Written by The Wandering Fox
The Wandering Fox comes in wearing his Doctor Who suit.
Wandering Fox: Hello everybody, I’m here to talk about a time travelling game…..(looks down to find he’s wearing a green frock coat and a cravat) oh bugger, I’ve got the wrong thing! Hold on.
Whips out the Dagger of Time and rewinds time. The Wandering Fox then walked back in wearing his ordinary clothes, though he still had the Dagger of Time.
Wandering Fox: This will do.
Hello everybody. You know me well enough for my love for Doctor Who, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Owl House, The Dragon Prince and more. Hence I thought I’d tell you what you don’t know about myself. While I was younger I often watched lots of cartoons and Disney films, but if there was a video game which was THE game of my childhood, it was the Prince of Persia games. The Sands of Time trilogy holds a special place in my heart for it not only being quite the challenging game trilogy to play, but it’s also quite the strong storytelling game which helps you understand how time travel is not as easy as you think, how we have to grow up and face up to what we did. But the most special reason why it’s such a special game to me is the fact this is among the few games my dad played with me. He loved them as much as I did, loving the platforming, gameplay, story and monsters, he would often take over to fight some of the bigger enemies because I was scared of them. He would help figure out the puzzles in the games. It was so great to have him by my side to fight in the game and complete the story to see the Prince and Farah get to the end. Years it took for us to complete Warrior Within and The Two Thrones, and after we did it we were pumped up and happy!
But why else is it these games are so dear to me? Well, before we go for that, how about we start with where Prince of Persia began?
Origins and History
In the late 1980s, the video game craze was real, with Mario the big boss of games, though of course others were coming along to have their own mark in the gaming industry. Jordan Mechner, who began as a humble student, had a success in programming and animating the fighting game Karateka, and the gaming company he was working with gave him freedom to create an original game, and thus he created Prince of Persia for the PC, with him having actors perform as the characters and then rotoscoped them to create the characters and gameplay. The game sees the unknown Prince traverse a dungeon of boobytraps and swordsmen to get inside a castle to save a princess and stop Jafar (YES, he was called Jafar).
The game was a success and saw a sequel made, though didn’t receive as much acclaim as the other game. Then in 2001, Ubisoft bought the rights to Prince of Persia and they wanted to make a game, hence Jordan was brought back to help write the story, as well as game designer and consultant. The game was a comeback for the franchise with it having many nominations and awards to it. The Sands of Time would see sequels in Warrior Within, The Two Thrones, and later The Forgotten Sands. Ubisoft then tried to reboot the franchise in 2008 with the Prince now a traveller, though the game wasn’t as well received. Ubisoft by this had started focusing its all on Assassins Creed, which was at first seen as a spiritual successor to Prince of Persia, though they did end up making The Forgotten Sands and only recently released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Disney even tried to turn Prince of Persia into a film franchise back in 2010 with a film, though it wasn’t as well received. There were a few other games connected to The Sands of Time trilogy.
The only games I’ve had the most exposure with is The Sands of Time trilogy, The Forgotten Sands, the 2008 game and the movie, hence I’ll just be talking about those.
The Games of my Childhood
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was quite the game to play as a kid. At the time my young mind was impressed with the graphics and came to love the gameplay. My earliest memory was climbing the treasure vault in the Maharaja’s kingdom to get the Dagger of Time. I hadn’t the foggiest clue of what was to come after taking the Dagger, and boy it sure set me forth for a story. I remember the cutscene of the Vizier trying to take the Dagger from the Prince, only for the King to stop him, Farah being captured, the travel through the desert, then the Prince being tricked in opening the Hourglass, releasing the Sands upon the kingdom of Azad, turning everybody except for the Prince, Farah, and the Vizier, into Sand Monsters. From there, the fighting, wall running, jumping and rewinding began.
The games have made themselves proud with its puzzle solving, time limit of unlocking doors, and letting you rewind time to undo a mistake or undo your death. The more you traverse the more difficult it becomes, with giving you a different form you have to be careful with thanks to the fact this different form eats away at your health unless you kill as many monsters as you can. You have to be weary of enemies which can drain you or your sand tanks. In the final half of the first game you lose the Dagger, hence you have to be careful of any mistakes you make. The games will toss you about and have you thinking twice. The bosses get bigger in Warrior Within and The Two Thrones and you have to work your arse on it.
Though the games wowed me with how it told us a story through them, which I began to understand.
I was young though I began to realise there was a story going on thanks to a few cutscenes like with the Prince finding Farah, watching the Hourglass being taken away, then I finally knew the story was only just getting started after the Prince and Farah team up. The more I played the game, the more I became connected to the Prince and Farah, their banter from begrudging friends to lovers, the slight doubts the Prince had, his own want of killing the Vizier and the moment of despair at the climax of the game, I was hoping I could finish the game. We finally did and the end was quite the surprise: you reverse everything in the game, undoing it all up to the prologue of the game, the Prince finds Farah and tells her of the Vizier’s treachery, you fight the Vizier, kill him, and the game is done. You’d think you wasted your time in erasing the events of the game with only the Prince remembering what happened in it…
Only for Warrior Within to reveal why this made things harder for the Prince. Warrior Within in a way became my first horror game to play as, not just because of the blood, gore, sex and swearing, but the much darker storytelling and muted colours. You play this game and Sands of Time back-to-back, you’d not think this was the same character or it set in the same continuity. This was also the game where I was SCARED!
I mean it, when you had this guy coming after you in a few levels, you would be frightened. You can only run from the Dahaka.
This guy is the whole reason why we have a sequel. Cos the Prince undid the events of the first game, this means he undone his death. Thanks to this, the Dahaka has chased the Prince for seven years trying to kill him, crippling the Prince’s calmer, charming character and turning him in a cynical, desperate man. The whole game itself is already dark, though you have this guy coming out of nowhere and the whole game takes on a literal grey ad bleak colour, then you have this music playing in the background, you feel as if the Dahaka itself is coming at you from behind, you just want to get away from it as quick as you can.
The Two Thrones does end up as a lighter story though still has the Prince fighting against the forces of darkness only now it’s in himself as well. The Prince is reunited with Farah and the Vizier to end the whole trilogy, with the Prince wrestling with his own darkness as he finally understands he has to face the responsibility of a prince, helping his citizens, listen to love and finally find peace.
The games have certain storytelling elements to them, including romance, tragedy, learning, and of course time travel, all of which revolve around the Prince himself. His tragedies go from losing his family like his father and brother, to friends and lovers like Kaileena, Razia and Farah, the last of which happens twice in which she dies at the climax of the first game, then is resurrected thanks to the Prince undoing the events of the game, then he loses her again in some way as he changes the past in Warrior Within to the point Farah’s father hadn’t found the Sands of Time. The deaths of those by his unintentional screwing with time has the Prince desperately seek out time travel to undo all this but it only made things worse, with the final game seeing his own people suffering for all this. Even when he first begins to realise how selfish he’s being, Farah calls him out for still not thinking of the people which only has him think even more of how much he’s changed. It takes finding his dad’s body to finally have him let go of the darkness and accept his mistakes. He won’t turn time back now, enough death has happened thanks to him and time travel. We truly see a man growing from a snippy, glory seeking warrior to a wiser king who finally sets his own aside for those around him not by scheming but by helping.
The games as well have the catchy music to them which you can hear in your head even after you haven’t played them for ages.
The characters themselves have quite the awesome designs to them.
The Prince in Warrior Within.
The Dark Prince in the The Two Thrones.
Farah in The Two Thrones.
Mahashti in The Two Thrones.
The games were just something wondrous in my childhood. I love them so much. Though sadly, some things just aren’t meant to succeed.
We got the 2008 reboot in which the Prince is now a traveller and has to stop an infection taking over a kingdom. It’s platforming was at least something with it being open world and you had a select places to go to to traverse, but the time travel aspect was gone as well as the fact nearly every enemy mook you encountered was a boss and they were hard to defeat. This game didn’t win much favour from the fans, hence we didn’t hear much of Prince of Persia until Disney made a film adaptation in 2010.
I have mixed feelings on the film. I like the cast even if a lot of them are just strangely white actors playing Middle Eastern characters, Jake Gyllenhall looks good in the Warrior Within suit, trying to focus a bit more on the Prince’s family was good and the fight scenes were quite decent, though sadly we didn’t get any Sand Monsters, the Dagger of Time’s rewinding powers are hardly used in the movie, and there’s how odd the story unfolds.
Prince of Persia wouldn’t get another game until The Forgotten Sands, set in between Sands of Time and Warrior Within, and it did reveal the Prince had a brother, Malick, and we got some new powers for the prince such as controlling water. It honestly would’ve been sweet if we had more of this continuity exploring other myths as we get the Djinn here though we didn’t. I haven’t played The Lost Crown yet, though I’ll have to check it out.
I think what is even more interesting is how this was one of Yuri Lowenthal’s first voice roles, ironic as he became a household voice acting treasure years later, and I didn’t even know it was him until I was a teenager. Yuri didn’t voice him in Warrior Within, though it was nice he came back for The Two Thrones and The Forgotten Sands.
Finishing Thoughts
The Prince of Persia holds a dear place in my heart, for it was a big part of my childhood, a game me and my dad played, storytelling my young mind grasped, and having been one of my first insights in time travelling stories. The franchise hasn’t had it good, though the fact we had a trilogy of games which had a beginning and an end is enough to tell me I had it good, and I don’t want another game unless I play The Lost Crown, if it’s that good.
If you ever want to check out the Prince of Persia, check a few videos on YouTube, either of cutscenes, levels or bosses and the intense scenes. I wish I could tell you more, but I have to hand this Dagger back to Farah’s family to safeguard it until it ends up coming back in The Two Thrones. I'm the Wandering Fox and I will talk to you all later.
I think I watched a playthrough of the original game long ago. DIdn't watch after the first, though. I know there was also a movie made but it was different from the games, and I only saw the second half when it was on tv. It was Yuri Lowenthal whom voice him in the games, if I recall?