DGC Ep 256: Prince of Persia Sands of Time (part three)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. We talk about the Library, our problems with it, how we were misled, and how such things happen, as well as other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Up to "On the Ramparts"

Issues covered: the Prince as a jerk, what did you call me?, feeling hamfisted but trying for the heart, a stepping stone to better-formed relationship in a game, inter-character action in later Ubisoft games, skipping to the end puzzle of a sequence as a possible goal, misunderstanding the point of the puzzle, skipping a chunk of stuff and being thrown off mentally, having to re-run the room to understand what was going on, building the puzzle piece-by-piece instead of holistically, wanting to see a pattern when it's just a series of steps, the language of the space, Tim loves his cisterns, recontextualizing a space, being able to compare several rooms more or less back-to-back, the memorable rooms from an art standpoint vs a design standpoint, balancing against hidden health packs, feedback loops that are negative for the wrong people, aesthetic fit of the space between worlds in tension with the difficulty piece, unlikelihood of dynamic difficulty balancing, feeling like the later areas were seen less in playtesting, getting to the limits of the traversal, the inability to refill the sands out of combat, camera modes and the camera timer reset, losing track of where the stick movement will take you, breaking the 180 rule, working the level and camera design together, platformers with wider spaces, why this game didn't hit as well as God of War, the possible shadow of September 11, tone and presentation and mass appeal, everything going grim, the arcade-y nature of God of War and the power fantasy, story and video games, the balance of traversal and combat, excellence in craft in the God of War series, the roots of Western civilization and making a Greek story easier to go for, what we're streaming, Sands of Tim.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Tomb Raider, Soul Reaver, Uncharted, UbiSoft, Assassin's Creed, Naughty Dog, AC: Syndicate, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia (2008), Crystal Dynamics, Apple ][, Ocarina of Time, Perfect Dark Zero, Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Remi Lacoste, Mario (3D series), Artimage, Binx: The Time Sweeper, God of War, DOOM, John Carmack, Max Payne, Jak 2, Brian/dontkickfood, Hitman (2016, series), Death Stranding, Metal Gear (series), Hideo Kojima, Lea Seydoux, Lyndsay Wagner, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Fallout (series), Troika, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time:
Finish the Game!

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