First Details on the Remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [Interview with Creative Director Bio Jade Adam Granger and Game Director Michael McIntyre]
First Details on the Remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [Interview with Creative Director Bio Jade Adam Granger and Game Director Michael McIntyre]
>**When** **we last talked about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the project was still in the conception phase. What has happened in the year since we last spoke?**
>
>**Michael McIntyre:** We finished our pre-production phase; we are now in full production, which means that we have built a small version of the game that allowed us to validate many of our ambitions with the remake.
>
>**Bio Jade Adam Granger:** I joined the project, to start with! [laughs] It was last summer. The game has a lot of importance to me; it’s a game from my teenage years. I remember renting it at the video store and playing the heck out of it, so it is a building block of gaming for me.
>
>We built a passionate team here in Montreal, and it’s fantastic to now have the support of other Ubisoft teams from around the world.
>
>**How would you describe your overall approach to remaking Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time?**
>
>**BJAG:** Remaking a classic is very daring and exciting to me. What I wanted to bring is the idea of “sanctify, respect, modernize, and add.” So those four pillars are what we use to define everything in the game. If we take an enemy, for example: Do we want to sanctify it, keep it as-is because it’s so iconic? Do we want to respect it, just fix it a little bit? Modernize it, which is a bit more change – or is it something completely new? Everything that was in the original goes through that lens, as well as some things that we want to improve – for example, accessibility options are something that we’re adding.
>
>We have things that are staying as-is, like the wall run, which is so iconic that we will try to match it as much as we can. The dagger as well. There are core elements of the original recipe that we respect and sanctify: time powers, the tone of the game, and the gravity-defying gameplay. But we modernize stuff like the level design, for example, and really enhance the scale of the world. We also vary challenge a bit more.
>
>**MM:** I think combat is a good example. The original combat, for a lot of players today, would feel quite dated. Combat in games like Prince of Persia has advanced a lot in the 21 years since that game, and certain recent games, like Dark Souls and God of War, have really elevated even more casual players’ competency in combat. It is an area where modernity really needed to be injected.
>
>But there are certain things that are iconic about the Prince of Persia fighting style, like the vault strike, where you vault over an enemy and hit them, or rolling onto the ground and stabbing a prone enemy in order to drain sand from them with the dagger. There are moments that need to be preserved visually and pacing-wise, and also just the feeling of combat as an acrobatic hero who is gracefully staying one step ahead of the horde that outnumbers him.
>
>**Given that the game is launching in 2026, this seems like a very involved production for a remake. What’s the reason for the lengthy development cycle?**
>
>**BJAG:** The landscape of remakes has evolved a lot since the first inception of the remake of Sands of Time. There have been some big players that clearly redefined the bar. We made some big changes to the 3Cs (Character, Camera, Controls), and had to build prototypes to make sure that our new controls still feel good with the old gameplay, and sometimes we need to change them.
>
>**”We’re embracing that augmented scale, that increased sense of connectivity of the castle, of feeling more oriented because you can see faraway landmarks.”** ***- Michael McIntyre***
>
>It’s a little bit faster in terms of conception, but production-wise, there’s no difference between creating a remake or an original game. It takes time and craftsmanship and people, which is why we have reinforcements from other studios to help us here.
>
>**When players discover (or rediscover) Azad, what do you want that experience to be like for them?**
>
>**BJAG:** I want people to be amazed! Wonder is super-important to me. Because it’s a tale told by the Prince, and Azad is a fictitious place. We have multiplied the scale and the wonder of that place. It is larger than life, at the edge of fantasy; not fully fantasy, but enhanced rather than realistic. We call it “the poetic odyssey.” Poetry is in the visuals and the tone, with the music and sound. If we can really make sure that people feel transported into that world, I think we’ve won.
>
>**MM:** Due to technical limitations, the original game – though it did an amazing job of creating a sense of place and that sense of being in a storybook castle – was limited in terms of what you could see and how connected the spaces were. As a good example, one of the things that players are experiencing now in our game is a sense of vertigo, because of the scope of the castle, because of how high the heights can seem. In the original game, it would have to be a very cloudy mist that sort of was the floor down below, and it hindered that dizzying sense of height – which we’re able to achieve now with modern engines and such. We’re embracing that augmented scale, that increased sense of connectivity of the castle, of feeling more oriented because you can see faraway landmarks.
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>**When** **we last talked about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the project was still in the conception phase. What has happened in the year since we last spoke?**
>
>**Michael McIntyre:** We finished our pre-production phase; we are now in full production, which means that we have built a small version of the game that allowed us to validate many of our ambitions with the remake.
>
>**Bio Jade Adam Granger:** I joined the project, to start with! [laughs] It was last summer. The game has a lot of importance to me; it’s a game from my teenage years. I remember renting it at the video store and playing the heck out of it, so it is a building block of gaming for me.
>
>We built a passionate team here in Montreal, and it’s fantastic to now have the support of other Ubisoft teams from around the world.
>
>**How would you describe your overall approach to remaking Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time?**
>
>**BJAG:** Remaking a classic is very daring and exciting to me. What I wanted to bring is the idea of “sanctify, respect, modernize, and add.” So those four pillars are what we use to define everything in the game. If we take an enemy, for example: Do we want to sanctify it, keep it as-is because it’s so iconic? Do we want to respect it, just fix it a little bit? Modernize it, which is a bit more change – or is it something completely new? Everything that was in the original goes through that lens, as well as some things that we want to improve – for example, accessibility options are something that we’re adding.
>
>We have things that are staying as-is, like the wall run, which is so iconic that we will try to match it as much as we can. The dagger as well. There are core elements of the original recipe that we respect and sanctify: time powers, the tone of the game, and the gravity-defying gameplay. But we modernize stuff like the level design, for example, and really enhance the scale of the world. We also vary challenge a bit more.
>
>**MM:** I think combat is a good example. The original combat, for a lot of players today, would feel quite dated. Combat in games like Prince of Persia has advanced a lot in the 21 years since that game, and certain recent games, like Dark Souls and God of War, have really elevated even more casual players’ competency in combat. It is an area where modernity really needed to be injected.
>
>But there are certain things that are iconic about the Prince of Persia fighting style, like the vault strike, where you vault over an enemy and hit them, or rolling onto the ground and stabbing a prone enemy in order to drain sand from them with the dagger. There are moments that need to be preserved visually and pacing-wise, and also just the feeling of combat as an acrobatic hero who is gracefully staying one step ahead of the horde that outnumbers him.
>
>**Given that the game is launching in 2026, this seems like a very involved production for a remake. What’s the reason for the lengthy development cycle?**
>
>**BJAG:** The landscape of remakes has evolved a lot since the first inception of the remake of Sands of Time. There have been some big players that clearly redefined the bar. We made some big changes to the 3Cs (Character, Camera, Controls), and had to build prototypes to make sure that our new controls still feel good with the old gameplay, and sometimes we need to change them.
>
>**”We’re embracing that augmented scale, that increased sense of connectivity of the castle, of feeling more oriented because you can see faraway landmarks.”** ***- Michael McIntyre***
>
>It’s a little bit faster in terms of conception, but production-wise, there’s no difference between creating a remake or an original game. It takes time and craftsmanship and people, which is why we have reinforcements from other studios to help us here.
>
>**When players discover (or rediscover) Azad, what do you want that experience to be like for them?**
>
>**BJAG:** I want people to be amazed! Wonder is super-important to me. Because it’s a tale told by the Prince, and Azad is a fictitious place. We have multiplied the scale and the wonder of that place. It is larger than life, at the edge of fantasy; not fully fantasy, but enhanced rather than realistic. We call it “the poetic odyssey.” Poetry is in the visuals and the tone, with the music and sound. If we can really make sure that people feel transported into that world, I think we’ve won.
>
>**MM:** Due to technical limitations, the original game – though it did an amazing job of creating a sense of place and that sense of being in a storybook castle – was limited in terms of what you could see and how connected the spaces were. As a good example, one of the things that players are experiencing now in our game is a sense of vertigo, because of the scope of the castle, because of how high the heights can seem. In the original game, it would have to be a very cloudy mist that sort of was the floor down below, and it hindered that dizzying sense of height – which we’re able to achieve now with modern engines and such. We’re embracing that augmented scale, that increased sense of connectivity of the castle, of feeling more oriented because you can see faraway landmarks.