We have new insider word on the status of The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
As reported by Insider Gaming, Ubisoft Montreal started on the project over from scratch. Ubisoft had earlier stated that they would be working with what Ubisoft Pune and Ubisoft Mumbai had made, but that was no longer true.
Now, it isn’t exactly the case that Ubisoft has misrepresented what they have done with the title. As we reported last November, Producer Jean-Francois Naud explained that they were in the conception stage, that they were taking fan feedback into consideration, and that they were in the process of building the team and putting prototypes together. Naud also stated, in Ubisoft’s official blog, that the game was “in an early stage.”
In any case, if Insider Gaming is to be believed, they may have already made the changes that fans wanted to see. The project has undergone a graphical overhaul for a “more realistic approach”, and systems have been remade for combat, parkour and other mechanics. Insider Gaming’s sources also stated that the game was rewritten and redone in mocap.
Insider Gaming also claims that Yuri Lowenthal, now famous as the voice of Marvel’s Spider-Man, is no longer slated to reprise his role as the Prince from the original 2003 game. They don’t know why Yuri has been removed from casting.
It certainly sounds like the remake is now shaping up to be a completely different title from what the original title was, but older fans do have something to pin their hopes on. Going back to Ubisoft’s update from November, Naud revealed that they got access to many of the original production materials, and so they are actually building a game that is closer to the ambition of what Ubisoft’s staff originally had in mind.
Furthermore, Naud stated that their team paid special attention to what he referred to “nostalgia markers;” the critical moments in the original title that the fans remember fondly, and that they wanted to make sure to recreate for those fans.
It’s hard to learn that this title started from scratch, but if Metroid fans have something to say about it, maybe the wait will prove to be worthwhile. This seems to be something Ubisoft understand they have to get right, to the point that they were willing to restart development, costing them dearly, and also putting the greenlight on other projects that they knew wouldn’t be received well, just so that the company could keep releasing games, like Skull and Bones.
So Ubisoft has paid a lot for this remake, but they did all that because they know they can’t pull a Chrono Trigger on it. It’s easy to be cynical and skeptical about this project, but there is well-grounded reason, that isn’t just insider rumors, to believe Ubisoft will do right by it.
