PoP Sands of Time Remake Thread - Delayed Indefinitely?

@humanity: Yeah I'm not expecting anything like on the Demon Souls level of love and care, but if it can be greatly improved that would be nice. I loved Sands of Time and it deserves a whole lot better than a cheap cash grab shit it out the door treatment.

@hippie_genocide: I absolutely agree although I think the game deserves the Demons Souls level of love, especially since they are bringing it back for the first time now. What a wasted opportunity.

What a shame that this was delayed, because I would’ve been very stoked about being reminded that it’s coming out in ten days. Of course, that is me ignoring how rough it looked when announced and how the delay is most likely a good thing.

I really liked the original Sands of Time, but only ever played the demo (multiple times) for some reason. Warrior Within played well, but even for a teenage me, the edgy tone of it was kinda laughable. Don’t think I ever tried Two Thrones (also they really put that whole trilogy out between 2003-2005, huh). I bought the 2008 reboot(?) from a sale for dirtcheap but never tried it and The Forgotten Sands I keep forgetting even exists.

Anyway, I hope this will be great. Though whoever is responsible for those filters (one of them ”being more close to the visual look of the original SoT”) being a pre-order bonus can piss off.

@glots: The Two Thrones was pretty good. It was a clear course correction after Warrior Within, keeping the more diverse combat from WW but returning to the more storybook tone of SoT with the original voice actor. They're all on GoG and Steam, I would highly recommend giving the trilogy a shot again at some point, they are still very enjoyable, though some elements are clearly dated. I replay sands of time at least once a year.

@vaiz: At this point, I'll wait and see how the remake turns out. If it does end up being a big turd, I'll more likely give the original game(s) a go at some point later this year.

I did try the 2008 one today, thanks to this thread and, uh, I don't know. Something about that game's style felt very jarring. Nolan North just doing his Nolan North voice™ as the Price definitely didn't help.

@glots: I sure do hope this delay will give them adequate time to ...sand off.. the rough edges..

@glots: For what its worth, the 2008 game is so completely different in every way from the Sands trilogy that it may as well be a completely different franchise. It had some really cool concepts, but didn't quite stick the landing.

And now it's delayed indefinitely.

Probably the right move given the reaction to what they had, but brings into question why they even thought it made sense to release it as it was.

Huh. Maybe I will end up playing Stubbs the Zombie in march then, since that's about the only thing coming out that I'm interested in.

Ignoring the graphic decisions on display in the trailer this is another case of art from a specific time, by a specific person/team, not being able to be re-made in a way which carries the soul of the original piece?

I'd honestly rather have them put out a budget Sands Of Time trilogy in a box, no real upgrades bar save states and accessibility options, and say 'look, the first game is considered incredibly important by many in and out of the industry, there's no value in remaking it!'

I know the Crash Trilogy was a great looking game, but that had issues with a few design and gameplay issues which didn't exist in the original games, but sometimes you wish art would be kept as close to the original style with proper accessibility add-ons attached to help those who need it.

This is why I actually quite liked the Super Mario All Stars 2 set, despite the flaws (especially the awful limited release window, and lack of true accessibility options but that's still an issue in games, innit?). It showed the games largely as they were at the time, upscaled a bit. That's a form of archiving I fully get behind because it lets people truly experience what the art was. People can contextualize it with their own knowledge/research to see if it has value to them then without it being misrepresented.

What I'm saying is bring me more Rare Replay collections, I guess?

The trailer didn't look great, but at the same AAA development costs are crazy and we can't expect every game to look like Resi 2 Remake or Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I think it's an interesting experiment to see if they can make a decent remake on a modest budget. I'm worried that being delayed indefinitely means either cancelled or they're going all-in and then need the game to sell 5 million copies to break even.

@apewins: Haven't we already seen a bunch of good more mid-tier remakes? The Crash/Spyro remakes. Tony Hawk. Medievil. Spongebob. Panzer Dragoon. This has been happening for a while with both successes and failures, but it's not really experimental at this point.

This particular one just looked...not good. It neither captured the old charm of the PS2 graphics nor had a new good style. It was just sort of...off.

It might be kind of a bummer if it were canceled but I'd be happy for them to go all in and spend a lot of money even if they don't recoup it, because I don't care if Ubisoft loses money.

@osail: I might agree in this case, though the difference with Crash is that it was a PS1 game so there was a lot of room to make improvements to character models, levels and cutscenes, PS2 games hold up a lot better which is why many PS2 remasters do little more than add widescreen, which is totally fine i'm all for making old games accessible and preserving them in a better state.
I feel similarly about the upcoming but not yet announced Resident Evil 4 remake, and while that's a full remake and not just an update, the original game is still one of the best games of all time made in a sort of golden era in game design, i'm always ready to be surprised but i really don't think anyone can successfully remake RE4, you can't reinvent what makes that game so special.
A remaster with significant changes needs to be handled with care also, C&C Remastered is dripping with the care and attention it was given, Prince of Persia deserves the same.

I don't have high hopes this delay will produce the results I expect but as I stated above - the series definitely deserves the Demons Souls treatment and if you're not going to go the extra mile then maybe don't bother at all.

From what I've played of that trilogy, they switched art styles real quick which makes Sands of Time very much its own thing.

Oh boy, delayed indefinitely. This is now the spiritual successor to my old eight year strong Doom 2016 thread. My body is ready. I want a good SoT remake, BUT AT WHAT COST?

@humanity: I'd probably be content with a sequel to Prince of Persia (2008) but a Demon Souls / Sekiro style Prince of Persia reboot would be interested in seeing

They created a new studio in Pune India. I am not sure if any of the staff have created a video game before. Combining that with COVID probably lead to the delay.

And we have a new developer. This is going great!

With Skull & Bones and this game it's clear that Ubisoft's management may be a bunch of sexually harassing jerkwads but they sure are great at this management thing, yessir.

@bigsocrates: What a mess. I can't believe this would be that complicated.

Following that Twitter thread @bigsocrates linked above, it seems they moved development to Ubisoft Montreal recently, so I guess they're still working on it... but I wonder if Montreal considered the work done so far to be unusable and they're more or less starting from scratch.

EDIT: doh, that was posted already a few messages earlier. I should learn to read! >_<

Wasn't this supposed to be Ubisoft India's first game? If that's the case that must be a huge blow to what Ubisoft sees as the viability of their studio in India.

Clearly the problem is that Sands of Time is too different and out of touch with modern times. UbiSoft knows true gamerz will only play things with big open worlds and icon-vomit all over the map.

And lots of micro-transactions, of course.

It's just occurred to me The Sands of Time beat Forza's rewind to the punch by several years. It still feels novel and I can't think of another platformer that does that.

Apparently it is not canceled, just delayed again.

Apparently Ubisoft is applying the same kind of innovative project management as it did to Skull & Bones.

A bit head scratching as to how a remake of all things goes south, you've already made the game one before.

Very weird to me that Gamestop calls customers "guests".

I can see it. Just look at the agony Square Enix has had over the FFVII remake. It's not like a remaster where they're polishing up existing assets. With a remake, you have a plot and that's about it. If you do it right, it's a whole new game.

Apparently this game is still in the conception stage. How much conception do you need for a remake?

Ubisoft is COMICALLY inept.

At this point it's vaporware and not much will convince me otherwise. That said, Duke Nukem Forever *did* come out, so there's precedence...

Glad to hear that, because what they were about to put out was, to put it politely, not good.

@cikame: About to put out? That trailer was years old and the game had already been announced to be rebooted and indefinitely delayed like a year ago.

This update is just basically "we rebooted our remake of an old game a year ago and have not even got past the concepting stage in an entire year, even though the game we're remaking probably had like a 24 month development cycle or something because it was the PS2 era."

Again I ask how long it takes to concept out a remake. You already have your setting, characters, basic gameplay style, etc... This is not one of those situations where you like start out making a platformer and end up with a kart racer.

Concepting process: Play the PS2 game. Concepting process over.

Conception? Surely that work was done 20 years ago?

@shindig: Maybe it means that the developers who will actually finish this game are just being conceived right now.