It had been rumoured for a while, but yesterday Ubisoft made the announcement official: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is making a comeback in the form of a remake, and will release for consoles in January of next year. While this should've been exciting news, fans didn't react positively to the announcement.
As it turns out, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time really is a remake of the original game that launched in 2003, and the remake got a lot of criticism from fans due to its unpolished graphics. To be a little bit more precise, fans complained that it is characters themselves the ones that are poorly designed.
Ubisoft has recently revealed that the game's controversial new art style is pretty deliberate, and it was chosen because it will make characters and the game itself stand out; well, they're not wrong there, as they did stood out.
"If you take the game that was made 17 years ago, there's definitely room for improvement in terms of graphism and we really wanted to give a unique look to the game because Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is actually is a fantasy story," reveals Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Game Director Pierre Sylvain-Gires in an interview with The Mako Reactor.
"The narration, the 40 different levels you have to go through to finish the game are an immersion into the Thief of Baghdad and all these magical environments. So we decided to go for a unique visual treatment to make this game stand out from other games. It's not another Assassin's Creed, it's not like the same Prince of Persia from 2008. It has to be unique. This magic, this fantasy is shown through the saturation, through the light, so it also a challenge to redefine the visual identity of the game with this remake," Sylvain-Gires explained.
Again, it only seems to be the designs and animations for the characters in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time that has fans up in arms, since everything else does looks fairly decent — particularly the game's environments; the problem is that characters shouldn't look like they're from a previous generation of consoles.
With that said, this goes beyoned the art style. This Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake looks unpolished, and unappealing. Ubisoft still has got some time to work on the graphics, but Sylvain-Gires' comments on the matter sound like an excuse; deliberate or not.
Embark on a journey as the Prince to prevent the powerful Sands of Time from falling into the hands of the treacherous Vizier. Master the Sands of Time and use your dagger to control time itself. Fight cursed enemies and solve puzzles along the way.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will release for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Thursday the 21st of January, 2021.