New Prince of Persia Trailer from Leiptzig
This 7-minute long (well, minus all the marketing junk at the end) trailer of the new Prince of Persia game has been circulating around the web today, fresh off the floor of the Leiptzig Game Show, one of the few remaining venues where they are still not ashamed to use sexy girls to promote love, peace, and video games.
German girls aside, the trailer is quite an enjoyable little piece of media. As an avid fan of the original Prince of Persia games, I can never quite pass up a chance to get a sneak peak at the next game, and this time was no different. A penny for my thoughts, you say? Why, sure. Well, first things first - I love the new art style. This, of course, is a highly personal thing, but for me it’s a great improvement over the previous look of the The Sands of Time et al - I never really bought into the whole “Dark Prince” thing, and this definitely improves on that color scheme.
The moves and acrobatics remain on the same track as before - wall-running and the like. Once again, not something that I was ever too crazy about - while all these moves are theoretically cool, they just stray a little too far from reality for me - even video game reality. It’s not parkour - because you can’t really do parkour in the mountains by simply pretending that tiny cracks can actually support your entire body weight even for a second - and it’s not classic platforming, because there is nothing classic about being able to slide down a 50 foot wall without so much as breaking a fingernail. It’s definitely cinematic, but my issue with it is that it’s too much so - you can’t stop at any point, take a breather, and enjoy the scenery - you have to keep executing crazy maneuvers until you reach that very occasional point when you are actually on solid ground.
The voice acting also definitely comes off as a little weird. The Prince and Elika sound like two teenagers having a relaxed conversation over milk shakes in a suburban diner - all the while they are scaling immense heights, performing head-turning acrobatics, and battling incredible beasts. I was half expecting one of them to come out with “So, you wanna catch a movie later?” at any moment.
Still, being a total graphics whore, the amazing art style might just lure me back for another try at this next iteration of an undying classic. It will definitely start out as a rental for me, though.
