Prince of Persia is the latest in the Prince of Persia line of games (god that sounds stupid). The series started with a single game on the PC where you played as a young prince who was tricked by the vizier and dumped into the palace dungeon. The player was given an hour time limit to make it out of the dungeons and back into the palace to stop the vizier and rescue the princess. Along the way players were treated with some of the finest animations of running and jumping as they ran past falling plates and leapt over yawning chasms. Following this was a sequel that added a number of outdoor areas without changing the rest of the game's story. Following this was the Sands of Time trilogy. The trilogy was a re-imagining of the series. The Prince was now tricked by the vizier into unleashing the sands of time, destroying his kingdom and turning all of his subjects into monsters. The trilogy brought the Prince into the 3-D world and was widely praised for it's smooth controls and clever puzzles. The series continued with the Prince having to fix all of the mistakes caused by the damage he created when he released the sands of time.

Prince of Persia is another re-imagining, thus it's lack of a title identifier aside from Prince of Persia. The Prince is no longer an actual prince, but instead a wise-cracking adventurer whose past we never really learn. There are no sands of time, nor is there a vizier causing trouble. It is with this blank slate that Prince of Persia begins.

The new game begins with our hero, the Prince (not actually a prince), walking around in a sandstorm looking for his donkey. We discover later that this donkey is laden with gold from his latest escapade, a tomb-robbing. As he searches the Prince stumbles over an edge and ends up in a chasm only to immediately run head first into a girl, our new princess, Elika. Elika wastes no time and immediately runs off, telling the Prince not to follow her, whom of course does. Elika is being chased by some guards and her father, who a few scenes later ends up destroying a very bright tree, which we later learn is helping to imprison the dark god Ahriman (from ancient Persian religion, Ahriman is darkness and bad, Ohrmaz is light and good). Elika then gains magic power and the ability to heal lands that have been corrupted by Ahriman's darkness. The Prince and Elika thus set out to heal the fertile grounds (areas of power which help to imprison Ahriman) and keep Ahriman imprisoned.

Along their journey the player can make the Prince stop and talk to Elika, where they'll then a have a quick discussion, revealing more about the land around you or Elika's past. Mind you, I did not say the Prince's. Throughout the game the Prince persistently avoids mentioning anything about his past, with the most we ever learn being that he got the gold from a recent tomb-robbing expedition. Elika meanwhile reveals much about herself: her past, her current thoughts, even some of her deeper insecurities. The writer's do a good job with these little dialogues, with my main complaint being that you can't move while they're occurring, which would have helped to cut down on the tedium of travel times as well as the annoyance of having to choose whether to play the game or learn about the story.

Warning! MASSIVE SPOILERS!!!

As the game progresses we learn that Elika died before the Prince ever arrived, and that the reason her father cut down the tree in the beginning was because he had made a deal with Ahriman to bring her back. At the end of the game, after you have healed all of the lands and sealed Ahriman away again, Elika dies, her life energy being used up to heal the tree that her father cut down. The game then has the player carry her out of the temple to a nearby altar where here mother is entombed. There is then a moment where the Prince looks down at Elika and some sand begins to blow in from the desert. Throughout this scene there is not a word of dialogue, and it is one of the most striking scenes I have played in a while.

Then the writers kill it.

The game then shows the same flashback you've been seeing all game of Elika's farther bargaining with Ahriman, and the Prince makes the same agreement. The player must then go chop down some magic trees and return to Elika. The land is corrupted entirely, everything black and grey, while a black sandstorm erupts from the temple of Ohrmaz where Ahriman is imprisoned. The final scene showsd the Prince carrying Elika out into the corrupted desert with the giant black sandstorm/Ahriman rushing behind and then past him.

I won't say that this is a terrible ending, or that it ruins the game, as it is still a very powerful scene. However the writers missed their golden opportunity by having the ending continue past Elika's death. Say we had the game end where I mentioned (with the Prince having just placed Elika down on the altar), they could have then shown the Prince walking out into the desert, all in perfect silence. This ending leaves Elika dead, unusable (aside from bad plot mechanics) for future games, but we would have learned so much more about the Prince, and had a more powerful main character for future titles. Rather than a wise-cracking adventurer without a history, we could have had a man who guards himself with jokes and witty banter. Never revealing anything about himself or his feelings, lest he get hurt again, as he has been with Elika, and perhaps other women in his past. We have a Prince who just had an amazing adventure (he imprisoned a god!) and yet he cannot tell anyone, for as the sole witness, who would believe him?

Personally I much prefer this ending, leaving us with one well-developed character (who still has a blank past that we can fill in as we need), rather than an incomplete character (the Prince) and a complete, but moderately shallow character (Elika). Either way I must commend the men and women at Ubisoft for making a fantastic game with a story that I enjoyed enough, that even though they failed to achieve greatness (much as with Fallout 3), I still thoroughly enjoyed myself and am looking forward to both their announced epilogue content as well as another play-through of the standard game.