The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake was originally announced back in 2020. It has since been delayed multiple times. It was originally delayed into 2021, then got delayed till 2022. Last year, it was revealed that Ubisoft Montreal, the original developers of the game will be taking over the development of the remake from Ubisoft Pune and Ubisoft Mumbai. Now, Ubisoft has provided an update on the game. They announced that the game is still in development and that Ubisoft Montreal is currently in the conception phase, with the studio building up the team, defining priorities, and developing prototypes and testing gameplay elements. With this, Ubisoft has made it clear that the game will not be making an appearance at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward in June.
Producer Jean-Francois Naud talked about what state the game is at the moment and what happened when Ubisoft Montreal took over development. “In terms of the development stage, we’re in conception right now,” he said. “Since we took over the project, we’ve been looking at feedback from the community and finding our own way of delivering the game. Now, we’re building up the team, defining the priorities, putting prototypes together, testing elements, and looking at how we can include community feedback in the development as well. It’s still in an early stage, and players should not expect to hear more about the game this year, but rest assured that we’re all putting our strengths and heart into this project.
Michael McIntyre, Game Director, talked about how the team is approaching this as a remake and not a remaster and how they plan to update and refine the game. “It has been 20 years since the original game was released, and not only has technology advanced – which of course you would need for a remaster – but I think we, as players and game-makers, have evolved since that time,” McIntyre said. “I do not think a remaster would take enough of those evolutions.”
“In the case of The Sands of Time, it’s about how you would preserve those things that are still strong, right? One of the gameplay cornerstones of the original game is how the Prince moves around. And yes, there is technology that lets us execute that better – but there are also expectations from players, in terms of other modern games, of what it means to actually control a character. Ubisoft Montreal has developed a strong expertise in that, and we are looking at how we take those lessons and apply them to the spirit of a game like Prince of Persia. That kind of thing is more than just technology; it really is us as game makers having evolved, and understanding that for players, simply picking up a polished version of the original would not meet their expectations.”
Discussing what needs to be updated or refined from the original, McIntyre said “That refinement is actually kind of across the board. I think part of remake-versus-remaster is that there really is some degree of refinement in every aspect. The movement is a big one for us, but combat will get a similar treatment, because of how movement is evolving. And when we as a team look at some of the things that need to be refined, even the story – the story will remain true to itself. But the way it’s delivered, we have new ways that stories have been told in games over the past 20 years, and it allows us to be a bit more nuanced and refined in the way we execute the story.”
“And the big challenge is really to find that narrow line where we can modernize the game while not distorting the original experience for fans, but still able to offer something new for newcomers,” Naud said. “That narrow line is going to be our path.”
McIntyre also talks about how one of the things that makes The Sands of Time great is how appealing it is to newcomers. The whole premise of the game and the way it was built, including how welcoming it was in terms of difficulty is a philosophy that Ubisoft Montreal wants to embrace for the remake. “Also, one of the big advances in the industry in the past 20 years is accessibility features, ways that players can customize their experience to really suit the way they like to play it. And that will help newcomers come to this game even if, at the time, they couldn’t have played a game like this, because these accessibility features were far from the norm. And so that’s another aspect we’re looking to embrace in order to help newcomers come into this kind of game.”
Despite wanting to change and evolve things, McIntyre also wants to preserve certain things about the original too. In this case, the gameplay mix of acrobatics, combat, and puzzles. The team also wants to keep the same story and setting, and to make sure it is not just a Prince of Persia game but it is The Sands of Time with a narrator telling the story, something that differentiates The Sands of Time from every other Prince of Persia game. “Even other Prince of Persia games did not do that, and it really is a secret ingredient to that feeling of The Sands of Time, that sort of storybook feel. That is super-important for us to preserve,” McIntyre said.
More information about the game will be revealed, including a release date when Ubisoft is ready. Ubisoft also made it clear that there are currently no plans to remake any other Prince of Persia title.