fighting (the dagger is the only main weapon, however), but by encouraging players to use the Prince's abilities to initiate quick kills, which inherently enhance the existing platforming, the game designers have really taken strides toward melting the previously contrasting platforming and action segments together.
Even when we weren't leaping onto the backs of enemies, we still found the basic platforming challenging. Eventually we were presented with a particularly cool segment that featured concrete slabs sliding on tracks in timed patterns. We ran up walls as they shifted in and out of nooks, leapt over floors that would soon fall out below us, and then caught distant crumbling ledges to pull ourselves up to relative safety. It was classic Prince.
There are new platforming traps, though. Giant saws swung out of the grounds and walls of many rooms at us, and only small openings were there for us to roll through. The dagger plant let us run along walls and then slam our dagger into preset areas where we could pause and continue our run to either side, do a vertical leap, or vault off in another direction. But that didn't save us from the arrow traps that shoot walls of sharp death across floors Indiana Jones would have been loath to cross. Then there were the spiked floor tiles that flipped out of the ground, and shudders that acted as jumping points. But it's actually what we barely played that really interested us.
Frankly, the boss fights in Warrior Within weren't very good. This is because too many of the bosses shared the same patterns. Not so in Two Thrones. Ubi demonstrated a bit more of the jawless brute and how careful platforming and quick kills had to be used to topple him. Further along Prince will encounter completely different enemies. Ubi mentioned the twins with a smile and a flying enemy with a great deal of oohs and ahs. Even the final boss will be a surprise, they say. Between those and the traditional Prince gameplay will also come the occasional chariot race sewn into appropriate areas where the Prince might need to flee or chase. The one we played was nicely done and heavily emphasized scripted wow moments like crashes, boarding enemies, and death defying jumps. Very cool. Very fast.
The game also promises the addition of more puzzles. Ubisoft told us to expect around 10, with three major ones taking priority. At least one of those will feature a cooperative aspect that has the Prince and a computer controlled partner working in tandem to reach an end. We saw another that involved positioning a series of massive stone slabs on horizontal and vertical axes to eventually build an elaborate stair so that Prince could reach the top. Like before, each puzzle incorporates platforming and action.
Everything we saw in Two Thrones impressed us. Ubisoft has omitted all the trashy metal and poor voice of Warrior Within and put the series back on its beautiful track. The open sprawl of Babylon transitions nicely into cavernous interiors and posh Persian halls. The narrative is also exciting and the new gameplay devices that accentuate the established platforming -- as opposed to a more obtuse combat system that starkly contrasts it -- has us very happy. And with more diverse bosses, scripted on-rails segments and multiple puzzles, Two Thrones definitely looks like the action platformer devout fans of Sands of Time have been waiting for. It's the one we're all about anyway.
You can check out a new trailer and a new video interview by navigating the below links, but stay with us. Later this week we'll return with more video interview chunks and new features on how the art and music are changing.
http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/736/736164/vids_1.html
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