The Prince of Persia's evolution

Ubi Soft recently conducted a brief Q&A session with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time producer Yannis Mallat. Yannis was keen to speak about the evolution of the Prince himself as a character, compared to the original incarnation: "Today's videogame standards are extremely high. It is harder than ever to create a truly special hero that the gaming public will embrace. For Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, we faced a double challenge: To recapture the spirit of the original character, while reinventing him as a distinctive hero for a new generation of gamers."

The aim seems to have been for the designers to create a far more emotive, expressive variation of the original mute, somewhat enigmatic acrobatic Prince, in a bid to lend the game a theatrical edge. In order to help develop the character, Jordan Mechner, designer of the original Prince of Persia, was brought in as "screenwriter" to ensure the essential elements of the original character - acrobatic and graceful, as opposed to mechanical - were successfully fused with the far more sophisticated gaming model and an intuitive control scheme.

We're expecting Ubi Soft to release Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time towards the latter end of the year, on PS2, GameCube, PC and Xbox.