Ubisoft’s new 2D Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown, is not a prequel, sequel, or any kind of spin-off of the beloved Sands of Time trilogy. We’ll still be seeing some ideas from those games, though, including the iconic time powers that rewound the clock. However, it won’t be you who can use those abilities; they’re reserved for the story’s villain.
“We are toying with the time theme, and this is not a prequel,” said Mounir Radi, Game Director on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, in an interview with IGN. “Of course, we use ideas and signatures because as a developer, when we begin to think about this new chapter – Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown – it was very important to try to twist with all these things. So something like simple ideas: imagine that the time powers are back, the ones that you know from the trilogy, but this time they won’t be in your hand. They will be in the hands of the main antagonist.”
“The iconic time powers of Prince of Persia, you can’t play [with] them. [They] will be [used] by the main antagonist,” confirmed World Director Christophe Pic. “And so you will have very new time powers.”
So far we’ve seen just two of those new time powers. Rush of the Simurgh is a classic Metroidvania dash move, with an animation that suggests that you are bending time to rush forward at high speed. Shadow of the Simurgh, meanwhile, allows you to drop a shadow marker in the world and teleport back to it at any time, as if you have rewound the clock on your position. Both are accompanied by crystalline visuals, as if your abilities can freeze time like it were water.
Pic hints that more time powers will be unlocked across your journey through the game. “I don’t want to spoil it but you will later in the game unlock a specific ability that will allow you to have a very different approach, even in the fight, the puzzles, everything,” he said. “So it’s a combination of abilities that give a lot of creativity to the player.”
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is set to release on January 18, 2024. It will be available on Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X, PC, and Amazon Luna. For more information check out our hands-on preview and the reveal trailer from Summer Game Fest, as well as our full recap of everything announced at Ubisoft Forward. And for more on what to expect in the coming days, check out our Summer of Gaming schedule.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.
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