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Ubisoft Montreal takes over Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake, will be released when it's ready

Deleted member 4494

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,798
Fat4all said:
feels like ubi gave them the PoP remake as a sort of low intensity project, but as soon as feedback hit ubi they panicked and decided it needed to be a AAA remake or sommit

that would put just about any new studio in over their heads i imagine
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I think this is spot on. Probably, once they saw it was going to need a complete redo they've also decided it may act as a pathway to reinvigorate the franchise if they do the work, whereas an on-the-cheap remake wouldn't do much and frankly probably wouldn't sell much.
 
m_shortpants

m_shortpants

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,202
LastNac said:
Pretty sure it's still India.Maharaja and such.
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You're getting it mixed up. The Maharaja was at the beginning. The Prince and his father are going through India returning to Persia. They take Farah, the vizier, the dagger, the hourglass with them. They then arrive in Azad, which is implied to be a part of Persia. Which is why it has a Sultan.
 
LastNac

LastNac

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,188
m_shortpants said:
You're getting it mixed up. The Maharaja was at the beginning. The Prince and his father are going through India returning to Persia. They take Farah, the vizier, the dagger, the hourglass with them. They then arrive in Azad, which is implied to be a part of Persia. Which is why it has a Sultan.
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But it's not their capital. And stylistically very India esque.

Why is the Persian capitol in Babylon???
 
m_shortpants

m_shortpants

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,202
LastNac said:
But it's not their capital. And stylistically very India esque.

Why is the Persian capitol in Babylon???
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It's a sultanate in Persia, who said anything about a capital? The architecture in Azad is markedly different than the Indian level at the beginning. It's 1001 Nights inspired, which is Persian. Domes, minarets, geometric blue tile designs. Which is why it also has a Sultan. Which is why the final sword you get in that game has Persian/Arabic script on it.

Heck, even the Prince of Persia wiki states that Azad is in the greater Persian empire lol.
 
LastNac

LastNac

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,188
m_shortpants said:
It's a sultanate in Persia, who said anything about a capital? The architecture in Azad is markedly different than the Indian level at the beginning. It's 1001 Nights inspired, which is Persian. Which is why it has a Sultan. Which is the the final sword you get in that game has Persian/Arabic script on it.
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Let's be fair here, Arabian Nights is a lot of stuff.
 
HMD

HMD

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,300
I'm surprised they haven't given up, but I'm glad it's going to see the light of day at some point. One of my most anticipated games despite the troubled development.
 
Farlander

Farlander

Game Designer
Verified
Sep 29, 2021
329
Ubisoft really threw Pune and Mumbai under the bus there.

The two studios were expected to make a full remake of a game on an absolutely new engine (technically Anvil evolved from Scimitar but there have been so many iterations in 20 years that you can't call it the same engine at this point), which means, essentially, make the game from scratch, and the teams received absolutely 0 support to make that happen. Pune had to scrounge through other Ubi studios to, if we boil it down, look for what essentially were volunteers that would be able to assist them in learning the toolsets.

Only after the announcement (with a lot of negative press) did there begin an effort to actually support the studios, but by that point, if I remember correctly the development time, for two years they were essentially alone on this.

And now Ubisoft Montreal "swoops in" to save the day, and all blame for the projects woes will be on Indian studios.

And it's working, even in this thread you already see people saying how Ubi shouldn't have given the project to people without expertise in the matter or whatnot.

If higher ups would actually care about evolving Pune and Mumbai as studios beyond the very tokenistic approach of 'here is a project we don't care about that you're a lead of now' until it started getting bad rep, this situation wouldn't have happened.
 
LastNac

LastNac

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,188
Really hope this still sees the light of day.

Makes me wonder if they'd remake Warrior Within. That one would definitely need to be tweaked in places...
 
Yerffej

Yerffej

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,496
LastNac said:
Really hope this still sees the light of day.

Makes me wonder if they'd remake Warrior Within. That one would definitely need to be tweaked in places...
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Excuse me but this is peak protagonist. You can hear glorious Godsmack when you look into his eyes.
popww5-890x606.jpg
 
Palette Swap

Palette Swap

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
11,201
Not gonna lie, I'd be happy with a remaster trilogy on current gen. Hell, I was thinking about dusting off my PS3 the other day to play that collection.
 
dusan

dusan

Member
Aug 2, 2020
5,384
Palette Swap said:
Not gonna lie, I'd be happy with a remaster trilogy on current gen. Hell, I was thinking about dusting off my PS3 the other day to play that collection.
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I would die for this... It's my dream remastered collection, but it never happened because of Ubisoft's stupid policies. Luckily, at least this remake is coming.
 
AncientReptileBrain

AncientReptileBrain

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,454
Farlander said:
Ubisoft really threw Pune and Mumbai under the bus there.

The two studios were expected to make a full remake of a game on an absolutely new engine (technically Anvil evolved from Scimitar but there have been so many iterations in 20 years that you can't call it the same engine at this point), which means, essentially, make the game from scratch, and the teams received absolutely 0 support to make that happen. Pune had to scrounge through other Ubi studios to, if we boil it down, look for what essentially were volunteers that would be able to assist them in learning the toolsets.

Only after the announcement (with a lot of negative press) did there begin an effort to actually support the studios, but by that point, if I remember correctly the development time, for two years they were essentially alone on this.

And now Ubisoft Montreal "swoops in" to save the day, and all blame for the projects woes will be on Indian studios.

And it's working, even in this thread you already see people saying how Ubi shouldn't have given the project to people without expertise in the matter or whatnot.

If higher ups would actually care about evolving Pune and Mumbai as studios beyond the very tokenistic approach of 'here is a project we don't care about that you're a lead of now' until it started getting bad rep, this situation wouldn't have happened.
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missed this post back in 2022, but it's excellent. thanks for the insight.
 
m_shortpants

m_shortpants

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,202
Yerffej said:
Excuse me but this is peak protagonist. You can hear glorious Godsmack when you look into his eyes.
popww5-890x606.jpg
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The Prince getting cut by kaileena Shahdee in the opening and then calling her a bitch comes to mind too. And that's ignoring how they introduce her with a shot of her butt. The edginess hasn't aged well lol.
 
giancarlo123x

giancarlo123x

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,359
m_shortpants said:
The Prince getting cut by kaileena Shahdee in the opening and then calling her a bitch comes to mind too. And that's ignoring how they introduce her with a shot of her butt. The edginess hasn't aged well lol.
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The ps2 demo disk I had around that time featured this part. I only remember that and Godsmack from the game. Lol
 
CelticKennedy

CelticKennedy

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Sep 18, 2019
1,881
m_shortpants said:
The Prince getting cut by kaileena Shahdee in the opening and then calling her a bitch comes to mind too. And that's ignoring how they introduce her with a shot of her butt. The edginess hasn't aged well lol.
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Yeah, I remember wondering even as a teenager....how did they go from Sands of Time tone to this? Then I saw an interview with the art director with huge tribal tattoos and a soul patch. Oh...then it all made sense.


View: https://youtu.be/IXiSzt102kw?t=364
 
egg

egg

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
6,576
Yerffej said:
Excuse me but this is peak protagonist. You can hear glorious Godsmack when you look into his eyes.
popww5-890x606.jpg
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And the best one in the series imo lol.

m_shortpants said:
The Prince getting cut by kaileena Shahdee in the opening and then calling her a bitch comes to mind too. And that's ignoring how they introduce her with a shot of her butt. The edginess hasn't aged well lol.
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Damn, I remember the sound of her combos lmao.
They end with her doing long dramatic screams 😭

RAAAAGHHUUUUUUUHHH
 
Spehornoob

Spehornoob

Member
Nov 15, 2017
8,938
Quacktion said:
This was unironically the best POP game but yall arent ready for that conversation...
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From my (long ago) memory, I think you're right, at least from a design perspective. The combat was fantastic and the platforming as great as ever.

But that *tone*, lol

Complete aside, but I feel like Prince of Persia would make for a good Metroidvania series. I think the new one is a 2D Metroidvania, right?
 
Quacktion

Quacktion

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,479
Spehornoob said:
From my (long ago) memory, I think you're right, at least from a design perspective. The combat was fantastic and the platforming as great as ever.

But that *tone*, lol

Complete aside, but I feel like Prince of Persia would make for a good Metroidvania series. I think the new one is a 2D Metroidvania, right?
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Yea I think thats correct. And I agree, I was thinking maybe trying something Souls-adjacent (not an outright souls-like mind) would be a nice experiment for the series.
LastNac said:
That's not The Two Thrones...
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I remember disliking that one for some reason, like its the only one I have beaten like twice while SOT and WW got like 10 replays each.
 
RedSwirl

RedSwirl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,051
Yerffej said:
Excuse me but this is peak protagonist. You can hear glorious Godsmack when you look into his eyes.
popww5-890x606.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

m_shortpants said:
The Prince getting cut by kaileena Shahdee in the opening and then calling her a bitch comes to mind too. And that's ignoring how they introduce her with a shot of her butt. The edginess hasn't aged well lol.
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CelticKennedy said:
Yeah, I remember wondering even as a teenager....how did they go from Sands of Time tone to this? Then I saw an interview with the art director with huge tribal tattoos and a soul patch. Oh...then it all made sense.


View: https://youtu.be/IXiSzt102kw?t=364
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All you have to do is look at the sales numbers.

Practically nobody bought Sands of Time. WW immediately outsold it.

And honestly, if you look at all three games as a whole, they kind of form a coherent character arc for the Prince, with WW being his low point.
 
dusan

dusan

Member
Aug 2, 2020
5,384
LastNac said:
I domt agree it was bad. I think it played fine and narratively I liked a lot of the story beats
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I agree about the story, they went in an interesting direction. But Forgotten Sands goes back a long way in terms of gameplay compared to the original trilogy. Especially the Prince's fight & acrobatic animations feel very bad and unfinished.
 
LastNac

LastNac

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,188
dusan said:
I agree about the story, they went in an interesting direction. But Forgotten Sands goes back a long way in terms of gameplay compared to the original trilogy. Especially the Prince's fight & acrobatic animations were very bad.
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He was less fluid. But tonally it did feel more akin to 1,001 Nights then the last two games in that trilogy.

Then again, I really liked PoP08 too...
 
Wolf Parade

Wolf Parade

Member
Feb 1, 2018
836
A bit of insight into Ubisoft's business model. They are a public company and must grow the stock. They believe the best way to do this is to produce both a higher quantity and quality of games. Deeply embedded in their corporate philosophy is a desire to only open studios in jurisdictions with generous government support in the form of digital media tax credits for labour, direct subsidies, or a combination of the two. This, along with the bilingual nature of Quebec, is why Canada is their defacto dev HQ, event though they are a Paris based company. Canada has some of the most generous and stable tax credit regimes on the planet. These supports, combined with a flexible immigration system, in particular fast-tracked temporary foreign worker programs, make Canada one of the most desirable locations to open studios on the planet.

Ubi Montreal is the largest game studio on the planet by employee count and home to Ubisoft's best dev talent. I suspect Ubi India will be given other projects and be a-ok, but it makes sense that a struggling property would be sent to Montreal for a second wind.
 
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