Has this trademark demise made it into the 3D version? That is, you should feel really awful, but it shouldn't be something that would make you turn off the game and never turn it on again." The first game was renowned for the way the titular character would occasionally fall on some upright spikes, twitching in a macabre fashion as death took an icy grip on his prostrate form. But of course, with respect to the seven-year-old contingent, we've tried to make it more suggestive than gory. On the subject of ugly wanton violence, Jordan says: "There's a fair amount. For instance, piercing a guard with an Arrow of Discord forces him to launch a violent attack on his colleague, thus enabling you to sneak past.
Indeed he does, and some of the spells are particularly devious. And the Prince does have one long-range weapon - it's a bow and arrow with which he can shoot spells and things." Prince Of Persia 3D is lacking in the heavy firearms department, favouring a flashing blade rather than a smoking barrel, but Jordan doesn't foresee any problems: "I think there's room for swords, especially when you're in close. Latter-day gamers are accustomed to wielding an arsenal of weaponry that would shame even the most avid rifle-polishing Guns 'n'Ammo subscriber. I mean, the basic idea behind Prince I was to take the first eight minutes of Indiana Jones and make a game out of it, and that's pretty much the mix that we're still trying to do." There's a lot of thinking-type puzzles, but at the same time there's also a lot of action. The Prince doesn't have a gun he doesn't blow out everybody in the room. "We've tried to get the same mix of action and adventure that the first games had. So is the emphasis on action, or adventure? We've seen the game moving with our own eyes, and it seems to be an explore 'em up with swords. As well as that, I hope my wife will play it, because she never played Prince of Persia 1". I also hope that 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds will be able to enjoy this one, too. "I certainly hope that people who played Prince I and 2 will be able to pick this one up and feel like they're continuing where they left off a few years ago, but with better graphics. The first two POP games had a massive following, but that was then and this is now. They don't seem to have any trouble with menu bars, but I'm hopeless with them." I'm sort of a check on them, because many on the team are very good core gamers and they play games like Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy all the way through. It's a trick to keep people from getting disoriented. Some of the people on the team can use both hands simultaneously all over the keyboard, but that's personally my limit and that's what we had on Prince 2, so we're trying to stick to that. So the design challenge that we're still wrestling with is: how do you keep it to basically four directional arrow keys and two keys - because that's all I can do personally. And making the leap between them is a tricky business, as Jordan admits: "Well, the hard thing about 3D, of course, is you need at least a couple of extra keys.
PRINCE OF PERSIA 3D OPENGL FULL
So I thought, 'Hey, Jeez, twist my arm.'"Ĭlearly, a side-on platformer and a full 3D extravaganza are two very different prospects. But they really convinced me that they wanted to push it further than it's ever been before and use the Prince Of Persia to do that. There's no sense in doing it if it's just going to be like 'take the Tomb Raider engine and slap a turban on if. "The opportunity was there and it was kind of intriguing because Andy Peterson, the producer, had a really gung-ho bunch of artists and programmers who wanted to give it the full treatment - the best graphics, the best 3D. We tracked down its creator, Jordan Mechner, at the recent E3 show in Atlanta and asked him just that. It's been five years since the last outing though, so why resurrect it now?
The latest to earn the 3D tag is Prince Of Persia, which by a stroke of luck is actually the third game in the series. In fact, it always has been, it's just that games are finally catching up.