PoP Sands of Time Remake Thread - Delayed Indefinitely?

I was excited when news of this leaked last night, I'm significantly less so now. This looks like a very budget, rough shod 'remake'. Like, I would have been very excited to play this on my 360 in 2010. I'm probably still going to fucking buy it and play it, because Sands of Time is one of my top five favorite games of all time, and just having a way to play it on modern systems is something I don't mind having. They could have just upscaled the 2003 original and I would have been fine with that.

Will you still buy and play this despite it looking kind of like they dusted off a ten year old port they forgot they had in the vaults and said 'HERE YOU GO, HERE'S THIS FRANCHISE YOU LIKE THAT WE FORGOT WE OWNED'?

Edit: This is now the official spiritual successor to my eight year strong Doom 2016 thread.

I'm not particularly a PoP guy, but I feel your pain. It appears Ubi stuffed this down the same hole they did Heroes of Might and Magic.

"Hey, remember that thing that you liked from 10-15 years ago? We made this thing that is superficially similar. It checks all the boxes except for the ones labeled 'heart,' 'soul,' 'quality,' and 'respect for the fanbase.' Also, it looks a bit ass. Have fun and remember to check out Assassin's Creed Valhalla!"

It's that game again but with nicer clothes. And maybe a shorter elevator section. I'll pass. I've been and done the original twice over.

Like.. they call it a remaster Id look at it and be like yeah alright seems fine.

But remake is Bold.

Anyway they should continue 2008 Prince of Persia instead.

I might buy it on sale or something some day. I loved the original but i'm in no rush to play it again.

I do find it weird that they said this was the first remake ubisoft has done when they did the same thing with Prince of Persia Classic in 2007.

I was kind of surprised to see a trailer with what looks like a pretty early build. Based on this reveal, it seems to still have a ways to go but it's set to release soon. So we'll see!

It was a solid game that feels a little dated nowadays, but I'm willing to replay it if they nail its look and feel.

It looks like what they did with the halo games except they are locking the ability to turn off the updated graphics behind a pre-order...which doesn't really make sense.

Not sure why they call it a remake when it looks like a remaster.

I was prepared for the worst from that thumbnail but the trailer wasn't so bad.
At the same time Sands of Time is an extremely important game to me and these remade graphics don't evoke the feel of that game at all, there's a soft, hazy, almost desaturated look to the original that really sells the Arabian feel, part of that was being creative with PS2 hardware but it crafted a really memorable style for the game, you wouldn't bathe a modern game in as much bloom and haze but without it the game feels like it's missing something.

The art style does not look right at all to me. It should be softer looking.

It looks competent but by adding all this detail it does seem to have lost a certain charm the originals simpler look carried so well.

Ah, was Ubi's license about to expire?

@cikame: It makes sense, seeing as that whole game is the Prince remembering it.

@cikame: I always felt like it looked very much like a story book, with that kind of dreamy quality, and yeah, the bits we see here are definitely missing that. It's one of those games that definitely benefited from the blurry quality of CRT displays. I played it on Gamecube back in the day when it first came out, and I always thought it was one of the better looking games on that machine.

I'm pretty bummed, it should be softer or more stylized, this looks like it was made to be realistic like... last gen, or just like they didn't really put that much care into it. It looks fine but I'd rather fire up my PS2 copy. Along with Ubi's overall shittiness I'm not planning on picking it up, but I hope it at least plays well for people who will be playing it for the first time.

For the right price i'll play it. But yeah, it probably deserves a better look than it received.

Everyone complaining about the look, relax. If you pre-order you get a "classic game filter" that should smooth it out.

So excited for the microtransactions in this! Pay 500 Ubi Sand Grains to rewind time and try that jump again. Perfect!

I only played the first game like 8 years ago on the PS3 remaster but I really liked it then. However...this series has been remade and rebooted so many times. Do we really need another faithful remake here? Just do something new with it. Or remaster the old game again in stunning 4k. This seems like a lose lose situation. If they make new levels and flesh out the story it will very likely be worse than the old one. If they faithfully remake the old game with new graphics it won't feel right. I know we've had a lot of very successful faithful remakes recently, and truthfully I've been enjoying them a lot, but remaking a PS1 game is different from remaking a PS2 game. PS2 games can still look and animate decently. They don't have the same issues that PS1 games tend to in terms of controls and cameras.

Who is this even for?

@bigsocrates: "Who is this even for?"

Like I'm wondering the same thing. But also curious with the recent direction of Assassin's Creed, maybe ubi are testing the waters to see if there's now room for Prince of Persia.

I still think it's a licensing thing, but yeah.

I would love to see the market research that goes into a decision like this. The trailer didn't look as bad as I thought it would based on the thumbnail but I can't get over how odd the Prince's face looks.

Give us the Prince of Persia 2008 sequel you cowards!

Look, Sands of Time is an all-timer. But it’s also on Xbox backwards compatibility with enhancements. It looks great! And you can probably get an Xbox disc for a song, or even digitally. They gotta do better here.

@efesell: yes! After all these years, I’m still a little salty that we didn’t get anything else out of PoP 2008... :(

@navster15: You can get it digitally, but it's a pain. I had a hankering to play it ac couple months back on my one x, and basically you can't buy it directly on the Xbox, or the Microsoft store. You have to go to xbox.com in a web browser and specifically look it up and purchase it through there. This would be pretty easy, except for if you click the wrong thing, it'll go to the game store on Microsoft.com, which it turns out is NOT the same thing, and again just tell you that you have to go sign in on xbox.com to buy it. After that I was able to download it just fine. This is a problem with quite a few backwards compatible titles that are TECHNICALLY available digitally that I've run into and Microsoft should really do something about. If I can purchase it roubdabout on a website, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to just buy it directly on the console.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

They released a DS game that seemingly no one cared about.

I don't know, OP, this looks fine. I mean, not amazing... but also, I don't have much appreciation for the original and the bloom is turned up way too much. Still, I have the collection on my PS3's hard drive so if I really have a hankering to play this, I can just play it on my PS3 and not have to deal with modern Ubisoft.

@justin258: Holy crap, they actually continued that story? I always thought it had an unresolved cliffhanger.

People keep saying this is a licensing thing, but licensing from whom? Who owns the right to Prince of Persia if not Ubisoft? Everything I can find online (after not searching too deeply) says that Ubisoft owns the property outright, and it's not like it's licensed from another medium.

They also released a 2018 mobile game so they've been relatively current with doing something with the rights.

I don't think this is an IP rights thing. I think this is an attempt to revive a classic IP and see if it still has value, as well as cash in on the remake train that worked so well for the Crash and Spyro trilogies.

Except it's Ubisoft so we only get the one game and it looks pretty cheaply made.

Ubisoft Forward was really a let down.
Also something I was curious about Gods and Monsters (Fenyx Rising now) is just Breath of the Wild AC Odyssey.

As someone who loves Sands of Time, I thought the trailer invoked what the game looks like in my mind. To me, it looks like what a PS2 game is suppose to look like. The animations look like how I remember them. I'd like to hope that's intentional, and not just a result of budget or whatever.

That being said, I already play this game about once a year. I don't need another way to play the same game with a different shade of paint. Also not really interested in paying Ubisoft for anything right now.

I think the original in high resolution looks better than this.

Having the classic filter as a pre-order bonus is some video game-ass bullshit.

The more I look at it the more I realize that my main issue with it is that all the extra detail and grit are making it look more like Warrior Within, and nothing should look like Warrior Within.

Who do they replace Godsmack with in the Warrior Within remake trailer next year? Who is 2020's Godsmack?

@fugitivej: DaBaby

@fugitivej: Maybe Trapt or that Treatin guy. 6ix9ine?

@fugitivej: Surprise they will replace Godsmack with a remastered album version of Godsmack.

About a week ago i was thinking "i wonder what they could do with Prince of Persia with the Assassins Creed engine". This is not what i saw in my head.

The animations, textures, lighting and models look all over the place in terms of quality. It honestly makes it look like it was remade for the 360/PS3 era, and that remake got a remaster just now for current gen. And the classic filter option looks like it just turns everything grey based on there pre-order image, so no hope there.

You would think with all these positive reviews of some of these recent remakes and potential sales of new installments they could invest more into something like this, but hey im no business man.

@bigsocrates: sorry, it's just been me in this thread mentioning licensing, not sure about what others are saying outside of here. I figured ubisoft only owned the license to make games, while Mechner owned the IP. In my searches, I couldn't find any clear answer.

@lego_my_eggo: lol wtf is is that classic filter man? What a mess.

Really? Wow, I had literally no idea. I knew of the DLC that continued on from that cliffhanger ending, but that was about it.

Trapt is still around? I did not know this. Also I remember kinda liking that Headstrong song in high school but I'm listening to it now and Jesus, it sucks. Probably unfair that I went from Rage Against the Machine to this, but... yeah.

So if I remember correctly, PoP 2008 wasn't terribly popular with fans who wanted more Sands of Time trilogy stuff, people complained that it was too easy, and it was a pretty short game, all three of which seemed to sink its sales and Ubisoft gave up on it. Also, Ubisoft was working their way towards mastering the generic open-world formula. Massive shame, as the game was gorgeous and had some really awesome platforming sections that I don't think anyone else has done in quite the same way. Apart from Sands of Time, 3D games loaded with wall-running and crazy parkour nonsense never seem to really capture audiences and memories outside of cult classic status, which is a shame because they're awesome and they need the moneybags of big publishers to get the look and feel right.

@justin258: it WAS fairly easy because there were nearly no fail states as Elika(?) would save your from any lethal fall. At the same time I think that just helped the flow a lot since you could get right back to it instead of watching a game over screen. I really enjoyed the 2008 game and thought that final part was a great subversion if a typical good vs. evil story. Sadly I never played the DLC but would love it if they brought back that specific prince with that wonderfully vibrant art style. It will never happen but hey one can always dream.

If this game came out before Crash and Re remakes then I might get excited but my expectations for a remake are now high. I really don't understand how a major publisher like Ubisoft decided to green light this, I would understand if the game had technical flaws but they can tell by its look!

Is it just me or does anyone feel like Ubisoft games are being made by suits as of late? The suits control looks really strong on them 😥

@humanity: I personally feel like falling and having Elika pull you back is, mechanically, no different from Crash Bandicoot falling down a bottomless pit and coming back at the last checkpoint. Yes, there's a lore reason for why this Prince gets a retry every time he fails, but as far as pure mechanics go it's the same thing just with much more generous checkpoints. I won't argue that it isn't easy, though.

..."As of late" meaning "since Far Cry 3?"

...OK, that's not completely fair, they put out two Rayman Legends games, Zombii U, and Child of Light, as well as begrudgingly shoved Might and Magic X out the door, but by and large their games always have some corporate meddling, ensuring that they're just daring enough to garner interest but nowhere near enough to say or do anything noteworthy.

It looks like a half-remembered drunken playthrough of the Sands of Time Remaster from the earlier half of this decade. As someone who both soberly and drunkenly played that version of the game, as well as soberly and stonedly played the original, and did so with both multiple times over, I can't really measure my disappointment with the look of this in relatably measurable measurements. But it's BIG HUGE.

I mean, as someone who's never touched a Prince game, all the talk of how awesome the original game was has me interested. I can deal with iffy graphics as long as the gameplay is good (I lived through the age of freaking Wii ports. This is NOTHING in comparison) and honestly it doesn't even look that bad to me. Certainly not up to the level of something like Crash, but this is apparently a small side team and I certainly wouldn't mind the return of less money-intensive games to balance out the market a bit. Plus they've said they're fixing the less beloved parts of the game like the combat, which is a more important improvement to me than any visual updates could ever be.

Selling at $40 means I may give it a go when it comes to Switch, or wait a bit longer for a sale since Ubisoft puts their games on sale all the time.

So like... is this still coming out or what? The initially announced release date is in ten days and Ubisoft, as far as I know, has gone totally silent on the product since the announcement. Maybe they actually paid attention to everyone saying it looks like dog shit?

@vaiz: The release date is pushed back to March 18th. I took a glance at the official website and it confirms the date, just not necessarily the details as to why. I see articles mentioning "to further polish the game," whatever that may entail.

So yeah, they probably took a real sharp turn when the reaction to the trailer was a unanimous "this looks like a 2008 budget title".

@vaiz: I sure hope so. I don't know if saying "all time beloved" action platform is too much, but Sands of Time was definitely the best one at the time and in many ways the best "one of those" to date since they don't really make these sort of games anymore. Definitely deserves a proper remastering with a lot of effort put behind it instead of a cheap do over. Unfortunately seeing what they showed this isn't going to get the love it deserves, in terms of development time it's just impossible, but myabe it will look a little better.