Stop While You're Ahead

Anyone who reads this blog regularly could probably guess I’m a huge fan of the Prince of Persia series, then again, you two probably already knew that before I started this blog. I think I've written more articles about the last game than any other game on here. So naturally when Ubisoft announces something outrageous like the next PoP game being a continuation of the Sands of Time trilogy, instead of the story they ended with a cliffhanger less than a year ago, I’m going to rant about it.

A small part of me is excited if only because the characters from the Sands of Time trilogy are awesome and I’ve spent so many hours in that universe, but the rest of me knows that story is over. Ubisoft pushed their luck by giving Sands of Time a sequel when it was clearly a standalone story and somehow managed to tie it all together beautifully by the end of the third game. I sincerely doubt they’ll be able to pull off a fourth game with the same kind of grace and care that they gave Two Thrones. Hell, they almost killed all hope for the trilogy when they made the prince “dark” and angry in Warrior Within.

Then there’s the fact that this game is slated for May of 2010, that means that it has either been in development alongside the last PoP, or it is going to have less than an 18 month dev cycle. I know the two Sands of Time sequels were both made in a year, but they had all the assets from the previous games and didn’t alter an enormous amount of the core gameplay. This game however is probably not going to use a lot of last year’s game seeing as it was cel shaded and significantly different from the other universe.

The last thing that really makes me nervous is May is the same month that the Sands of Time movie is coming out. Based on the trailer, the movie seems to take bits from the entire trilogy, but will mainly focus on the story on the first game. Jordan Mechner wrote it, so it’s probably not that bad, but we’re still talking about a game movie here. What I don’t want to hear is this new game is going to be a movie tie-in because that would just be ridiculous. How could they possibly make a game that is based on a movie that is based on three other games and expect it to be better or even equivalent to the originals? The reason the movies story was changed so much (I imagine) is because games don’t translate directly to movies very well. The same is true the other way, so doing both is probably a recipe for disaster.

I’m always hopeful and I guess I’ll have a better grasp for what is coming once they release a trailer on the 12th.

Paradise in Other Games

As the more perceptive of my seven or so readers can see, I recently started playing Burnout Paradise again. I went and bought a copy the day the new Big Surf Island DLC came out. Interestingly enough, it had been damn near exactly a year since I last played Burnout Paradise when I popped it back into my 360. As I’m sure most gamers are aware, Burnout Paradise has seen an unprecedented level of support since release from its developer, Criterion Games. Since I stopped playing last summer they have added day and night cycles, weather effects, motorcycles, a cops and robbers mode, an entire new island, and some other stuff I’m sure I forgot about. Even better, most of it has been for free! Gamers everywhere have rallied behind this new model of support, but I wonder just how viable it really is? It works great for this style of game, but how will it fair if applied to a linear narrative or even any game with a narrative?

The reason Burnout Paradise can be modified so easily is there is absolutely no story. You drive cars around what is essentially a giant playground and have a blast doing it. The game gives you a plethora of things to do, and whenever Criterion comes up with something new, they throw it up on the marketplace. Most games however, aren’t like that. Prince of Persia, for example, stirred up all sorts of drama by deciding to add content to an already finished product. That game had an ending with a sort of hazy choice to be made. If you were among the minority that opted to end the game prematurely then the addition of DLC to add onto the story was essentially a slap in the face. Seeing as how most games single player campaigns fit into a narrative like this, with or without choices, adding content ends up feeling tacked on or just more of the same. New content for Burnout on the other hand not only adds new areas, but alters the old areas injecting a fresh twist on an old game. The only way to do that with a game like Prince of Persia would be to add new gameplay elements that require you to replay the storyline.

Still, there are a ton of games that could easily adopt Criterion's support system. GTA4 has in a way, with its DLC bringing storylines unrelated to the main game. A game that could have did a lot of really cool things with extra content, but I feel only scratched the surface was Crackdown. Crackdown is very similar to Burnout Paradise if you can overlook the very glaring fact that in one you are a super soldier and in the other you are a… car. The philosophy behind each game is essentially the same. You are given a huge world, tools to do cool things in those worlds and various objectives to complete. Once you were finished with Crackdown, co-op and all, you could have easily been left wanting more. I certainly was and I put a pretty ridiculous amount of time into that game. Realtime Worlds did release a small DLC pack with new weapons and cars, and a few other throwaways, but if they kept supporting Crackdown like Burnout, I could see myself still coming back to it two years later.

The reason I find Criterion’s continued support for Burnout Paradise so exciting is because up until now console DLC has felt more like a rip off than a justified addition. It’s only been getting worse as we get farther and farther into this cycles lifespan as well, map packs are getting smaller and more expensive and content is being released within weeks and sometimes days of a games release. There are some cons to this system such as developers having to dedicate resources to their older games that could potentially go to newer titles, but when so many new games feel like more of an expansion pack than an actual sequel it makes you wonder why they didn’t just keep patching the original. It won't work for all games, but when it does I think you could turn an awesome game into something really special.

Prince of Persia Epilogue

I played through the PoP DLC last night. It was a fun romp; the level design is a lot more creative and at times a bit more difficult. It took me about three hours to finish and I definitely enjoyed it. The new moves were sort of moot however, they added a fifth magic plate and the Prince can now sprint towards an enemy in combat to initiate a QTE for a stun. Neither was a significant addition, but added a little something to change up the experience from December.

The main reason I was excited for this though was not the new gameplay changes. It was the cliffhanger ending that threatened to remain a mystery for another two years before PoP2 came out. Of course it was addressed by the DLC, how could it not be? The biggest gameplay mechanic, Elika, is still usable so they had to address the “disagreement” between her and the Prince.

I am a little disappointed in how they went about with this. Essentially it can be summed up as Elika is rightfully incredibly angry with the Prince and disillusioned by the prospect of stopping Ahriman again. They exchange a few conversations about it, but little progress is made by the end of the epilogue. It does end on a fairly good note that once again leaves me hopeful for future titles, but this wasn’t the satisfying conclusion I was looking for.

I’d still definitely recommend it if you liked playing through PoP, at ten bucks you get about a third of the amount of play that you got for spending sixty. That’s like half off! However if you were one of the few people that chose to turn the console off instead of finishing the canon ending you aren’t going to want check this out. You can probably figure out why. ;)

On that note, I was perusing the internets the other day and stumbled across Ben Mattes blog. He was the producer of the Prince of Persia. After skimming a few of his posts I found one explaining why his team chose to end their latest game with the controversial ending that it did rather than offering an obvious choice. For those of you who don’t want to read the whole article, it comes down to if they ever made a sequel they didn’t want to have to pick which ending was canon. This is what they were forced to do when they finished off the Sands of Time trilogy. The middle game, Warrior Within had two endings, and the harder to obtain ending was the one they ended up choosing to use. This probably led to some confusion for the fans that were unaware of the alternate ending when they started up the final game, Two Thrones.

I have no problem with this explanation, Ben even states in his article that they expected 5% of people to just turn off their consoles and accept an alternate ending by not completing the entirety of the game. He also says, as I think is common knowledge, that this new storyline has always been planned as a trilogy so anyone that chose to turn off their consoles should have been aware that they were also choosing to ignore any sequels that are coming. This is a fine alternative; I just don’t think most people considered sequels when they chose to turn off their consoles. I’m guessing it slipped their mind, because looking at games these days, especially from a company like Ubisoft, it’s incredibly naïve to think otherwise.

Prince of Persia DLC

Note: There are some major Prince of Persia spoilers in this article.

I’ve always been a little hesitant to jump aboard the console downloadable content bandwagon. It seems with each passing year games are getting shorter and DLC is coming out sooner. I can understand why developers are doing it, besides just making money, stats have shown that 30 days after a games release is the sweet spot to reinvigorate player interest. This means not only can they sell 10 dollars worth of stuff to a large chunk of their install base, but also that all these people are less likely to sell their game back to GameStop and potentially snatch a sale away from the creators.

Having said that I am still very excited about the new Prince of Persia Epilogue DLC that was announced last week. Despite liking PoP, including its controversial ending, it drives me crazy when a game or movie is written with a major plot cliffhanger at the end. It is one thing to resolve a primary story and set the mood for what is yet to come. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within did this well by wrapping up the storyline and then showing the Prince’s hometown ravaged by war. This way you knew there was more to come, but the story was already wrapped up. The new Prince of Persia most definitely did not end this way and I was fairly angry thinking I’d have to wait another two years to see what the hell happens.

I’m excited because this DLC sounds like it is going to help flesh out the ending of PoP a mere 3 months after the games release. Of course you could argue they already had the story all planned out and just held onto the content to cash in on it later, but this seems to say otherwise. Who knows how truthful Ben Mattes was being, but I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

One problem this epilogue will bring is it undermines the theory that the game gave us a choice to stop playing once the first set of credits rolled. I personally never thought that was the real end, in large part due to the beating the game achievement only being unlocked after the second set of credits start. Still, even if the developers didn’t intend for you to turn the game off and let it end with Elika lying dead on the altar it still is a perfectly reasonable decision to come too given the context of the ending. The credits do roll before you bring Elika back and you are in control of the Prince and can choose to stop playing.

Now that there is another chapter to the story that theory really can’t hold up anymore. Now it would be like stopping in the middle of a game rather than at a sort of ambiguous end. Depending on how this story plays out, it is very unlikely that anyone will be able to maintain the above argument. However, this most likely would have happened anyway when the inevitable sequel comes out a couple years from now.

This is kind of sad because I found the debate about turning off the game to be incredibly interesting. Who knows though, maybe the story in the epilogue will lead to an even more interesting ending. At the very least I am very curious to hear what Elika has to say now that she has time to say more than “Why?”

A Prince for Everyone

Recently Michael Abbott over at the wonderful Brainy Gamer organized a symposium for discussing the new Prince of Persia. I was pretty stoked when I discovered this because first of all I love his site and all of his friends game discussions, but more importantly the Sands of Time trilogy ranks very high among my favorite games ever. Yes, even Warrior Within, though it is without a doubt the weakest in the series. This obviously leaves me fairly biased towards the discussion of the new game, but luckily I’m not writing this to discuss how much I liked the game.

The Brainy Gamer posted this article back when Braid came out this summer. He was commenting on how all his non-gamer friends loved the opening of Braid and wanted to experience all it had to offer. They couldn’t of course because Braid requires a previous knowledge of video games that can only be acquired from the years we all spent playing games. Certain unspoken rules are there that us as gamers don’t have to think twice about, but would never cross a non-gamers mind. From what I understand several incredibly avid gamers even had problems beating all the puzzles in there. Not me of course, but my skills needn’t be discussed. ;)

Braid would have been a great game to show the world what games are capable of, if only the world was capable of playing it. That’s where Prince of Persia comes in. PoP has the beautiful graphics, the awesome atmosphere and excellent score that Braid has. It also has the narrative and ending to inspire a huge dialogue, regardless of if you liked the story. Most importantly it has what Braid never even wanted to have, accessibility. Several gamers cite this as a negative, but this is the game we should be showing all our non-gamer friends in an attempt to get them to experience what we do. Interestingly, Mr. Abbott’s friends ended up choosing PoP as their universal favorite after his holiday get together. I assume at least some of them are the same friends that couldn’t break into Braid.

Prince of Persia is a great step in the right direction for expanding the gaming audience in a way the Wii hasn’t really provided. If that requires the sacrifice of displeasing a few hardcore gamers, I’m sorry to say I think that’s a fair trade. Besides, it sounds like several of the hardcore were happy to jump aboard. I certainly was.