Yesterday, Ubisoft officially revealed a remake for Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake. However, it appears that this remake was not received well by a lot of gamers. The main reason behind this negative reception is the game’s underwhelming graphics. And, in an interview with TheMakoReactor, Ubisoft India shed some additional details on the game’s art style, visuals, and graphics.
According to Production Director Sashi Menon, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake does not suffer from any low budget or strict deadline issues.
“No, it was not a problem of timeline or budget. For us at Ubisoft quality is of the utmost importance and this is something that we have kept in mind from the start. The project has been in development for the last two and a half years. We have had at peak 170 members working on this project and not to mention other investments in infrastructure and set up to make a modern game. No there have not been any cutback in budget or timeline for the game.”
This statement feels awkward, especially after watching the game’s announcement trailer. I mean, you can clearly see an NPC being reused multiple times in one single cut-scene. Then again, we wouldn’t expect the game’s director to go ahead and admit any budget restrictions. On the other hand, though, Pierre Sylvain-Gires admitted some technical difficulties the team had with the Anvil Engine.
“The principle of the rewind is a headache technically. The Anvil engine was not made at all to do rewind, to do slow motion, to do all those time manipulation. The tech approach was a challenge.”
Senior Producer Annu Koul added:
“Anvil engine is mainly for open-world games. The game we have is a short, linear game and not an open-world game so there are many challenges we have to be wary of.”
Both Koul and Sylvain-Gires stated that the art style was exactly what the team had in mind.
“We decided to go for a unique visual treatment to make this game standout from other games. It’s not another Assassin’s Creed, it’s not like the same Prince of Persia from 2008. It has to be unique. This magic, this fantasy is shown through the saturation, through the light. So, it was also a challenge to redefine the visual identity of the game with this remake.”
“The main challenge was to create a game where we had to play on the nostalgia and we have to give it the modern twist. Keeping this balance intact is important.”
Still, Ubisoft India has not provided any additional explanations about the remake’s graphical shortcomings. And while the game looks better than the original version, it’s nowhere close to what other remakes have achieved.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake releases on January 21st, 2020.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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