One of my favorite JRPG franchises has to be the Persona sub-franchise in the Shin Megami Tensei series. Although I have played through all of the games in the franchise, Persona 3 and 4 are the ones that really captured my heart. I was talking with a friend about the two games, and we disagreed on which of them had a better cast of characters. They preferred the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES) that made up the main cast of the third entry in the series. However, I connected more with the Investigation Team of the fourth game. This lead me to think a bit more about why I have this preference, which will be the subject of this post.
One of the biggest reasons I think for my preference is the difference in scope between the two stories. In the third entry of the series, the stakes are raised fairly quickly. In the first half of the game, players are introduced to monsters called shadows, which cause havoc during this extra hour in the day in which normal, non-Persona-users are sleeping in coffins. Both the player and the main characters are told that unless the shadows are stopped, they will destroy the world. Although the plot and its twists and turns stop this from becoming another standard save-the-world story, it is hard for audiences to really comprehend the stakes for which they play. When players are out participating in story events, it is very difficult to fully understand that if they fail, then X amount of nameless, faceless people will suffer for it. Not to say that players are stupid, but rather that the human mind is not really equipped to process such high risks, when so many people are on the line (doubly so when it is a work of fiction, and not a real event).
This is in fairly stark contrast with Persona 4, where the risks involved with failure are much easier to understand. The plot to that game is not a tale about saving the world. Rather, it is a story about a serial killer in a small town. Despite the supernatural elements to the plot (since it is a Persona game and players will need to use personae to fight in some capacity), the story is actually very grounded and on a much smaller scale than its predecessor’s. Every victim and potential victim of the serial murders has a face, name, and personality which players are introduced to before they become the next target. It is much easier for me to comprehend that “If I fail, my classmate Yukiko will die” then “If I fail, innocent people will die.” This is not to say that larger scope stories are invalid, but rather that the smaller scale of Persona 4 let me really understand why my characters were out doing the things they do. That difference in understanding helped me relate a lot more to that cast as a result, especially since the majority of the cast joined the team because I saved them.
Another reason that the cast of Persona 4 appeals to me more is that the personal issues that each of the cast members are dealing with are much more relatable to me than those of Persona 3’s cast. In the third game, most of the main characters have very dark personal histories. Out of all nine of them, six of them are dealing with trauma related to the death of a loved one as major parts to their story arc. Two of the other three are dealing with major issues involving their parents and the last one is a robot who is coming to grips with her growing sense of humanity. Again, all of these are valid and worthwhile backstories to explore, but the sheer darkness of it all makes it very, very hard for me to personally relate to them. These are issues that people do deal with, but not so much so that it becomes a dominating force in the way they live their lives like the cast of Persona 3. It often feels like there is a barrier between me and the cast as a result.
On the other hand, the kind of issues the members of the Investigation Team in Persona 4 go through are more resonate to me. Every single member of the group has something about themselves that they do not like and refuse to admit. In order to save them, players have to defeat their shadow selves and convince each cast member to accept whatever baggage is dragging them down. Many of these issues are much smaller ones that most people can understand and empathize with. One person secretly resents moving from the city to a small town with comparatively less to do. Two best friends have to confront that deep down, they are jealous of each other. Another party member is insecure about his favorite hobby because, to others, it is not very “manly.” These are all issues that people deal with on a day-to-day basis. I can understand these kinds of pains because I personally feel them more often than I would care to admit. Although I have only had loved ones die a small number of times in my life, these other issues are some that I and most people confront regularly. This creates much more empathy and understanding of the cast of Persona 4 than it does for Persona 3.
Lastly, I suspect that a contributing factor to the popularity of the Investigation Team over that of SEES is that Persona 4 was a lot easier to play than Persona 3 was. Transitioning from Persona 3 to 4, Atlus added two major additions to the combat system. The first was the “Guard” command, which replaced passing turns from Persona 3 and allowed players to reduce that damage from powerful skills that bosses used. The second was “Direct Command”, which allowed players to take control of other party members, besides the protagonist, in battle instead of leaving it to the AI. While I am sure this was a contributing factor for many people in increasing the likeability of the Investigation Team, this was not the case for me. When I played Persona 3, I played the PSP version of the game, which brought in the above improvements from Persona 4. Despite not playing a major part in affecting my enjoyment of both groups, I am sure it was a contributing factor for many others, so I opted to mention it here for completion’s sake.

When it comes down to it, Persona 3 and 4 are actually quite different games in terms of tone, scope, and style of writing, despite being nearly identical in the gameplay aspects. This makes them useful for a case study in how writing can affect the overall takeaway of the player from a game. Of course, I have to stress that this is extremely subjective and I fully expect people to disagree with my preferences. Further, both games are solid and worth playing if you are a fan of JRPGs. I might have been a little critical of Persona 3’s storytelling, but it is a very well-written and fun to play game. And who knows? You might be like my friend and prefer SEES to the Investigation Team. Regardless, make sure to reflect on how the differences between the two games make you feel differently about them, despite them being very similar.

Like many people out there in the gaming space, I like to try to play games to completion. Though I do that with fewer and fewer games as I grow older, those games that particularly interest me still fuel that urge to do everything I can before moving on. Because of this, I am all too familiar with some of the frustrations that come from such a playstyle. Open-world RPGs can be either great or horrible for people like myself. On one hand, we always have something to do, because those kinds of games will almost always have a quest or two hidden away for players to find. However, completions like me are never able to completely move on from them, because those kinds of games will almost always have a quest or two hidden away for players to find. Despite this problem, this genre can be implemented in ways that can either exacerbate this feeling or lessen it in people.
Two open-world RPGs in particular are the subjects of this weeks article: Kingdoms of Amalur, which I recently got finished playing, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one of the most successful games in the Elder Scrolls franchise. I want to talk about these two games in particular for a very special reason. Both games have tons of content. So much so that players could spend hundreds of hours playing either game and still never be able to complete it all. However, when I think of trying to do everything in Kingdoms of Amalur, I can’t help but be intimidated by the thought. Not because any one piece of content is particularly overwhelming, but because I feel that it will take so much time, become so boring, and progress will be so slow that I just lose any desire to keep playing the game. At the same time, the thought of exploring the land of Skyrim, despite all the criticisms I have levied at that game over its lifespan, fills me with delight. Just writing about it now makes me want to go back, reload my save, and keep exploring the land to look for all the things I undoubtedly missed. At this realization, I sat down and thought for a bit as to why that might be.
The first explanation I came to for this is that Kingdoms of Amalur makes the sheer wealth of content available much more obvious than Skyrim does. When traveling through a given area in Kingdoms of Amalur, players will often come across bright yellow question marks on the map. Each of those symbols represents a quest which the players can stop to complete. This means that a player can gauge exactly how many quests are in given area by just filling out the map and counting how many yellow question marks show up. This is in fairly stark contrast to Skyrim. In the latest installment to the Elder Scrolls series, players are not explicitly told where or how to find quests. Players need to talk with people in towns or settlements in order to obtain quests. While sometimes NPCs in the game world will come up and petition the player character for assistance, the player themselves will generally be the one who has to begin interactions in order to discover new content.
Though these two systems lead to the same end, in which the player discovers quests and content to do, they accomplish different things in the mind of the player. In the case of Kingdoms of Amalur, all the content is made readily apparent to the player. In Skyrim, the exact amount of content is obfuscated. So when I go into an new area in Kingdoms of Amalur, I think to myself that this could be a potential 6-7 hours sitting right here just doing missions completely unrelated to anything else in the game. Entering a new town in Skryim, I can complete whatever errands I need to run and talk to a few villagers to find some quests I need to do. Without the constant reminder that there is a new thing to do in the city, it is easier for me to trick myself into thinking that I have “completed” all the quests in town, when in truth I have barely scratched the surface. Nonetheless, I walk away with a feeling like I accomplished much. In Kingdoms of Amalur, when I finish a quest, I feel like it is just a drop in bucket because I can see another 3-4 quests just in this one grassy plane. It is a subtle shift in the way it makes players think, but a key one that affects the perception of the whole game.
Another contributing factor to the difference in feeling of intimidation in one of these games, but not the other is that contrast in how combat works in each of them. In Kingdoms of Amalur, the combat is very visceral. There is a surprising amount of depth to it. Players need to stay aware of their surroundings in order to dodge enemy attacks, while trying to create an opening to stagger the enemy. If they are not careful, then they themselves will be knocked down and on the defensive. Each weapon type has its own combo chain, with strength and speed unique to that type of weapon. Though not difficult, timing and planning are quite important, and even enemies of equal level can wear down the unprepared (especially when there are mages in the enemy formation). On the flip side, Skyrim’s combat is quite bare bones. It is quite trivial to button mash one’s way through most encounters the game will throw at the player. Magic and stealth characters can use spells and backstab to change things up, but the mechanics are fairly simple and do not need much knowledge to fully grasp.
Let me preface my next statement by saying that I enjoy the combat in Kingdoms of Amalur. In fact, the combat was one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. However, that kind of combat against dozens and dozens of encounters has a way of gradually draining the player’s mental stamina and enthusiasm for playing. As fun and fairly easy as it is, the sheer number of enemies the game throws at the player are not quite compatible with the type of combat. Also, the foes in Kingdoms of Amalur are quite durable, so taking them down can be fairly time consuming. While Skyrim also tends to have a lot of enemies come the player’s way, the simpler mechanics lend themselves to that more readily. Enemies tend to fall fast and easy. It is not as mentally draining to play through waves of enemies in Skyrim than it in Kingdoms of Amalur, so playing through it is more bearable, despite its combat being worse overall. As a result, it is much easier to play hours and hours of Skyrim than in is to do the same in Kingdoms of Amalur. I can also play the latter for an hour or two before I feel the need to save and shut it off.

I find it interesting to compare and contrast similar games, because there is much to learn from such analysis. Both games are likely in many ways, but the way they implement their systems can leave completely different impressions of the audience. What is even more interesting is that I know there will be people who disagree for many different reasons. I am sad that Kingdoms of Amalur did not do so well, because I think they could do so much better if given a second chance. Hopefully, people will be able to learn from what went wrong with the game in time. Until then, there will be guys like me out there to over-analyze games like it in the vain hopes that others will listen.

(Spoiler Alert for Beyond: Two Souls. I wanted to keep this post spoiler-free. However, as I was typing it I realized that my points are stronger in the presence of clear examples from the game.)
As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I purchased and played through Beyond: Two Souls: Starring Ellen Page and Willam Dafoe, developed by David Cage and Quantic Dream, when it came out a while back. Despite the similarities between Beyond and Quantic Dream’s previous opus, Heavy Rain, Beyond has been much more negatively received than its predecessor. On Metacritic, for example, Two Souls received a 71 on Metacritic, whereas Heavy Rain received an 87. That is a grand total of a 16 point difference between the games, which is fairly significant. What is it about Beyond that makes people dislike it so much more? This week, I propose a possible answer.
One of the biggest reasons I feel that Beyond received a more lukewarm reception was that, unlike Heavy Rain, came out amongst stiff competition in the space of the “interactive fiction” genre. At the time of Heavy Rain’s release, Quantic Dream was the only company who made games of that type. Aside from Heavy Rain, the only notable “interactive fiction” game was Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, also developed by the same company. Fast forward to the time of Beyond: Two Soul’s release, and this is now no longer the case. Now, there are quite a few competitors in this space. Chief among them is Telltale Games, famous for both the spectacular release of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. To The Moon is another great example, developed by Firebird Games in the indie space. Though these games lack the budget of the works of Quantic Dream, they command very strong followings in their own right.
Fans of the genre previously had only one place to go to get their fix. As a direct result, they were less likely to criticize games from David Cage. Since there are more points of comparison for “interactive fiction” than there were even 5 years ago, we see more of the flaws in games of that genre than we used to. Cage no longer has the defense of being the only developer in the field. He needs to do much more to impress audiences. Beyond really does not do much to move the goal post at all. In fact, it is much worse in many respects. Therefore, it is natural to expect it to have a lower score than its predecessors.
Another reason that Beyond might not have been as well received as well as other Quantic Dream games is that the control scheme is a much more ambiguous than in those games. Presumably in order to to avoid the common criticism that David Cage’s games are nothing more than a series of Quick Time Events, the systems used during action sequences have been revised. Instead of displaying the button prompts on screen, the game uses a new mechanic. All action sequences are handled using the right analog stick. When the action goes into slow-motion, players are supposed to move the stick in the same direction Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is whatever action she is performing in. The problem with this is twofold. First, many movements can be ambiguous with regards to which direction they are going towards. Since the game expects players to perform them with relative haste, this leads to unnecessary failures. The other issue is that the game has an annoying tendency to have action sequences in dimly or poorly lit areas.
As a result, it is often hard to see exactly what Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is doing, let alone which direction she is doing it in. Compared to the discreet button prompts present in Heavy Rain, Beyond makes it much more difficult to correctly input the proper commands. As an example, there is a scene that takes place “early on” in the game (I’ll explain later) where Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is on the run from the CIA. She is on a train and seen by police officers, creating a chase scene. When she makes it off the train, she has to jump over and/or duck under tree branches as she is running into a forest in order to avoid capture. As Ellen Page approaches a branch, the game slows-down, indicating that it is time to move the right stick. Unfortunately, it is very hard to make out if Ellen Page is ducking or preparing to jump in the darkness of the night. This gives players a 50/50 chance of guessing whether to move the right stick up or down. It results in confusion, irritation, and anger on the player’s part, which are not the emotions David Cage wants to instill in audiences.
The final problem that Beyond: Two Souls had was its completely disjointed narrative. For the unaware, the game’s story is not told in chronological order. Instead, the game flashes forward and backward in time. One moment, players can be playing as child Jodie. Then, the very next scene can involve Jodie as a homeless, young adult. This happens up until the last 2-3 scenes, where the finale suddenly presents itself in a linear fashion. The effect is that otherwise tense or dramatic scenes are undermined by either a lack of narrative context or knowledge of what occurs in scenes that chronologically take place later on.
A case of the first can be easily demonstrated by a sequence of two scenes from the middle of the game. In the first scene, Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is drafted into the CIA by high-level government officials, thanks to her powers. The man who takes her is extremely cold and unfeeling towards her, and she leaves in tears. The very next scene has her in an apartment, preparing for a date with the very same man, which she has apparently fallen in love with. It is up to the player to prepare food, get washed and dressed, and clean up the apartment in time for the date. All the while, the player has no idea what happened in the time between these two scenes to so radically change the relationship between Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes and CIA Jerkwad. While it is plausible that they have grown close in the time between, the relationship feels like a hallow one without the prerequisite context. Any emotional connections the scene could invoke is undermined by that.
However, the reverse of this phenomenon is also true. Sometimes, knowledge of what goes on in Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes’s future undermines all the tension a given scene has in the present. For example, one scene in the game involves Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes escaping a burning building, rescuing her fellow homeless friends along the way. There are a few different ways this scene can play out, but all of them end with her on the ground, unconscious and possibly bleeding out. In most works of fiction, this would be a tense moment where we do not know if the protagonist survives. However, Beyond: Two Souls has the problem where players know that Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes survives because they just finished playing scene which chronologically takes place after the current one. Since we know Ellen Page as Jodie Holmes is alive in a future scene, she cannot die in the scene the player is watching, making the tense buildup utterly pointless. Ultimately, the story’s structure undermines the vast majority of it in very similar ways.

On some level, I respect David Cage and Quantic Dream. Those guys are doing something truly unique in the video game industry. Few developers do make games like the ones he makes. However, in light of what we see from other developers and obvious flaws in his own design, Cage is not good enough to justify all the copious resources and talent put his games. His largest problem seems to be that no one is willing to tell him when his scripts need work. Though he clearly subscribes to auteur theory, he is not skilled enough of a writer to be a auteur. Maybe in future projects, Cage will find an editor to improve the overall product. However, I wonder in Quantic Dream might start to crack after another few releases. It will be interesting to watch either way.

Not much of note happens in this episode. We couldn’t stop at Episode 31 because the cutscenes kept playing and there wasn’t a good save point. Even when the cutscenes were over, we just kept talking and the result is that we ended up with enough material for an entire episode.

This is actually a very interesting conversation with Mina. I feel the need to point out that if Mina liked us at the end of the game, that she’d come in person to have this chat. (That would also be the point at which you can have sex with her to get XP and level up.) We’d also have the choice of asking her to find a safehouse to hide if we didn’t want her to go back to Alpha Protocol. Since she hates our guts, this conversation is played over the monitor and Mina stays there regardless.
You can also use this point to uncover that Mina is the one who cut you loose, like we did here. If you fail to get enough dossier entries and connect the dots, then it becomes a bit of a loose thread. Although, by this point I don’t think a detail like that matters. By now, Thorton has enough of an interest in stopping Halbech that Saudi Arabia is a passing concern.
In another nod to how old this recording is, we were discussing the revelations with Edward Snowden at the time. It had just hit the news and was a major topic. Without delving too much into politics, government spying and overreach have been massive topics for the past decade or so. As a result, it makes sense for a modern day spy game to have some commentary on the matter. This just happened to be an interesting thought in light of what was going on at the time.
“We might be able to finish this by the time I start class next month.” In retrospect, that comment is one of the funniest things I said in this block of episodes. Such optimism. Such blind, stupid optimism.
So yeah, spoilers. We plan to do the finale without a guest. Sorry about that, but it’s thematically appropriate!
I’m not going to comment much on the conversation we had with Shamus. Honestly, I think it stands for itself without requiring further input in text form. All I’ll say is that it was a delight to bring Shamus on for the recording. In another season, sometime before Half-Life 3 comes out, he’ll be willing to join us again sometime. For now, you may be interested in his other musings about Alpha Protocol: here and here.

What follows is perhaps the saddest thing I’ve been a part of since that time when we went months without producing a single video.


Let the record show that I DID tell Aldowyn to “Pick Suave, and then pick Suave again.” #AldowynIsDumb

I think both this scene and the Surkov escort mission are the only two point in the entire game where your actions can lead to game over (aside from the normal HP=0). I kind of wish they’d just make you live with the consequences of failing of save Madison or stop the bombs. However, I know that would cause tons of problems in and of itself. I’m sure Obsidian had this very same debate when creating this scenario and I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for it.

I want to make it clear that I’ve only shot Madison on accident once in the 3-4 times I made this choice.

To elaborate on the trick to killing Marburg easily: You need to have Shadow Operative and Chain Shot. Use Shadow Operative and then use Chain Shot while you are invisible and land all your shots on Marburg. If you do it right, Marburg will be completely still until he takes another dose of damage. It’s actually pretty pathetic.

With regards to an “RPG where ‘Attack’ is always an option in dialog.” I believe in our talks after recording the episode, we fleshed out that idea a bit more. It could be a check of your weapon skill versus the skill of the NPC. If you have a higher skill, then you win and kill them. Else, you fail and suffer the consequences. I wonder if any of you RPG fans have any thoughts on that?

Finally, considering that Deng came up in discussion and the author himself was featured in the episode, this post would be incomplete without linking Shamus’s Stolen Pixels comic regarding that boss fight.

In this episode, we muse about the nature of life, shock traps, and tea. Also, some chick gets shot.


The e-mail in this game really is a missed opportunity. Since the game doesn’t really allow for Thorton to really keep up casual conversation with a lot of his contacts, this could have easily been a way to build up (or maintain/reduce) Thorton’s rapport with somebody well after you’ve completed the hub they were featured in. It also would’ve given them a chance to flesh out the world a bit more through newsletters, spam, and the like. (Yes, I know that Thorton’s e-mail is top secret and encrypted, but Rule of Funny allows it.) It’s a shame, really.

I actually really like the mission in the warehouse. It’s a short section that establishes a few facts that become relevant in light of things we learn in other missions. Stealth and combat are both viable options, and some light hacking is involved as well. Anaphysik is correct, though, that it would make more sense as an introductory mission than one in the second half of Rome.

It is interesting to note that had Spoiler Warning actually started an Alpha Protocol season, we would never have started Disclosure Alert. The whole premise of this show is that “Spoiler Warning won’t do Alpha Protocol, so we have do it ourselves.” If they do decide to do AP in the future, I’d be curious to see how their commentary lines up with ours.

The “shallow way” that Shamus was playing games back then is exactly how I’ve been playing games lately. My Twitter is afoul with many many games I quit in the middle when I got bored of them.

I love how, in a matter of a one minute side conversation, we completely tear apart the very notion behind Rome’s storyline. It is very much in the line of Bond villainy seen in many spy movies. Part of me wonders if that’s the point. The other half wonders if I’m giving the game too much credit. With Alpha Protocol, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between what was intended and what was a quick rewrite. This is one of those times.

Really, once we get out of the broom closet, the plot to Rome doesn’t make sense. Still, I can’t help but adore it for being over-the-top Hollywood-style. As I keep saying in these posts, AP feels like a homage to spy movies of all sorts. This is a Bond-style plot, so it fits. Moscow and Taipei are also ripped straight from spy movies. I want to say this is intentional, but truthfully I don’t know for sure.

True story, an alternate title for this episode was “Michael Thorton Comes Out of the (Broom) Closet.”

Also, here’s a clip of the “Shock Trap” scene we were talking about in this episode (Skip to 3:06):

At long last, Disclosure Alert has FINALLY returned. For those of you who haven’t been following the saga on Twitter, Aldowyn meant to have this out to you guys months ago, but forgot to bring his desktop computer to college with him. This was a problem because that was the only computer capable of editing everything.

So, we no longer have to keep you from that week’s special guest. Shamus Young, contributor to The Escapist and owner of Twenty Sided is here this week. As memory serves, this was a very fun recording session.


Wow. It’s been so long ago that Tom Braider jokes were still relevant. (For those who don’t get the joke, watch the Tomb Raider season of Spoiler Warning.) I wish I could say that I felt bad for making Shamus feel old, but I honestly don’t.

That glitch where Al-Samad gets a reputation ding is an interesting insight into how the game originally was supposed to work. I wish I could peer into the original designs of this game. It’s fairly common knowledge that this game was a victim of publishing meddling on Sega’s part, which explains so many of its problems.

Shamus is right, this game is heavily designed around Pistols, to the point where it’s actively worse if you specialize in any other weapon. Chain Shot is just such a strong skill that it makes every other skill look worse. Plus, you can shoot behind cover.

When we made jokes about how long it would take for these episodes to come out, we did not intend for those to be literal. I imagine Aldowyn felt really bad editing these.

I really dislike “ambush” style missions in general, but this one is particularly bad. This whole “protect the trace” thing is clearly an excuse to force you to mow down tons of mooks. Especially since in other missions, Mina seems perfectly capable of bugging and tracing things discretely, like when bugging the G22 base in Taipei.

(Spoiler Alert for the entire Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy)
And so we have reached the end of this little series. The Two Thrones, released in 2005, had a major problem from the get go. While most fans of the franchise vastly preferred The Sands of Time, there was enough of a positive reception to some aspects of The Warrior Within that its fans also needed to be catered to. This new game needed to walk a fine line between calling back to what fans enjoyed about the first game while taking in the improvements and knowledge gained from work on The Warrior Within, a challenging prospect to be sure. The end result was a carefully balanced compromise that works surprisingly well, more than making up for its lackluster predecessor.
The Prince himself is one of the biggest symbols of this compromise that the Two Thrones embodies. Yuri Lowenthal reprised his role as the titular Prince, with a harder edge than in the Sands of Time. This is the Prince people knew from the Sands of Time, as he still uses his old regal speech pattern and rarely resorts to simply uttering curse words. He also has a fair degree of snark, self-awareness, and snide confidence. However, experience has made him a colder and harsher individual than he used to be. This is a man who is significantly less likely to go out of his way to assist others unless he has made some form of vow to them in the past. However, gradually as the story progresses, he learns the error of his ways and slowly, but surely, returns to who he used to be, going so far as to literally combat his darker self, appropriately referred to as the Dark Prince. It is as if the game is performing a sort of meta-commentary on how the Warrior Within’s take on the character was so reviled compared to the Sand of Time’s take, which I found to be truly fascinating.
The other thing that the story did right was bringing back the premise of being a retelling a story that has already played out. However, instead of the Prince himself telling the story to the player, who is revealed to be Farah, the sidekick from the same game (due to the Prince’s complete rewind of time, she has no memory of the events that transpired). Rather, the story is told by Kaileena, the Empress of Time from The Warrior Within. Though this does give the game all the advantages that it gave the Sands of Time, it does not make as much sense. The Prince never dies in the series and is known to be a bit of a braggart, so it makes sense that he would be the one to tell the story even before the reveal that Farah is the audience. In The Two Thrones, Kaileena dies very early on in the game, so it is weird to have her tell anyone a story. Even though she is brought back to life by the end, she leaves to go to a different world so that the Sands of Time cannot be abused again, making it implausible that she is telling the tale to anyone. Though I appreciate the return to form, I wish that the conceit of a retelling of the story, like it was in the first game, was more plausible in the game’s narrative context.
One last criticism that I would make towards the plot to the Two Thrones is that is it completely necessary to know the plot of the previous games in order to fully understand what is going on before playing. This is something that even The Warrior Within did better. One of the early cutscenes in the The Warrior Within took a few minutes at the most to explain why the Prince was on his quest and what happened not just in the Sands of Time, but in the time between the two games. The Two Thrones explains some of what happened purely through the implications of what characters say, but without any outside knowledge I am fairly sure it would be hard to follow. There is no attempt to summarize or explain what happened in the previous two games to catch new players up. I weep for the poor fools who went into the game with no prior experience with the trilogy.
The underlying compromise between the Sands of Time and the Warrior Within also extended to the gameplay in a number of ways, the biggest of which is the combat. Combat in the Two Thrones is taken wholesale from the Warrior Within, taking the systems of that game and refining them a bit more. However, the game included a very interesting addition not present in either of the other two games. In the Two Thrones, it was possible to sneak up to an enemy and silently dispatch them without them ever noticing you. Though it is technically a stealth system, in reality it is a method for allowing players to bypass combat sections by utilizing their platforming skills to keep out of sight of enemy groups, picking them off one by one. This accomplished several things. One, it forced enemy encounters to be in small groups of 3-4 enemies to avoid making any one section of the game last too long. Two, it gave fans who enjoyed platforming more than combat a way to either avoid the combat or make it a little bit easier by removing a few enemies from the equation.
The platforming also got an few notable additions. The most visceral of these was the springboard. While wall-running, the Prince will occasionally end up on a springboard, which he can use to leap off of in order to change direction and land in otherwise inaccessible places. The Prince is also now able to brace himself in narrow wall spaces, allowing to climb up and down them. Lastly, the prince is now capable of sticking his weapon into groves in the wall, keeping himself from falling. Like most of the returning platforming features, all of these additions also have stealth kills associated with them, allowing players to ambush enemies from many different positions. Including all of these new methods of transportation made the platforming feel much more interesting than it did before.
The game also ditched the open-world elements of the Warrior Within, opting to return to the linearity of the Sands of Time. This prevents the repetition that was present in the previous entry. Also, it allowed the developers to better focus and improve upon each area rather than worry about how a given area connects to the world at large. Linearity is not a bad thing, especially in the context of a platformer. Furthermore, since the Two Thrones had the same 6 sand tank limit that the Warrior Within had, there was still a lessened amount of wiggle room for players. However, the improved level layout and camera positioning made it so that the game was rarely impacted by it.
The big gimmick included in the Two Thrones is the Dark Prince. Due to the Vizier from the first game releasing the Sands of Time, the Prince became corrupted by the sands. Fortunately, he was able to grasp the Dagger of Time quickly enough that he did not completely succumb. Unfortunately, he was left partially corrupted, giving him a new, dark persona that manifests itself as both a voice in his head and a new, occasionally emerging corrupted form. Counter to what one would initially suspect, this is not some form that the Prince needs to gather rage to enter and gain a temporary boost to combat ability in. Rather, the Dark Prince will manifest itself at certain points in the story. Once the Dark Prince emerges, the Prince can only return to his normal form once he enters a body of water at the end of the segment.
While at first this seems like an odd choice for a super-powered dark side, it works in the context of the game. The Dark Prince has his own completely different move-set and gameplay style, separate from the Prince, and since the game has discreet sections of the story where he manifests, levels that include him are allowed to cater to his strengths. The biggest change that occurs in the Dark Prince’s gameplay sections is that his health gradually drops as time goes on, which is lethal if left unchecked. However, he recovers full health if he defeats an enemy or acquires a portion of the Sands of Time. In that way, players have to work quickly in order to make sure that they get to their next fix of enemies or sand before they die. Although this could be a recipe for disaster, the Dark Prince levels space out enemies and sand just well enough so that getting to them can be a challenge, but hardly impossible.
The other thing that only the Dark Prince has is a chain attached to his left arm. Thanks to that chain, the Dark Prince does not have access to other secondary weapons like he normally would. However, the chain in and of itself more than makes up for it. Having a weapon with good range really changes combat by given players much more options on how to take down enemies. Furthermore, the chain is also useful when platforming. When making leaps across wide gaps, the Dark Prince can use the chain to latch onto hanging structure and gain enough extra distance to make it to the other side. This can also be done while wall-running to keep up momentum and stay on the wall for longer periods of time. It is only one small addition, but it does change the way players think about the area when going through platforming sections.

The Two Thrones had a lot to accomplish, bridging together its two radically different predecessor. Overall, it succeeded in that respect. I do not know if I would call it superior to the Sands of Time, but it is at least comparable in my opinion. Someone could make a case for it being the best in the franchise and I would be open to hearing it. There is a lot to like about the grand finale to the Sands of Time trilogy. It represents the combined lessons from the first and second games. If you guys out there were like I used to be, and avoided the trilogy for whatever reason, I would recommend that you play the Sands of Time, watch someone else play the Warrior Within, and then play the Two Thrones. If you enjoy platforms with light combat elements, you will enjoy this series.

Last week, I began a series of retrospectives on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy. Starting with the original Sands of Time, I mostly praised the game for the many, many things it did correctly, including its gameplay, narrative, and setting. However, despite the great reception of the game, all good things must one day come to an end. Of course, I am referring to the direct sequel to the game, Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within. Released in 2004 as the second game in a soon to be trilogy, The Warrior Within had a lot to live up to. Sadly, it failed to do so it many, painful ways. For very good reason, this second entry in the trilogy has been labeled a black sheep by fans. Allow me to elaborate.
The very first thing that people noticed about The Warrior Within was that the Prince had undergone a severe personality shift somewhere between the two games. In the previous entry, our protagonist was a bit of a snark, but otherwise went out of his way to help those in need when he had the chance. His demeanor added a degree of levity to the preceding, helping to maintain the original game’s fairly light tone. In its sequel, this was flatly not the case. Though he was technically the same Prince players knew from The Sands of Time, he acted in a completely different manner. As an example, one of the earliest lines in the game has our dear Prince calling a female lieutenant of an unknown enemy a “Bitch.” Now, to our modern AAA sensibilities, that is hardly a blip on the radar, since “Bitch” is such a common word that it feels tame. However, the Prince and a much more regal speech pattern in the Sands of Time, so this new personality was simply jarring, and the new personality permeates the entire game. Ubisoft even went so far as to get a new voice actor, Robin Atkin Downes to replace Yuri Lowenthal, who had voiced the Prince in the previous game, to sell fans on the new Prince.
If I am being honest, though. That was only a symptom of a greater problem. Overall, the Warrior Within tried to go in a much darker direction than the Sands of Time. The level design and graphics look noticeably bleaker than the much more vibrant locales of the original game. The original game’s bright yellow sands, blue waters, and green grass have been replaced by dark caves, dark ruins, dark towers, and dark green gardens. Even the relative cartoon-like graphics of the original game were replaced with a more “gritty, realistic, mature” style (about 4-5 years too early, guys). This was so bad that the earliest female enemy was wearing nothing but a leather bikini with gauntlets and iron leggings in an obvious case of pandering. While Farah’s outfit in Sands of Time was a little skimpy, it fit with the setting and her origins as a princess from India. This dominatrix leather outfit looked completely ridiculous, like the game was trying too hard to be mature.
Even the plot suffered from this new tone. To avoid spoiling the game for those who have not yet played it and for some reason still intend to, I will paint in broad strokes. With that said, after the time-bending antics of the Sands of Time, the prince is being chased by a Guardian of Time, called the “Dahaka”, because he was supposed to die in the “true” timeline. In order to save his own skin, the Prince embarks on a quest to the Island of Time with the purpose of going back in time to stop the creation on the Sands of Time. This will resolve the temporal paradox because he could never have fiddled with time had the Sands of Time never been created… or something. This element of the plot does not bother me too much because to some degree all time-travel plots have an element of “Just go with it”, being innately vulnerable to plot holes or logical inconsistencies. What bothered me was how the plot took all the light-hardheartedness and humor of the first game and replaced it with grim-dark upon grim-dark, since the Prince does little else but brood over his likely demise and complain to others about how unfair his circumstances are. I suppose that on some level, I can applaud the designers for daring to do something comparatively different. However, this was a bit of a slap in the face for series fans.
Not everything the Warrior Within changed was for the worse. Some of the things they tweaked were actually genuine improvements. The most notable of these improvements was with the game’s combat system, fitting for a game called “The Warrior Within.” Now, the Prince has the ability to pick up secondary weapons for use in his off-hand. Though these weapons will break after enough use, the new combat system allowed players to very their attacks and perform different combos with them. In addition, secondary weapons can be thrown at enemies, permanently discarding them, but adding extra attack options to deal with ranged foes. Though I enjoyed the combat of the Sands of Time, even I must admit that this was an improvement. The combat has gone from a fairly hack and slash fest to a more visceral experience that skilled players can excel at.
Furthermore, even in the original game, ranged enemies could be difficult because melee combat was really the only option in a fight, meaning players had to either wait for enemies to come to them or find a way to close the distance. My biggest criticism of the Sands of Time was also answered, because enemies in The Warrior Within rarely exceeded 4-5 enemies, although there were points where they slipped into old habits. And yet again my praise is tempered with a handful of other issues. For example, while the game rarely threw large waves of enemies at the player, foes often had a large amount of health. I was no longer tired by the overabundance of weak enemies. Now, I was tired by the overabundance of health each individual enemy had and the sheer amount of damage they would soak up before they died. The series had gone from one extreme to the other, and neither one of them were exactly pleasant.
Other changes to the gameplay were made as well, aside from the combat. The most notable of these changes was the semi-open world of the game. In the previous game, the layout of the world was decidedly linear. Players would enter an area where they would then solve a puzzle, undergo a platforming segment, or fight a group of enemies. This would unlock a save point and the entrance to the next location and so on. The beginning of The Warrior Within follows this for a while. Then, the Island of Time opens up a little. Players are able to, with some restrictions, explore the island almost completely. Through sand portals, it is also possible to travel between the past and present versions of the island. This allowed the game to give players multiple objectives that they could tackle in any order in certain points in the story.
While this was an interesting little experiment with game design in a platformer, ultimately it had a number of problems associated with it. For one, it resulted in a major design oversight such that it a certain area of the game was not arranged in a specific fashion before it is revisited in the story, it would literally be impossible to finish the game. Another problem is that due to the similarities between past and present areas and the need to go back to previously explored areas, the Warrior Within feels like it is wasting the player’s by literally forcing them to repeat already completed areas two, maybe even three or more times in the story in nearly the exactly same way.
Hardware limitations also stifled this pseudo open-world concept. As a special guest for nidoking042’s Let’s Play of the game, one of the developers stated that the original intent was to give players a series of shortcuts that unlocked once they completed an area in order to return to the central section of the Island of Time, similar to the way Skyrim always gave player’s a secret exit at the end of a dungeon. However, the hardware of the PS2, Gamecube, and original Xbox were unable to load quickly enough to make this possible. As a result, when a player clears an area, they need to go back through it in order to make their way to the central hub which connects all the areas in the game. Speaking from experience, this added needless frustration to the game.
By comparison, other changes to gameplay are minor. For one, the amount of the Sands of Time players will be able to store is much more limiting than it was in the original. Though both games started the player off with three tanks of sand, the Warrior Within gives only an additional three through progression of the story, as opposed to the gradual upgrading via absorption of sand clouds in the original. Furthermore, the tanks are used to both fuel time rewind and the other sand powers obtained throughout the game. Unlike the previous game, where the tanks for rewinding time and for using powers were separate resources. While on the subject of sands, the Prince no longer has to absorb sand from enemies to finish them off, as he no longer possesses the Dagger of Time. Instead, sand is semi-randomly obtained through breaking objects and defeating sand creatures. These factors combined give the player a significantly smaller margin of error for making mistakes in the game. With less sand, players (myself included) would see the game over screen much more frequently.
In the end, this is easily the worst game in the Sands of Time trilogy. Fans of The Warrior Within do exist, but they are vastly outnumbered by the group who preferred the original game over it. As for myself, I ragequit the game when I realized how tired I was growing of constantly fighting enemies and dying while backtracking in platforming sections. I only know about what happens in the game thanks to nidoking042’s Let’s Play. This game was an experiment as to how to improve the Prince of Persia franchise, and for the most part a failed one. Even Ubisoft’s developers realized that by the time development of the final game in the trilogy began. As loathe as I am to admit it, the Warrior Within is likely an important stepping stone to the grand finale of the Sands of Time trilogy as without it, Ubisoft would not have learned the lessons that they did. But we will talk about that in greater detail next time.

(This article is spoiler-free, for those of you who, like myself until recently, have yet to play a game from 10 years ago.)
As a child gamer, I was told of the greatness of the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy. Despite the praise, I had never played the games because I had somehow convinced myself (with reasons that I can no longer recall) that I would hate them. Last summer, the HD collection of the franchise went on sale on the PlayStation Network for about $7.50. Even then, I was not terribly interested in the trilogy. However, this time I was much more open to the opinions of others. Hearing recommendations from a few people and considering how cheap the collection was, I decided to finally throw caution to the wind and take the plunge for myself. Now that I have played all three games in the trilogy, I strongly believe that they serve as an interesting case study in game design from the PlayStation 2 era. Because of this, I will be running a series of articles discussing each game in the franchise, along with its positives and negatives. There is no better place to start than with the game that started it all, so without further ado:
The Sands of Time trilogy began, fittingly enough, with the 2003 release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. This game served as a reboot of the Prince of Persia brand name, since the original incarnations did not do terribly well in their day. Rather than shy away from its roots in difficult platforming, the game opted to embrace this tradition at the core of its design, setting the tone for the gameplay of the franchise henceforth. Death defying jumps, wall running, and various other feats of acrobatics and athleticism were par for the course. Fans of the platforming genre would be immensely satisfied by this element of the Sands of Time. However, the developers knew that they needed to do more than that.
Given that this was in the PlayStation 2 era, consumers were just beginning to shy away from the unforgiving style of older games. The mechanics of the game had to be updated in order to avoid the pain of constant failure states. This is likely what inspired the most well known mechanic from the trilogy: the ability to rewind time. In the beginning of the game, the titular Prince acquires an artifact called the Dagger of Time, which allows its user to absorb the Sands of Time into it and use them to manipulate time. With this weapon, players could rewind time up to 10 seconds into the past, allowing them to recover from receiving large amounts of damage in short periods of time and/or dying from a fall during a platforming section. In this way, players could recover from failure states, if only a finite number of times, and try sections again without getting a game over. Though this does not completely prevent the frustration caused by failing a difficult and long platforming section, it lessens the pain by giving players multiple chances to get passed troublesome obstacles with having to redo entire segments of play.
Another aspect of the game the seems geared toward limiting frustrations are the visions that the Prince receives throughout the game. Scattered throughout the game world are plumes of the Sands of Time that the Prince can step into. These plumes have two purposes. The first purpose is to provide save points for the player. The second is to give visions to the Prince. Visions give both the player and the Prince previews of future events, displaying a rough picture of what to do in order to complete the next section leading to the next save point. This removes part of the trial and error commonly associated with platformers of this type, especially when coupled with the ability to rewind time. As a result, the challenge of the game is preserved while stifling the unforgiving nature of constant game overs.
However, these elements cannot simply exist in a vacuum. Like any somewhat modern game, there needs to be a solid story to tie these elements together into a cohesive whole. Though I cannot be sure as to what the thought processes were behind the development of the game, I suspect the Ubisoft created the story to the Sands of Time in very much the same way that Naughty Dog created the story for the Uncharted franchise, which is the same way many industry veterans have done it. They created a set of mechanics and level designs, then wrote the story around them. Unlike many other stories generated in this fashion, it was very well received by those who played the game and stood out in its own right, for a number of reasons.
One of the smartest moves that the game made regarding the story was to present the entire narrative as a tale told by the Prince to somebody else after events have already unfolded. This alone serves multiple purposes. First, it allows the Prince to explain details of the plot that needed to be elaborated on, but the developers lacked either the time or resources to delve into. Like any good storyteller, the Prince is willing to fill in details and lampshade otherwise absurd notions in the story through his narration. Second, this gives an in-game justification for all of the countless deaths a given player will receive in a playthrough of the game. Although the game does a lot to keep players from reaching such a state, it is still possible, and quite likely, that players will achieve a game over at some point. When this happens, the Prince says something along the lines of “Wait. That’s not right. I didn’t die. Let me start again.” and the game gives the player the option to retry the section they died on. Instead of doing what most games do and making death something that never truly happens, The Sands of Time acknowledges the fact that it can happen and framed the story in a way that allowed it to account for player death.
Another intelligent choice made by the writers of the game is to only have a small cast of three major characters with only one or two minor characters. The Prince, his captured princess turned unlikely partner Farah, who players meet and befriend fairly early in the game, and the evil vizier are the only real characters who drive the plot. This allows the plot to be basic enough that any form of level or gameplay design can fit around it. Rather than complex politic intrigue and reputations with large factions, The Sands of Time chooses to focus on interactions between these characters and how their relationships and opinions of each other evolve throughout the course of the game. Instead of a global, world-spanning story, it is a personal one that, except for the prologue, takes place entirely with the Sultan’s Palace. The way Farah and the Prince grow to respect one another is interesting, especially since they both have a snarky attitude that makes it nearly impossible for them to just come out and admit that they respect one another. Like the time reversal mechanics mentioned earlier, this lack of characters would grow to become a recurring element in the trilogy.
Lastly, the narrative is bolstered by a strong Arabian theme that is present throughout the entire game. Areas in the Sultan’s Palace seemed ripped straight out of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. From the castle terrace to the caged gardens, and even the top of the Vizier’s Tower all look distinctive in their own right while retaining a continuity of theme and setting. Another notable way that the Sands of Time establishes the Arabian theme is through the game’s very impressive soundtrack. While many tracks utilize an electric guitar to an extent, they weave together Indian and Arabian instruments and sounds, resulting in a musical score than further immerses players into the story. Further selling the setting is the fact that the Prince can only regain health by drinking out of bodies of water. There are even special magical bodies of water players can stumble onto throughout the game that will increase the Prince’s maximum health. In the desert, having a steady supply of water is very important. Making water a resource that players will need to seek out in order to keep themselves alive is a nice subtle touch that adds a layer of plausibility to the world. Together with the titular Sands of Time, these small, seemingly minor details form the gestalt of a believable Arabian setting.
However, despite the vast amounts of praise I can levy towards the game, there are a couple of problems. The biggest issue I have with the Sands of Time is its combat. The way combat works is that in certain areas of the game, Sand Creatures, humans and animals possessed by the Sands of Time, will spawn and strike out at The Prince. The easiest way to defeat these enemies is to attack them until they are downed, at which point The Prince can use the Dagger of Time to extract the Sands of Time from them and add those Sands to Dagger’s supply of sand. Players can attack enemies with their scimitar in order to inflict damage, but they also have access to the usual arsenal of blocks, counters, and dodges. Since the Prince is an acrobat at heart, he is able to dodge over most enemies and strike at their blind sides. Furthermore, the Dagger of Time is given more uses than simple extraction and time reversal, which can be used to recover from battles that are not going in the player’s favor. Other time powers that utilize the Sands include a freeze attack that leaves the afflicted foe open to an instant kill 2-hit combo and a move called Mega Freeze that drastically increases the speed and power of the Prince, allowing him to dispatch numerous foes in a short time.
Despite common criticism, I do not have a complaint with the combat system itself. In fact, I think it works. Enemies are not “bullet-spongy” and can be downed in a few combos (at the same time, so can players if not careful) and the system is enjoyable enough to make these sequences entertaining. The problem I had with the combat is the sheer amount of it that was thrown at players at any given time. While the system itself is fairly solid, anything can become a problem in excess. One of the first things I noticed when fighting Sand Creatures is that the moment I had finished dispatching of two or three enemies, another group had spawned in almost immediately. This would continue on until I was defeating at least 20 and possibly even 30 enemies in the same area in the exact same fight. Often times I was getting tired of fighting at around half that number of foes. The nature of the game’s lethal play makes combat seem like it goes on for far longer than it actually does, giving off the feeling that combat is padding out the game. Although this seems like a minor issue, over time it makes an otherwise interesting combat system grow dull and repetitive very quickly.
The other issue is, by comparison, not as big of a deal. Towards the beginning and the end of the game, The Prince does not possess the Dagger of Time. As a result, the time reversal mechanic is not available to the player during these sections. This is an issue that is not particularly noticeable towards the start of the game. Since the game assumes that a given player has either no knowledge or limited knowledge of the game mechanics, the platforming in that section of the game is fairly easy to pull off. However, towards the end of the game, the game no longer has these expectations. In fact, some of the platforming segments towards the ends are some of the hardest in the game. When cut off from the time reversal mechanics that made failure states less of an issue, an otherwise simple platforming section becomes needlessly frustrating. While it is an interesting narrative and thematic choice to strip the Prince of his time bending powers in the climax of the game, the gameplay itself suffers as a result.

Overall, the Sands of Time was a fantastic game released during the PlayStation 2’s lifespan. There are many, myself included, who would go so far as to call it the best game in the trilogy, if not the Prince of Persia series. So many things, both big and small, were done correctly in this game that the things it and its sequels did wrong strongly stand out simply by comparison. Going forward, all Ubisoft really had to do is refine the template laid out here and continue providing excellent platforming in an Arabian-inspired setting, with some slight refinements to the combat. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. As we will see in the next article, the sequel decided to go in another direction. A very annoying and stupid direction. Until then, see you next time!
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