About “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”

A decisive if temerarious Prince of Persia, eager to prove his mettle to the demanding King Shahraman, remorselessly lays siege on an Indian city and discovers two artifacts: a large hourglass filled with glowing sand, and a dagger bestowing its wielder the ability to manipulate time. Ominous a trope as the theft of age-old, mysterious magical items usually is, chaos soon bursts free. With the devastating potential of the Sands of Time unleashed, transforming those it reaches into frenzied abominations and spreading ever onward, our Prince finds himself trapped in the once splendid Palace of Azad with a treacherous Vizier and an enigmatic woman whom his father’s army had forced into slavery. One sole goal is on his mind: to reach the Hourglass atop a far-off, now monster-infested tower and exact due retribution.

From this relatively simple setup springs a tale of rich nuances. Original creator of the Prince of Persia series Jordan Mechner (who joined this fourth entry as consultant and designer), in an article published 5 years following the game’s release, motivates the streamlined plot: rather than twist the gameplay into a narrative, it is story that should support how the game is designed. After scrapping the initial draft, in which the unnamed Prince is faced with a plethora of additional characters and diverse political factions, the team decided that a clear sense of destination—finding oneself at point A and being required to reach point B—would more effectively draw the player in, without unnecessary complications. Mechner’s new script, retaken here from his official website (another way to read the story is through the prose written by one fan), generally features but two supporting characters: an “obvious villain” on the one hand, and on the other a Maharajah’s daughter whom the Prince variably distrusts, distances, and cherishes.

The simplicity of plot correlates to that of game design, focused on being entertaining and challenging yet accessible and logically embedded. (None of which should give the impression this was easy to do.) As far as setting is concerned, almost the entire game is placed in one majestic palace, and thus the Aristotelian unity of action taps into the unity of place too; unity of time (traditionally speaking) reigns in that everything around Azad takes place in approximately 24 hours. Without any loading screens or other seams of transition, the Prince is guided through booby-traps, gardens, caverns, barracks, baths, halls, courtyards, dungeons and the like with enhanced immersion, since Azad feels like a place that might truly exist and function, though its dimensions are entrancingly enlarged. Game director Patrice Désilets explains his team’s objective of blending platforming elements into the environment reasonably:

Something that was really, really important for us (and the same with Assassin’s Creed afterwards) is this idea that there’s no game design element around the player. It’s all part of the palace, part of the game world. I’m not there telling you ‘oh, this is a column you should climb,’ it’s just the natural architecture. So it was all about hiding the game design inside the game world.

Similarly, the innovative mechanic that can be used to rewind time at any in-game moment (requiring the player’s console or computer to constantly record recent gameplay) was an idea emerging from the desire to have a ‘rewind’ function without breaking the illusion of the game. It would simultaneously provide a cue for the story through the Dagger of Time, and offer the player various possibilities diversifying combat and movement.

Mechner and Ubisoft Montreal’s maxim of simplicity also means that more of the characters is shown through gameplay than through cutscenes where the player is resigned to passivity (which explains the script’s lack of certain voice-overs of the Prince’s, or dialogues between him and Farah, included during sessions of platforming, combat and puzzling). As remarked by Mark Filipowich in a (gender) critical essay on the game’s story, the clear plot does not stand in the way of a complicated relation between protagonist and deuteragonist either—on the contrary, their straightforward journey leaves all the more room to the complexities of their personalities and draws out a necessary connection between the two.

On a concluding note, the game’s lasting critical success is not only explained by the fluid mechanics, gripping plot, significant character interaction and smooth artistic design: Stuart Chatwood’s surprising blend of Oriental music with touches of rock and even techno, infused with, primarily, Maryem Tollar’s powerful vocals, was well received for adding multiple nuances of rhythm, force and eeriness to the fighting sequences. Chatwood shortly describes the Prince of Persia soundtrack at large as “Exotic Grandiosity,” and our Genius annotations might allow us to approach these eclectic instrumental pieces too, in addition to such matters as differences between script and end product (e.g. the presence of a Sand Griffin in the former only), implicit criticisms of violence and arrogance, literary allusions, technical considerations, or close readings of Farah and the Prince’s dispositions.

All potential spoilers in the annotations are marked with a bold ‘spoiler alert’ and separated from spoiler-free text by images. New readers or players may wish to omit those segments, for no text can replace the experience of playing through The Sands of Time.

The credits listed below feature some prominent members, among whom prolific voice actor Yuri Lowenthal: a full overview can be found here. But behind the development stand, as Geoff Keighley writes of the final production days, “50 young French-Canadians. […] Almost all of them are in their mid-20s, and none of them have a hit game on their resume. ‘It feels like we’ve all come so far in such a short period of time,’ Mallat says with a hint of pride.”