The Assassin of Persia
Ubisoft has two very successful franchises in Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia. One game is a parkour action-adventure with a fun battle system and the other is – oh wait, the same. Alright so they’re not exactly the same game but there are a lot of similarities.
The feel of the games as well as the characters you play as are very similar, and understandably so considering they even hired the same Mocap Team for both games. So why I ask do the assassins have different agility limitations in comparison to the prince. Does Ubisoft want to enforce more differences in their popular franchises in order to mask how similar these games are, or does it just not make sense for one game as opposed to the other? This question is not one out of annoyance but rather out of curiosity.
Why shouldn’t my assassin be able to run across a wall, jump, and then in mid-air eliminate his target with his hidden blade? Even the prince’s climb animations are faster, why slow the assassin down? I understand that the Prince of Persia games are stationed in a fantasy world where various monsters exist and abilities are given which defy physics, but does the sci-fi world of Assassin’s Creed really demand that the rules of physics remain intact? If something outside the realms of the already established rules of Assassin’s Creed was introduced, would it make the series “jump the shark”? Think about how you felt when Neo was able to control the robots outside of the Matrix.
I actually agree with the decisions that have been made thus far, in terms of keeping the Assassin’s abilities within limits in order to make the situation seem more realistic. I fear that an unintentional side-effect of Ubisoft having this unrealistic/realistic game dichotomy is that the existence of one will cause the other one to be more extreme. For example a developer has this great Idea for a character’s ability but can’t right away figure out how to make it seem realistic they can just bump it over to the other game or vice versa. Which in turn might make Prince of Persia more and more farfetched, or Assassin’s Creed too confined to reality. Whether or not the games would truly suffer from this is difficult to project, but it is something I am slightly weary of. Only time will tell what direction they take though.
I never noticed before that both games were made by Ubisoft Montreal. I guess it’s not too surprising. They must have a gigantic team though.
I would have to guess the biggest difference between the two games is that Prince of Persia is basically an Action/Adventure Platformer. Whereas Assassin’s Creed seems more like an Action Stealth Platformer. Well something like that. They have to limit your abilities in Assassin’s Creed in order to balance the option to remain stealthy. The stronger you are, the more agile you are, the easier it is to kill enemies. If it becomes too easy to kill enemies you have less incentive to remain hidden.
I think that on top of trying to keep it realistic forces them away from some of the more incredible acrobatic stunts. If they pushed the assassin to the limits of human agility and strength then they would need to make guards stronger or more numerous. Too many and you’d start to have almost a dynasty warriors-esque situation. Too strong and the normal guards becomes freakish elite super soldiers. They could make the guards more agile instead of stronger but well.. that sort of ruins the game.
As for whether or not the game will get more conservative and more wild I doubt it. Just look at DaVinci’s inclusion in Assassin’s Creed 2. I think they know where their limits are. As for Prince of Persia, it could go anywhere but the new game is already much more fictional than the old trilogy and the trilogy is much more fictional than the original game. At least I believe so. Based on that I don’t expect them to scale it back they’ll probably make it more crazy.
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Dan Reply:
November 24th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
We have to assume Ubisoft develops both games independently of one another. However, it is hard to ignore the fact that Ubisoft has 2 very similar games about a guy who climbs everything, has a flowy outfit, and (at least when considering the first Assassin’s Creed) is of Middle-Eastern descent. The similarities are laminated by the fact that both are made by the same hands. It just makes you wonder why they’d want to work on such similar projects. Could Assassin’s Creed have been a next-gen Prince of Persia – but then rejected, and reworked to be Assassin’s Creed?
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J Reply:
November 24th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Good point. While there are many important differences there are definitely an unusually large amount of similarities. I’d have to guess that the team simply enjoys making that type of game. Often with a game’s development there are points where you have to make key decisions on things like whether or not to include stealth elements in a game. So it’s definitely possible that Assassin’s Creed incoporates ideas they decided not to use for Prince of Persia.
Really someone needs to ask the studio what the answer is. How Assassin’s Creed came about and why it shares so many similarities to The Prince of Persia.
I don’t think this is very uncommon in the game industry. Companies like Valve often borrow ideas from previous games for new ones. Even a game like Perfect Dark is very similar to Goldeneye. I think the only difference is that usually there are more changes to the game than they did here.
Also I was right Ubisoft Montreal is huge. From what I’ve looked up it seems they have something like 1700 people.
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Flat out Assassin’s Creed = awful awful awful awful awful awful times a gazillion billion trillion million. There is nothing that anyone can do to ever make me play that game again.
Though I have heard really good things about Prince of Persia…the ability to reverse time just that small amount is a nice feature, along with with the actual game play.
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Dan Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
while we’re chatting about the whole ‘reverse-time’ deal that Prince of Persia offered… don’t you feel that made the game too easy? “Whoop! I died.. lemme just turn the clock back a few seconds…”
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Hey everyone, it’s Thanksgiving Day! I’m enjoying my extra day off, and I am planning to make something fun that will probably involve a bike ride and seeing something new in Manteca I haven’t seen yet.
You write something new at Thanksgiving?
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