Joystiq interview: Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes
Following our recent hands-on with the soon-to-be-released Prince of Persia, we sat down with series producer, Ben Mattes, to chat about how (and why) this new installment – and, in some respects, direction – for the iconic franchise came to be.
Mattes wasn't afraid to cite his team's influences for the project, nor to lavish praise on the competition. He spoke about what wasn't quite right with follow-ups to the acclaimed Sands of Time and how, in a variety of ways, Ubisoft Montreal tried (and sometimes failed) to nail it this time around. Re-creating Guitar Hero-like Zen in the platforming? He thinks that worked.
Read on for Mattes' insight into the game's creation; early hurdles (and lessons learned); the new prince (and what people think of him); and designing combat that doesn't try to compete where, in his words, God of War has already "won."
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What was your overall goal going into this project?
We could have just made another sequel. We could have upgraded the graphics and done a new iteration of the combat and probably have sold a couple million units because it's got the words "prince" and "Persia" in the title. We could probably make a Prince of Persia puzzle game and it'd sell a decent number because it's got a certain amount of "brand stickiness."
But we really want to reclaim the throne. We want to be recognized as the best action adventure game. That's our goal. And when sands of time came out, for a while I think Ubisoft could rightfully claim that throne. And then a lot of other people did some amazing stuff in a very short period of time. God of War came along and it certainly changed things in terms of the combat element of it. Ninja Gaiden, too. Devil May Cry, obviously.
Having a cool character that people really liked in Dante was something that was obviously very interesting to us. Heavenly Sword in terms of production value ... Drake's Fortune in terms of production value. Suddenly, over the last 4-5 years, the landscape for the action adventure genre has intensified in terms of competition. We want to come back and remind everyone that, "Hey, we were there first," and "We deserve our place at the top!"
We really do think there's something special in the "DNA" of Prince of Persia that lends itself very well to being a leader of the pack. You've got the potential for a great character, great story, an incredible environment, obviously great visuals and that sort of running, jumping, righting, and puzzle solving that's been at the heart of the genre.
In terms of what's new, we felt a strong push to make sure that we kept that beating heart of Prince of Persia, but change enough that we could hopefully appeal to a whole new demographic and potentially blow open the while audience for the game. Not just the hardcore Prince of Persia fans, but also the God of War fans with our new combat system and the more sort of open world, sandbox game fans with our world structure.
Hopefully a bunch of people with our new take on the artistic direction – our "cel-shaded plus-plus" thing. We really set out to change a lot in order to make a big splash and try to get some attention for this game, because we felt we had a lot of killer core ideas that we were convinced very early on were going to make a spectacular game.
What challenges did you face, given your competition?
I think one of the things that is both a strength and a weakness of Prince of Persia is that we don't settle for binary. We don't settle for black and white. As a franchise, we're looking at what's interesting in terms of the character, in terms of the design choices, etc. We're always kind of interested in shades of gray.
As an example, let's take the character of Kratos. No disrespect intended to God of War - Sony Santa Monica is obviously a very great developer. As a character, Kratos is not exactly a revolution in terms of storytelling. If you're writing for Kratos, it's like, "How can I hate the most?" That's Kratos. "I hate you so much I hate your corpse."
It sort of simplifies the challenge of designing that character. Whereas with us and Prince of Persia, we were always interested again in this idea of shades of gray. How do you create a more human character. A more approachable character. A more ... maybe in some instances an identifiable character. Same thing with gameplay.
Again, with God of War, it focused almost entirely on combat, whereas we were never willing to just settle on that one thing. We really wanted to have that balanced mix. So the challenge, then, is that you're creating a game that is perhaps a little bit harder to communicate because with God of War, you know, you communicate the rage and the violence. It's a very easy sales pitch. But on the other hand, if you like violence and games, there's nothing to detract from that in God of War. You're going to like it start to finish.
But because Prince of Persia tries to treat, in a sort of sophisticated way, these different types of gameplay – puzzle solving, which is sometimes a little more cerebral; acrobatics, which is a little bit more rhythmic; and combat as well – I just think it creates a significant challenge to do well on all three of those and communicate it.
You always run the risk that someone going to buy a game for the combat and maybe be turned off by the puzzle solving. So we had to work really hard this time around to make sure that we created something we didn't think was going to turn anyone off. That there wasn't any single part of it that we thought would drive a particular type of gamer away.
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In the early stages, when you were prototyping the game, what did you find that didn't work?
There's a lot. The first thing that didn't work was our level design philosophy. Our initial vision for the level design – we actually went through 3-4 iterations, night and day difference in terms of our level design – but one of the ones we spent the longest on was similar to our current "network structure," so this idea of "sticks and nodes," but each one of these nodes was much more of a little mini-sandbox. A little mini Assassin's Creed city.
It looked great on paper, and when we played it, we could get great flow, because we knew exactly the path to take. But when we play tested it – and we pushed this thing all the way to a near final production level of polish – people were really getting stuck, because they were overwhelmed with possibilities.
They would land on a beam, and in front of them there would be a pole there, a pole there, a ring there, a column there, a crack there ... and all of these things were possibilities. All of them could be used to move forward to the next point in the level. It was overwhelming. People would stop and look and think rather than flow – we don't want you to stop, look, and think.
We want you to be thinking four steps ahead, but much more in a sort of Guitar Hero style of, "I can see it on the periphery of the screen, I don't really have to think about it, it just flows naturally." That was the feeling we wanted, and we weren't getting it with this sandbox style design.
The game does feel very ... "rhythmic," for lack of a better term.
In many ways, we actually consider Prince of Persia to be a rhythm game in its platforming sequence, because when it works well, you get into the same sort of Zen-like state when you're platforming that you have in Guitar Hero. The world just shuts down and it just washes over you; you're completely lost in the experience. You're not picking out things like, "I have to press 'A' to do this," or "I have to press 'B' to do that" – just like you're not thinking, "I have to use this finger to hit the green key." Anyone who's played Guitar Hero for a couple of weeks ... they're not even thinking anymore about what their fingers are doing.
That's kind of the beauty of the design of Guitar Hero, and we really feel we have something similar now in our design thanks to the evolution of the level design structure. But when we first started out, with that design I was talking about, we didn't have that at all.
That original design might have had some people worried they were missing things in the levels.
Exactly. People were worried that they weren't "optimizing their path," so they would literally turn around to go back and try it a second time, and then get to exactly the same place and say, "If all of this leads to the same place, what's the point?" And ... there wasn't a point. It was just freedom. Freedom was not what the players were looking for in a Prince of Persia game. They didn't want freedom, they wanted rhythm, and they're two very different things.
Another thing that evolved quite a lot is ... well, some of our ideas of Elika were great on paper, but had to be scrapped in implementation and prototyping because they didn't serve the ultimate goal of Elika, which is she can never be a negative. We had these great ideas, for example at one point in time we had the idea of having "interest points" for Elika. So, you would walk into a trigger zone, that might launch a scripted event wherein Elika would be interested in something, and she would run off to investigate it. Then maybe it would be a sequence where you're following her.
Again, it felt good on paper, it seemed like it would flesh out her character a little more, but as soon as we started prototyping it we immediately saw that it wasn't going to be good because she was taking initiate away from the player. You're standing there, you're looking at whatever, and then Elika would just run off. You don't want to go that way – you want to go this way. "You're in control now? No, I'm the hero." That's something we cut because it wasn't serving our purpose with Elika.
In terms of other evolutions and changes with Elika, we had the idea that she would be more talkative when you would idle. She would kind of take that opportunity to initiate conversations. We scrapped that idea and rolled it into the "on demand" dialogue system because we want the player to decide whether or not they're going to talk to Elika, not Elika yammering. If Elika's taking the initiative to talk to you ... if Elika's yammering every time you idle, it's going to piss you off.
So now, anything that's interesting that Elika can say, she'll only say it if the prince asks her something first. The prince will only ask something first if the player presses the button to say, "I want to know stuff. I want to talk." All the player has to do is press a button and the prince and Elika will launch into a scripted discussion relevant to the most recent events that have gone on in the game world. It still gives her life and personality, but puts it into the hands of the player.
