DGC Ep 257: Prince of Persia Sands of Time (part four)
Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we finish our series on 2003's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. We talk about the unfortunate elevator sequence, the final platforming of the game, its circular story and of course, our takeaways. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
Finished the Game
Podcast breakdown:
0:52 Prince of Persia
56:16 Break
56:46 Takeaways and Feedback
Issues covered: rewinding time, feeling bad about the elevator section, spending two hours on one combat encounter, leaning on the worst things of the combat system, tight space, companion AI, being unable to see the Prince, being able to render more stuff and having that in tension with what you want to see, the "Kung Fu Circle," using the death blossom and wanting fewer sand bubbles, taking away all the things I enjoyed about the combat, the rewind resource, feeling over-designed, "fun is challenge," the history of challenge in digital game design, tightness and the tension with other goals, being too good at your game at the end, giving a lot of verbs that are fluidly deployed via context, trying to jump away but instead running me up an enemy, help me look cool getting away, not making the lock-on specific, finding the right balance for players, advocating for how to make your enemies/systems look great, the value of a locked camera, Tim looks up the solution to an audio puzzle, more puzzle discussions, misreading a puzzle and having a good moment, long checkpoints for the final exam, flipping the difficulty, really demonstrating how far the Prince has come by holding the blade edge of the dagger, maybe missing some of the transitions, rewinding the whole story back to the beginning so he tells this wild story (tying into the failures), the grand vizier trope, the cobra staff, compressing character development, the right difficulty for the final boss, doing a deep reading of the Prince disrobing through the game, not loving the rewound smooch, Brett's Book Recommendation, those mechanics that are just Great Ideas, allowing for soft failure and experimentation, contextual traversal (and combat), making the player look awesome with gentler difficulty, distilling down/all killer no filler, allowing for games that are shorter, the excellence of the animation blending system to achieve fluidity, the history of that fluidity to the original, the narrative space, trying different things in the narrative, how much we use mods, grief and games, the way games are more fixed in time, playing single player games with friends, getting streaming now, where to add quality of life improvements, asking why and what a game is about, Mister E. Dip, the sweet spot for Animal Crossing quality of life, "would fast travel help this game," being in the natural world, where the interesting friction is.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Star Wars, Brian/dontkickfood, Todd Howard, NES/SNES, Mario (series), UbiSoft, Nintendo, Troy Mashburn, Tomb Raider, Nathan Martz, Republic Commando, John Hancock, God of War, Starfighter, S. A. Chakraborty, Aladdin, Groundhog Day, Zelda (series), Dungeons & Dragons, G. Willow Wilson, Wonder Woman, Ms. Marvel, Alif the Unseen, Gears of War, Ocarina of Time, Uncharted, Shenmue, Assassin's Creed, Baldur's Gate, PixelJunk Eden, Q Games, Rez, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, The Matrix, Jill Murray, Zac Katis, Anachronox, Diablo, Bethesda Game Studios, DOOM (1993), World of Warcraft, Ashton Herrmann, Morrowind, Marcel Proust, mysterydip, Civilization, Animal Crossing, Ultima Underworld, The Witcher 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Minecraft, Death Stranding, Hitman (2016), Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.
Links:
Big World Setup tool for Baldur's Gate
Ashton Herrmann on sharing single-player games
Next time:
TBD!
Notes:
I call it the "Death Blossom" but the manual calls it the Power of Haste.
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