Ubidays '08: Prince of Persia producer on sidekick, new prince

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Ubisoft wasn't showing off much of its new Prince of Persia title at the Ubidays event in San Francisco earlier this month, but it did trot out producer Ben Mattes to acrobatically dodge – and sometimes answer – the queries of a room full of journalists left unsated by the beautiful, if not particularly informative, CGI teaser trailer.

First, what do we call it? Though the Ubidays press materials listed the title's name as Prince of Persia Prodigy, the very same name recently trademarked by the IP-owner Jordan Mechner, Mattes wouldn't confirm that that was the final title: "I don't think we've announced the final title."

If you're still unable to wrap your head around where this new prince fits into the existing franchise, Mattes wants you to forget about everything that's come before. "The Sands of Time trilogy is over. We're finished that story," he explains for what we're guessing is the hundredth time that day. "It's a new prince, with new challenges. There's no chronological connection with what's gone on in the past."
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So what are some of these new challenges? For starters, there will be "more platforming relative to combat than in past games" Mattes tells us. Maybe something along the lines of 60/40 or even 70/30 he estimates (we're totally holding him to those numbers). And, when there is combat, "fights are going to last a lot longer." Mattes boasts, "We want every single fight to feel like a boss battle." To that end, every region you free will have a "defender," an enemy that you keep encountering over and over, so instead of defeating an army of smaller enemies, you're battling a single, larger enemy multiple times until you finally best him. Helping you best these baddies (as well as restore light to the land) is Elika.

Of course, the biggest piece of news isn't necessarily the new look or the new prince – we've been able to deduce those changes from screens and stories on the game. No, the biggest news is the introduction of a companion ... a sidekick. Sure, the producers (and we're sure, the marketing materials) call Elika a "revolutionary AI character" but gamers are right to worry that that's simply marketing speak for "obnoxious escort missions ad nauseum." (And, in case you were wondering, Elika is AI only, there won't be any co-op support). So, it should come as a relief that one of the key design (and marketing!) points of the new game is that Elika "isn't obnoxious." She's intended to be a complementary character, and never a burden. Mattes reiterated this point many times.

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Considering the game's Fall 2008 release date, we were disappointed that it was not only not playable, but the trailer they showed off contained exactly 0 seconds of actual gameplay. Considering the departure from the well executed series of games last generation, we're hoping Ubisoft simply wants to avoid potentially negative initial impressions and give us a more relaxed look at the game at E3. Either that or Elika isn't quite "not obnoxious" yet.

Rabbids, Persian Princes and Beyond Good & Evil 2? Check out all our coverage (and a bountiful amount of videos and screenshots) from Ubisoft's Ubidays 2008 event.