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Posted on September 7th, 2005 - 4777 Reads

Rated Rating Pending Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones GameCube Preview

-- Written by Justin Joseph



 First there was Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. A game that is very critically acclaimed for what it was able to accomplish, while it did fall short in overall entertainment value. It innovated current generation software by fusing platforming gameplay with time control mechanics. Instead of constantly having to worry about whether you were going to die navigating the palace or fighting in battle, the time control allowed you to correct your mistakes. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within took the Prince in a new direction by giving him a much darker, more mature attitude, and a kick butt/taking names combat essence that really made the game "Warrior Within". It hugely improved upon the lack of variety in Sands of Time's combat, but many feel it fell short in retaining the overall PoP atmosphere that they know and love. However, The Two Thrones has sought to combine the best of both PoP worlds in completing the trilogy. Can the final mission of the Prince truly realize the entertainment value of both games? Or are both themes just too incompatible to offer yet another revolutionary installment in the franchise? Read along to find out!

The Prince is both a perpetrator and a victim in this situation. He unintentionally set off a chain of events to mess up the timeline ever since he unleashes the Sand of Time that has caused him many problems throughout the franchise. However, how he's chosen to go about certain things to fix what he started haven't exactly been the smartest. His own greed and desire to thwart his fate have caused suffering on his end as well as with others that he has drawn in on his quests.

The Two Thrones is a direct sequel to Warrior Within as well as the finisher of the trilogy. Wanting to continue his life with his new found love in Kaileena, they both leave the Island of Time behind them and head to the Prince's home city of Babylon. But how exactly Kaileena is even in this game in the first place considering the final events of Warrior Within escapes us. Now while no one really understands what is really going on between the Prince and Kaileena, nor what is up with all the rumors surrounding Farah; series designer Yannis Mallat has assured us all that Kindred Blades will clarify EVERYTHING.

Now how Two Thrones will stand out from its franchise predecessors to end the trilogy is the fact that the Prince can't manipulate time this time around. He is going to be forced to "fix things for real" this time, hence the reason this is the final game in the trilogy. There's no Dagger of Time, no Medallion from Farah, just the Prince's raw emotion and desperate attitude!

But to make things a little more interesting this time around, what the Prince and Kaileena will witness when they finally arrive to Babylon will cause them both shock. The city is quite literally "on fire", and the streets are just filled with endless violence. Upon arriving at the beginning of the city, the Prince and his love encounter an obvious enemy. Unfortunately Kaileena ends up being killed in the process (didn't you do that job anyway?), and her being a vessel for the Sands of Time causes it to be unleashed on the city. The sands then completely ravage the Prince's people, take over the generals, and eventually invade the Prince's very body and begin causing a strange change in him!

Feeling obligated to assist his fellow Babylonians, the Prince takes to the streets of the city to protect the loyal citizens. Unfortunately since he's been gone for so long, he is nothing but a stranger to the people. No one recognizes him and he's quickly deemed a threat to the ensuing forces. So along with the Prince doing everything he can to save his kingdom, his love and the timeline, he must face a brand new enemy. This happens to be the Prince's very self!

In Sands of Time he was a very naive Arabic warrior that desired to do nothing else but please his father's legacy. In Warrior Within he was "all alone" in preventing the sands from ever being created in the first place in order to fend off a mystical creature that wanted him dead. Now in Two Thrones, the Prince will undergo yet another character change, and this time around it will cause the birth of an alter ego! This happens to be none other than the "Dark Prince", an entity that wields a deadly short sword and dagger-tailed whip. He is also slowly "taking over" the Prince's entire identity.

In a cooperative campaign, the two sides of the Prince will experience numerous different environments. It will no longer offer the sort of claustrophobic feel of Warrior Within, but present an open-ended city that you are free to explore as you please! Taking to the rooftops of the city to mysteriously magical and sandy areas, Two Thrones mixes the best of both predecessors!

Having this feature in the game will allow players the opportunity of experiencing an enhanced version of Warrior Within's "backtracking". The story's plot in of itself is indeed linear, however the approach Ubisoft is taking with it will mix a feel of "backtracking while going forward" in terms of the Prince's journey. At certain points in the game, the Prince will be faced with a series of different objectives, and the way they must be approached should change every time.

Now how does Prince actually go about this adventure? In Sands of Time, it was a linear quest of teamwork with the Maharaja's daughter in Farah. In Warrior Within, you relied heavily on combat to thwart the Empress of Time's minions as well as avoiding the pursuing Dahaka. The main feature of Two Thrones will be that of a form of "pseudo-stealth". Now don't take that phrase as this game turning the franchise into something like Splinter Cell, even though Ubisoft creates those games as well. While the Ubisoft team has indeed given the AI the ideals of enemies from the SC franchise, you hardly have to worry about being cautious in your approaches to them. Two Thrones should really feel a lot like Warrior Within with the combined elements of extreme combat with the platforming and puzzle mechanics. The only thing different here now is the extreme action can be approached very differently!

Instead of taking on the traits of Splinter Cell and having the Prince take out his enemies in secret, or approaching it with a "slash with swords and ask questions" later mentality; Two Thrones encourages players to take out their adversaries with "quick kills!" This has been implemented to allow players to prevent enemies from calling for reinforcements or facing the possibility of entering the traditional PoP style of battle. Quick kills will work with a "Matrix-like" feel by having them occur in slow motion sequences. When initiating a quick kill attack, a specific kind of time prompt will appear onscreen. If you manage to do the striking down of your opponent in this time window, you'll get your kill! However if you fail in that regards, you will suffer a likely health penalty by being stabbed in the stomach or something like that.

Two Thrones will still very much support the combat style of Warrior Within, but quick kills will allow players of the game to not bother with that sort of thing if they don't wish to. To really get a feel for how that can work, the Prince can be seen performing ruthless moves in a couple scenes. In one, he jumps from building to building as the city remains on fire. Then in the process of one of those jumps, he spots potential prey, leaps towards and onto him, and immediately takes him down with a nasty throat slash! Another scene shows the Prince rapidly sliding down a ladder whose bottom begins several feet above the ground. When at the bottom, the Prince swings himself upside down, grabs a passing enemy Splinter Cell-style, and kills him!

To enhance the variety of the game's play mechanics even moreso, the Dark Prince will feature his own assortment of abilities through the use of his deadly whip! In actual combat, he can use that scary looking thing to both disarm his enemies as well as dragging ones to him for some brutal sword slashes. In a more effective sense that directly correlates to the game's "quick kills", the Dark Prince can also use the whip to break enemies' necks from a short distance.

In terms of what the Prince can do with his incredible acrobatics, everything isn't quite known about that. But what we do know is two of the Prince's new abilities happen to be a wall shimmy and a diagonal type jump. Two Thrones will also seemingly feature a number of "Dahaka-like" chase scenes, only not coupled with Godsmack's "I Stand Alone" this time around. Also sounding cool are the game's newly implemented chariot races. We don't know exactly how those will work, but it's a nice feature to make the game feel more like it's from the "ancient middle eastern" era. Also listening to consumers of both games, Yannis has assured us that the music and voice acting presentations in this game will far outdo that of both predecessors. The music will have a combination of rock and the traditional PoP themes to accompany sequences, and each side of the Prince will actually feature a different voice!

So in other words, this is it. This is the last chance for the Prince to really fix everything he's done in recent years, intentionally or not. His love interest is dead, his past lies in shambles and the only home he's ever known is veiled in chaos. He must find out what is happening in Babylon and why, with events possibly being connected to the ancient Tower of Babylon. Utilizing desperate measures with the Prince's very well-known acrobatics and combat, take to the streets and rooftops of his home city to finally set things right! Look forward to Prince of Persia 3: The Two Thrones this coming November!

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