New Prince of Persia detailed

By Tom Bramwell Published 15 December, 2009

Time and nature powers for Princey.

Ubisoft has revealed that Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands takes place between the stories of The Sands of Time and Warrior Within and incorporates "powers of nature" alongside time-manipulation.

The new game sees the Prince visiting his brother's kingdom only to find it under siege. Inevitably someone flips the Sands of Time and this plunges Princey into another epic adventure where he will "learn to bear the mantle of true leadership", according to Ubi. And to bear some best-in-class chest hair, most likely.

"The Prince will discover that harnessing the forces of nature itself will prove to be a devastating companion to his ability to rewind time," we're also told. IT GON RAIN.

What else? There will be "gigantic" environments, "huge-scale, multi-enemy combat" and level design to "push the Prince's prodigious abilities to unseen levels".

We've yet to see any screenshots of the game, which runs on the Anvil engine (Prince of Persia 2008, Assassin's Creed I and II), but we do now have some initial artwork to go with this weekend's teaser trailer.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is due out for DS, PC, PS3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360 in May 2010, timed to coincide with the Sands of Time film.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Emmit_Assassin #1 2 years ago

    Yay.....another pop.....yeah, man.....cool.....apparently....

  • Rizo #2 2 years ago

    I so wish this is like the original sands of time.

  • Lee_Morris #3 2 years ago

    In my opinion the trailer was super naff. I hope previews show this is something more than a dirty cash in.

    sad panda for no PoP 2008 sequel

  • Beek4257 #4 2 years ago

    Princey looks quite angry in the trailer, like he's about to say "b#tch!" again. Which he shouldn't. Ever. Again.

  • darkmorgado #5 2 years ago

    Interesting. I'm intrigued to see whether they can successfully make the transition from charming to emo prince a bit more seamless. That was the biggest problem with the original SOT trilogy - the sudden, drastic shift in tone. If they can find a way to make the change more believable, they might, just might actually end up making the original trilogy more cohesive.

    But what do you call this? It's not exactly a prequel, being set after the first one, but not a sequel, as it's before the other two. Can't be a ret-con, because it's not (as far as we know) attempting to provide a new explanation of events. It's like "Sands of Time: The Lost Chapter".

    Anvil engine should at least ensure some pretty graphics, but I'm more concerned about the gameplay. WW and TTT both focused too much on combat, and POP 2008 simplified the platforming to the degree where you could effectively play the game with one button. I'm hoping they scale back the combat and focus on revisting the same sense of awe in environments as the first TR game evoked, but the statement about multi-foe combat makes me worry that they are going to end up turning this into God of War with a POP skin on top.

  • tiddles #6 2 years ago

    Inquel?

  • raion #7 2 years ago

    @darkmorgado

    emo? I figured it was more a "badass wannabe". like if he watched one too many bruce willis movies.

  • Beano #8 2 years ago

    I prefer the style of the last PoP game from 2008 - but the gameplay was to dull and easy, and lacked variation. Hoping the new game will be more like Sands Of Time gameplaywise :)

  • Doctor_What #9 2 years ago

    It's an interesting choice, to back track from the world of the 2008 game - perhaps they realised that the companion wasn't as interesting as the time-rewind function?

  • andywilkie35 #10 2 years ago

    God I hope this is a direct followup to last year's effort - one of the most underrated games of 08

  • smithdown #11 2 years ago

    "EVERYBODY LOOK LIKE ANTS!"

    "WHO WANTS THIS DOG?"


  • Beano #12 2 years ago

    @andywilkie35: It's not. Read the article.

  • hiddenranbir #13 2 years ago

    Between SoT and WW!?

    Anyone feel like continuity is about to break? Will they remember that time assassin thing? Can they successfully degrade the Prince's personality at a reasonable and believable pace? Didn't the Prince have to reacquire the time powers in WW because of the events of SoT?
    Edited by 1 at 15/12/09 @ 11:23

  • sublitterat #14 2 years ago

    So all it takes to get an authentic sequel to the Sands of Time is a multi-million dollar movie made?

    Guess all you Beyond Good and Evil/Deus Ex/Elite/Thief/[insert fanboy obsession of choice] fans need to get petitioning Bruckheimer now...

  • penhalion #15 2 years ago

    I knew they'd be doing it assasins creed 2 style :)

    Those assasin tomb levels seemed way way too POP to have been anything but a test bed to see how we'd react.

  • theloz #16 2 years ago

    @darkmorgado I didn't mind the change in tone, personally. I thought it was reasonable considering what the prince had been through in the time since Sands of Time. There was supposed to be a big gap between the two games--15 years or so.

    However I did take issue with some of the changes in gameplay and mechanics. Sands of Time was so fresh, whereas Warrior Within felt very gamey. The new combat system was awesome, but it went completely against the established rules from Sands of Time as far as killing sand monsters was concerned. Suddenly it was possible to cut them in half with conventional weapons. Don't even get me started on the 'sand refills hidden in pots and baskets' cliche! I do think Warrior Within was an excellent game though, and horribly underrated, it just wasn't a wonderful interactive storytelling experience the like of which the world has never seen (before or since!)

    I'm sure the new PoP will be a very entertaining game, and I'm looking forward to playing it. However, I don't expect it will be anything like Sands of Time. In fact, I rather hope they don't try and make it similar. The last time they attempted to ape Sands of Time--in The Two Thrones, it wildly missed the mark, and I think ended up being the weakest of the trilogy...

  • M_of_the_sys #17 2 years ago

    @penhalion

    I really do hope you're right. The assassin's tombs with an element of danger(spikes and saws) would be perfect!

  • JamieR #18 2 years ago

    meh have Price of Persia on the ps3 and i got bored of it rather quick.

  • septimus #19 2 years ago

    Won't be as good as Sands of Time.

    I love the way 'multi-enemy combat' is now a bullet point. We took it away last time, everyone realised that was a shit idea, but now we can put it on the box!

    Well, they fixed ACII, maybe they can do this one justice also.

  • myoptika #20 2 years ago

    Interquel, eh? I never played PoP08, as I loved Classic and Sands of Time too much.