@Ashurahori:

Agreed. Two Thrones was much more SoT than WW. Anyone who liked SoT will probably enjoy TT. Hell, it even removed the combat of SoT (instant kill enemies and you don't have to fight droves of them).

It is a shame WW became so rushed, it probably would have gone over better with fans. Does anyone remember the interviews where the Price has a friend who dies and it is a pivotal point in the story that sends him on his quest? That whole sequence never made it into the game (the cinema is in all of the early trailers). Basically, WW was missing the entire beginning sequence that was meant to transition into 'i haven't slept in 7 years, and now I'm a bit crazy, ala fight club.'
Instead you are immediately introduced to the darker prince and the new market audience, rather than showing it as the fall from grace as initially intended. People hate him rather than pity him.

WW and Kotor2. Great promise rushed to market. Still good games, just easily ripped apart due to their legacy.

Phokal

Thanks Ubi...

[i25.tinypic.com]

theswitcher

Thank you, Ubi! Please, once again ignore the system with the largest share of the home console market! Clearly, those brilliant decisions are why you guys earned the most revenue on the Wii last year... oh wait! No you didn't! Quite opposite, actually! Clearly, you decided against a solid Wii title seeing as how the Wii versions of Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six, and Ghost Recon didn't sell too well.

megaStryke

I loved Sands of Time and Two Thrones. Someone once made an analogy of the PoP games to people growing up. Sands of Time represents your childhood, Warrior Within represents the angsty teenage years, and Two Thrones is finally reaching maturity.

That said, I'm curious to see where they go with the franchise from here. Are we getting a new prince and will the time mechanics stay?

SilentPredator

@dry-roasted-peanuts: The Two Thrones redeemed Warrior Within. Sparce environments, no backtracking, massive references to the first game, the dagger returns as the main weapon this time, and the Vizier and Farrah return as important characters. You should check it out.

Ashurahori

Loved the previous POP games religiously, can't wait for a new one.

Dragonzigg

@TaggarT6: Oooh yes. Please let them bring back the Time Thong! I still remember that penny arcade comic regarding it.
It would be nice if they had a sort of free roaming environment thing going on. Allowing you to explore the city and dispatching bad guys. Or maybe even multiple routes and ways of getting to the next objective i.e. one route allows you to get there via chariot, another requires you to take the rooftops etc. Probably not going to happen but its nice to dream.

captain_laxpants

@dry-roasted-peanuts: i loved sands of time...couldn't tolerate the almost random Warrior Within, but the third game felt a lot better to me...
not quite sands of time...but thankfully nothing like warrior within...

i'd try it out...its cheap now

mAaron

. . . Either I pissed myself or I have a vagina.

enigma89

sweet, a new art style sounds nice. cant wait!

squidboy007

@ArmiMaan: It would actually be turning gold into straw but I get what you were trying to do and I like where you were going.

TaggarT6

@dry-roasted-peanuts: I agree with you completely there. As much as I love the PoP franchise (the world needs more Arabian Nights-inspired games), I'm going to hold off on getting excited until we find out more about the gameplay and actually see what this wonderful new illustrative art style looks like. Warrior Within proved that Ubisoft Montreal could very easily take a great concept and ruin it, like a Bizarro-Rumpelstiltskin turning gold into shit.

ArmiMaan

@CHU BOI: Heh. I bought it because I thought (and sort of did) I'd like it. No woman can sell a crappy game to me, ever.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to meet her... :p

Candlejack

For everything but the Wii.

...AGAIN. >:-(

This is getting really old.

wonder6oy

@Candlejack: Ugh, please don't tempt me with sweet sweet Jade Raymond. I almost bought Assassin's Creed just because her but decided not to for the sake of my pride. I don't know if I can resist a second time.

For the zillionth time...damn that woman in fine.

CHU BOI

Any word on whether or not "Time Bitch" and her metal thong will be making a comeback?

TaggarT6

I dont know, those dirty bastards tricked me into buying assassins creed and i dont think im ready to forgive them just yet

smuckersisgood

No Wii version :( I love the PoP games too.

crescentfresh

Yay. I loved the Prince of Persia games... When I saw those concept art pics that leaked awhile back, I got excited. Then never followed it up. Better be good people. This time a new idea since time manipulation might... just... get... old... How about moving sand? lol

ph15h needs followers

If it's like Sands of Time, I'm there.
If it's like Warrior Within, I'm still gone.

/I didn't play #3 because of how much I hated WW.

dry-roasted-peanuts

Sweet. Maybe Jade Raymond, who also works for Ubisoft Montreal, will be involved and hype the game up like shit just through her occasional appearance. That worked so well for Assassin's, it's gotta work well for this title.

Yes, I went there.

Anyway, I'm looking very much forward to it. The PoP series is one of my favourite franchises and the best action adventure that remains more adventure than action. Read: More running and jumping than slashing and smashing.

Candlejack

Will they incorporate the new idea of "free running" just like every other new game out there or stick with their old scheme? Hmmm.

Eville1

I'm not sure if we should ask for a Wii version after Red Steel and that abysmal $50 port. *sigh*

Brain_Craters

A new Prince of Persia series for the new systems? Yes please. Trilogy please. And give us a decent way to replay the next Assassin's Creed.

Chances

I'd love to see this take Assassin's Creed's Sciimitar Engine and tweak the hell out of it. I'm talking jedi-esque wall running and Olympic-style acrobatics!

Arttemis

@Phokal: KOTOR 2 failed due to stupidly "look at me, I'm trying to be deep" story, which didn't solve absolutely anything about the story, and instead, left too many questions unanswered, not counting the massive number of bugs, which was greater than KOTOR's.

The problem that Obsidian Entertainment has in trying to pick the slack off Bioware, is that they try to do something inovative, but fail at it. Neverwinter Nights 2, although good, was the same.

Ashurahori

god dammit. shafted on Wii again

Sandbox_Emperor

Giggling like a teenager! haha, great news!

Two thrones was a great game, been waiting a very long time for a new PoP game. Thanks UBI!

Btw, am I the only person who actually enjoyed AC and can't wait for the sequel?

Paganmoon

I'd love the chance to play a Scimitar game that doesn't suck.

Please, tell me that Mechner is working on this one.

TickleMeElmo

I liked Warrior Within. :( I just downloaded the soundtrack to it last week. Rock!

Even if most of the combat felt like I was button mashing through it all.

belo

@Arttemis:
Dude, Prince of Persia + Sciimitar Engine = BEST PLATFORM ACTION EVER SEEN IN A GAME!!!

Koolfox

@Brain_Craters: Ubisoft seems to have trouble making their Wii exclusives look as good as the Gamecube versions of their multiplat releases last gen.

Torgen got his apology faceplate but not his fixed GH3 disc

I can't believe how many people are knocking on the WW. It was by far the best of them. I can understand people not liking the music, I got tired of listening to it too. The fight mechanics of it were amazing. The Sot was great and had a good story. WW had an amazing story, one that I haven't come across in a while. (spoiler) I don't know how many of you reacted to the prince actually being the sand wraith but id definitely caught me off guard. Games rarely do that anymore. There are also people that say the fights were to repetitive. The WW had way more attacks then Sot and TT. The two thrones annoyed the hell out of me with the same 3 stealth kill moves. I really want someone to tell me what was so bad about it. I can understand the people not liking the back tracking but it was the only way to make the story work the way it did. Aside from the back-tracking and the music, someone please tell me why it was a bad game.

RET_Ghost

@Paganmoon: You're totally not the only one. When I got my PS3 it was AC and R&C: Future. Very, very happy with both. After a lot of the complaints leveled against Assassin's Creed I have to think a lot of people just weren't looking at it from my perspective. Yes, it's a whole new IP. Yes it's a new story with new characters and entirely different gameplay. But to me? It's Prince of Persia Ver. 2.0. "Let's make it open world!"
"Yeah!"
"And combat that doesn't totally suck!"
"Woo!"

*

But I do have some notes for the crew working on Assassin's Creed 2 (because they totally read the comments on Kotaku and redesign their games accordingly):
(1) Cutscenes. Play Odin Sphere or FFXII. Notice how you can pause cutscenes, and choose to skip them or continue watching? Do that, please.

(2) Replayability. I want to go back and replay the Assassinations - it's fun! I don't want to have to sit through your cutscenes for the zillionth time, and then be forced to ride all the way from the mountain to Acre or Damascus.

For God's sake, give us a New Game+ where you can select an Assassination and replay it with all your abilities and weapons from the end of the game intact.

"But that counteracts the narrative-"
Yes, but it's a game and that would be fun. Here, i'll make it easy for you. Just walk up to Kristen Bell, and ask her to say this line:
"Desmond, I've programmed the Animus to allow you to enter earlier memories with all the tools you acquire later."

(3) Flow. Why is it that between the white knuckle-tension of approaching and killing my mark, and the insane flight from the authorities, you decided to make we watch a three minute cutscene? I get the story aspects you're trying to force on me (my mark and I both do evil in the name of good, so little separates us, that's so deep...), but you just interrupted the best, most exciting part of your game with boredom.

...sorry, that went on longer than anticipated. Those nitpicky issues aside, Assassin's Creed was totally worth my sixty bucks. A new Prince of Persia will be a welcome addition to my library.

Chances

I don't know why, but the new logo and the leaked in-game image makes me think it would be something similar to the catacombs near the ending of Two Thrones

Chopper_Mike

@Paganmoon:
Your not the only one ;).

Koolfox

@Phokal: I believe that the Prince from WW and Sot being compared to Marcus Fenix and Spiderman is too far fetched to be considered at all. As Chopper_Mike said, Of course he's gonna change, he's being haunted by something he can't kill for 7 YEARS! The combat in TT was horrible also, I found it to be very glitchy and they even had the audacity to dumb down the combos.

RET_Ghost

@Bobby McPresscott: You misunderstood everything. Tha change on WW wasn't forced, it was the ovbious flow to follow:

In SoT (and before that) he was almost a spoiled and too formal prince. Even after his adventures, he returned to the palace to conntinue his normal life... but after SoT he couldn't do that because his fate (the Dahaka) was chasing him, forcing him to escape and hide. He couldn't return to the 'high class' life, and had to adapt himself to the 'low world' style. That changed his personality with the course of the years (and so, his way to speak... because you can't talk like a prince when you live among thieves, pirates and such)

Maybe that's what bothered me in TT: After all he went thru on those seven years, he recovered the 'formal prince' attitude in a matter of months... in the sea... with Kaileena???... WTF???

Chopper_Mike

this seems like cool news as I liked the prince of persia games. I hope that they incorporate the free roaming of Assasin's Creed with the action of PoP.

JorgieX

@RET_Ghost: I agree: A lot of people complain by saying that the Prince wasn't the same... well, duh!! That was the idea! Being constantly life threatened during seven years changes you

Being completely honest, I prefered WW than TT... the TT prince was too soft and too much 'good boy' to my taste. The selfish, double-faced and emotionaly damaged prince in WW was priceless. Also they didn't use correctly the 'Dark Prince' issue... compared to the Sand Wraith surprise in WW (which was amazing and nobody expected)

Chopper_Mike

Warrior Within was bad for a lot of reasons, some of which are subjective. Personally, my BIGGEST problem with WW was that mother fucking Dahaka. I can't walk up stairs in the dead of night without feeling like I'm being chased, so that kind of pressure in a video game isn't really fun.

But mostly it was about style. Ubisoft went off on the classic big headed tangent that occurs when a studio has a successful title thanks to someone with vision and convinces themselves they can add modern elements like emo hairstyles and grab a bigger audience. The VERY first thing that annoyed me in WW was that they took what I considered to be a genius method of starting over after a "death" and turned it back into the super generic "game over" screen. It raped the atmosphere.

Beyond that, at times I wasn't entirely convinced I knew what was going on as the story supoosedly is a sequel to SoT, yet the character appears years older and with a completely different personality. Oh, and let's not forget the heavy smoker voice DESPITE THE FACT IT WAS THE SAME VOICE ACTOR.

SoT had an amazing atmosphere that WW was entirely lacking, but that is not to say parts of WW's mood weren't worthy of praise if you look at them individually. The Two Thrones brought things back, but even still it wasn't as solid as SoT. I think in particular they skimped out on the PC version, as it felt like an amateur had stolen the code and sloppily bound the commands to a keyboard.

All that said, I get the distinct feeling Prodigy should be pretty bitching. As long as they remember that SoT is why we love the 3D PoP, I doubt they can go as wrong as WW again.

Bobby McPresscott

@RET_Ghost: Besides those, it was the large character shift of the Prince.

Imagine booting up Gears of War 2, to find that Marcus was suddenly a Spiderman 3 emo guy who had fun with violence, but acted all cocky and struggled with his personal change. Sure, it could be interesting, but generally you don't take an established character and change him overnight.

Of course, generally buggyness (including one that could be triggered at any point that would stop you from completing the game, and reloading would rarely help because it was triggered so far in the past), and the backtracking (with that awful map), and combat (not a lot of people liked the combat, even though it was better. Wanted just a platformer) all hurt it, too.

Stealth Kills: YES. More animations would have definitely helped. And if you liked combat you could just fight everyone. Just the option to basically skip it by doing a bit of extra platforming (to position yourself for the stealth kill) was a good gameplay choice.

...And I actually enjoyed the music. But I like that heavy rock on its own. I don't think the switch added to the game (would have preferred original style). I just didn't hate it like most other people did.

Phokal

This is wonderful news. I love the PoP franchise!

Br00klyn-Grenade

I liked Assassins Creed also, but I thought the game-play was too repetitive and easy. I respect that they tried something new, the scimitar engine is amazing. Its too bad the game wasn't as great as it could have been.

RET_Ghost

Can't we just have more funds put into Assassin's Creed 2?

Fallible

New and best addition, I am the Prince now.

Fadakar

I also loved the "I am the architect of my own destruction" twist... never saw that coming. I was all like "Ah? Already fighting with Kaileena? So quickly? Well, at least the game was awesome" and then everything turns the wrong way, creating a totally new mission for you :D

Chopper_Mike

Finally... they should've announced this a year or 2 ago when all that stuff for the game got leaked.

Anyway, hoping they're able to work on both Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia. Because while I love Prince of Persia, I also love Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia doesn't have a story that it ended on a fucking cliffhanger with its last game.

Samos42

I didn't like WW because it wasn't Mechner's call. Mechner created the character in SoT and they decided to make him angstier. And the voice actor in SoT and TT is different from WW. In an interview with Mechner, he said that TT was going back to the way he originally wanted things.

Nettle

@dry-roasted-peanuts:Pretty much. Sands of Time was one of the best games in recent memory. Warrior Within was one of the most disappointing. And Two Thrones I refused to play due to the StarForce DRM.

gokieks

No Wii version because there's no PS2 version.

M

Sounds good. I really like this series and beat WW twice to get the bonus ending. The ending of the TT was great, and one of my favorites. Can't wait to see what comes out next.

kylo4

The reason the Wii isn't a development platform for this type of game is because while the Wii has the largest overall install base of the current-gen consoles, it has the smallest pool of people likely to play this type of game. I'm not knocking the Wii, but it's an unfortunate fact-- a huge portion of that console's install base are made of casuals, who would never buy this type of title. It's the same reason JRPG makers are not using the 360 as a lead design platform-- the install base is larger than the PS3 but the number of JRPG gamers on the Sony console is much bigger.

wild homes

@Fallible: Agreed. Prince of Persia can whither and die for all I care.

user_21938

If this is like WW, you know with actual difficulty and uses the innovative combat system, I'll be all over it. If it's a disappointment like the Two Thrones, an action game that actually punishes you for fighting, I'm not.

JohnHype

@Nettle: Then, I'm happy that they changed everything in WW. If it wasn't for that game, I would have never got into Prince Of Persia...

Chopper_Mike

@Bobby McPresscott:
Actually the Prince was voiced by Yuri Lowenthal for SoT and TT. Robin Atkin Downes voiced the prince for WW and he also might have been the Dark Prince in TT, I'm not sure about the latter part though.

@Everyone Else
Ubisoft made the decision to change the Prince's personality drastically in WW to appeal to a wider audience. They figured that this is how they would get huge sales. SoT, while being one of the best games ever made, did not actually sell that many copies. I believe Warrior Within actually beat it.

I have played through the Ubisoft Trilogy of Prince games over 10 times separately, and through discussion over forums, such as gamefaqs, most people consider WW to be the best overall game in terms of Gameplay/Platforming. Even the story at times was an amazing hook. Ubisoft basically did everything they could to ruin that game, but the core elements of it were so good that the gameplay was impossible to hold down. It's so sad that the game is presented in such a horrible fashion that so many people were immediately turned off to it. I'm surprised nobody here mentioned the horrible Godsmack 'I Stand Alone' inclusion yet.

The truth is the change in personality was MUCH to radical and unbelievable. Some people mentioned it was because of the horrible 7 years he had to endure running from the Dahaka, but Ubisoft could have done wonders with that hook to make the audience feel the Prince's plight and I'm sorry, the prince cursing and fighting time whores that say "There's so much pleasure in pain!" is not the way to communicate that message.

The truth is WW had flashes of brilliance. The Prince was such an awesome character that even through all the muck that Ubisoft tried to make him he still at times shined through. The CG's in particular where he turns to fight the Dahaka and you can only see his piercing eyes from under his cloak was amazing, better yet was when he discovers that he is in fact the architect of his own destruction.

All in all, if I had to pick one game out of the trilogy it would be WW. Because even though the presentation was shit, it had the best core elements, platforming, cutscenes, and story of the trilogy. Somebody mentioned the backtracking was bad, in truth it was fairly light and it gave a whole SoTN feel to the game when you traversed areas again that now were much different because they had been ravaged by time.

rupinderpaul