Anbpinions regarding... Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
This post contains spoilers for a 2003 videogame. Beware.
For some reason, I decided to play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time last week. It was one of my first GameCube games and, as a kid with serious problems with finishing videogames1, I don't think I ever made past thirty percent of it during my childhood. I used to do this thing a lot where I would reach a point where I didn't know what to do and just restart the game - and that point generally was the "palace defense system" level.
I finally made it to the end, after way too many years of it sitting in several different shelves and drawers! I... Think it's an... ok...... game...?
I remember being in immense awe of this guy parkouring around and, playing it now, I can see that there was a lot of effort in making the game as "cinematic" as possible, so that's probably why the running on walls thing completely altered little me's brain chemistry. This is mostly to contextualize that my main takeway from this game is it's fine as a whole, but it does look very cool. Today I think it's kinda funny how the camera keeps switching to capture these crazy shots of the Prince while he runs, but that was probably mind-boggling in 2003.
Story-wise, it's nothing to write home about. Edgy but valorous hero, suddenly having to survive sand zombies due to a traitorous magic vizier, then some time travel shenanigans. The audio quality for the dialogues is very questionable2 and had me raising the volume to be able to parse what they were saying constantly. The most fun part of the story was seeing how the visions you get at each save point start becoming more morbid as you advance in the game, which is not the story per se, but I think it's good storytelling. Finally, I'm not going to say anything regarding orientalism since I'm not versed in it3, but I will briefly roll my eyes because of the sexism. Farah is not a damsel in distress most of the time, but the final battle is about her helpless in her room and the Prince saving her. As I said, I won't dwell on it4, but it's flaccid.5
I think that, despite the whole push for a movie-inspired experience6, the most fun part of Sands of Time is running around. As I said before, it's simply nice to press buttons and see it happen. It doesn't matter that we don't have the open-endedness that Ubisoft would later implement in Assassin's Creed - looking at the giant toy-box palace rooms and making your character just free run through them is quite lovely. Some areas are a bit more puzzly to navigate and like, maybe one or two have complex execution? But it's mostly about seeing your little guy swing in poles, climb pillars, hang from ledges, run on walls (this is the coolest one), jump around, balance on beams and all that. This is also why combat is kinda boring: you get to see all the cool combat moves in the first third of the game, then it's just the same thing over and over again. Enter an arena-shaped room, jump over the sand-zombies without spears, wall-jump over the sand-zombies with spears. It made me wish the last confrontation was more of a building-crumbling-desperate-runaway sort of situation, instead of fighting one (1) guy in an empty room.
Ok, this went on for longer than what I wanted for a quick game review on Wednesday night. I guess it's a good game. It was worth playing for me, since it was an important part of my childhood, but there's cooler stuff out there. If you really want to play the game that was basically the basis for the Assassin's Creed franchise it might be worth your time? In that case though, feel free to follow little me's MO, i.e. no need to play it until the end.
anb
I am a firm believer that if you're not enjoying a game, you should just go do something else instead of finishing it. Little me, however, was just completely incapable of keeping focus on one game for over two hours.↩
I finally understand why my father couldn't explain to me what the characters were saying, despite the fact that he knew English. Funny how things work out.↩
If I had to guess, there are probably mischaracterizations of the cultures represented in this game. I don't say this in bad faith, I just don't think it was the kind of topic they accounted for at the time. I also think you can end up with a product that was constructed without proper knowledge but is embraced as representation and all that, but I don't know if that could be the case here. I'll look up if some Iranian folks have any say on the matter when I have the time.↩
There is a random moment where the Prince just goes on a rant about women as well. Like, he could have just been mad at Farah, right? She was literally the only other person alive. SHIT, I'm dwelling. Was it that hard to not be mysoginistic back then? I guess for a lot of peeps it still is now, but we're getting better. Right...?↩
Hi this is future me, dwelling harder. After finishing the post and going to bed I lingered a bit on the thought that, maybe if the Prince were a silent protagonist, I would have been more generous regarding Farah's role and presentation? I was confused because I was reminiscing the game and Farah was definitively more proactive then a lot of female characters in games (from that era). Like, she has a goal, she helps with the puzzles and she helps with the fights, but part of the problem is that the Prince is constantly yapping about how she should "stay close", "be careful", or "pull that lever" most of the time. I'm not saying she should become the annoying tutorial-spewing sidekick of the modern triple A games (and Sands of Time is already doing the thinking for you when the Prince tells her to pull a lever, but I digress), but maybe there was a less sexist way to frame all this. You can still have a Prince that is the center of the story, the hero - and the guy who rescues Farah sometimes - without shoving Farah into a "knows less and needs to be rescued constantly" role, right? Maybe I'm talking from a privileged position though, I should go look for stuff women have to say on the matter. (edited May 5th)↩
Which is something I feel triple A companies haven't gotten over yet. Come on folks, it's been 23 years. Games can be art on their own.↩