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News source: 3D Gamers

Interview conducted by John Houlihan.

What have you improved on from the original game and what are your aims for Prince of Persia 2?

Mallat: The very first ting we did starting Prince of Persia 2 was to look back at Prince of Persia one and really look deeply at what was not up to what we wanted the game to be. And from that we have identified three main areas...

...The fighting system, which was pretty redundant and repetitive, and no real variety in the enemies and stuff like that. We didn't have any bosses in Sands of Time and the game length was a little short, but especially we didn't have any replay value system.

That's pretty much the three big things we've worked on. Adding some real depth to the micro gameplay, starting with the fight system where we really wanted to give the player the control of the Prince rather than having the player triggering... Cool moves and animations are to be enjoyable to watch but we felt that this voyeurism trip was not what real gamers may expect from the game.

It had an advantage though, which we have been trying to keep and have kept which was that the control scheme was really intuitive which is a trademark in any P.O.P. game.

Can you tell us more about these areas of improvement?

Mallat: We've been doing a lot of trial and error to give controls to the player but also to not go too deep into hardcore stuff. We're going to have combos - even if I don't like the word - that will allow the player to really choose what he or she wants the Prince to do. We have more than 25 different combos, and a dozen are finishing moves.

Going deeper into the fight system, we are also giving the Prince the ability to fight with two swords. We've freed up one hand that was taken up by the dagger. And then the Prince also has the ability to steal secondary weapons from enemies using cool moves - like strangulation moves - which is really what I call intuitive gameplay. This is giving depth to the fight system.

Replay value - we're going to a have minimum of four different difficulty levels plus one huge thing I cannot talk about at this time [laughs] but I have to mention it - it will really give the player the desire and the opportunity to play the game again a different way.

And finally we have at least three different bosses in the game. These ask for what we call exotic gameplay, meaning you don't fight those guys the same way you fight all the other enemies. They call for specific gameplay, such as the huge golem where you have to find his weak point then climb on his back and do some rodeo stuff and smashing the head and finishing him in a very special way.

The game engine for Prince of Persia 2 is 25 percent more powerful than that of the original. What work have you done here?

Mallat: This is something we really didn't think could happen because the engine at the end of Sands of Time was at its maximum in terms of power and stuff. Last year I remember when meeting with Sony people and they were telling me about the PS2 capabilities and our game engine is matching the PS2 capabilities. Good to know, but we managed to improve the engine a lot - 25 percent more power to compute faster, 25 percent more in terms of memory usage and in terms of allocating different stuff to the CPUs in PS2.

It allows for more room, more textures, more special effects and stuff and the game running at a minimum of 30 frames per second which is cool because I don't think we have a game that needs to run at 60 frames per second. But going at 30 is allowing us to add a lot of stuff. Animation is taking a lot of memory in the game and I think it's something like 796 animations we have for the Prince alone. We've been able to add 150 animations in terms of new moves and that's thanks to the engine optimisation.

You've given the sequel more of an action focus, it seems. Has that been difficult a balance to achieve, between classic puzzle solving and the new emphasis on fighting?

Mallat: Not really because... Actually, in terms of gameplay mechanics this was not really hard to make except for the technological challenge. The real thing that asked a lot of work and questions of us was that we wanted every new thing to be justified in the "global" masterpiece, meaning everything has to fit. And this is also one trademark on Prince of Persia games.

For example, you're talking about puzzles. Yes we wanted it to be embedded with the fights, as well we want the fights to be embedded with the puzzles. But talking specifically about puzzles... For example in Sands of Time there were three main puzzles in the game. One was the very first one where you activated the palace defence system, the other one is in this huge library and the last one is in the big planetarium map.

Among those three puzzles, only one is good in my opinion. It's the first one. Because it's not only doing a puzzle that will open a door it's also a puzzle that linked to the story. By activating the palace defence system we justified the presence of all the traps in the game, so that's another dimension to the puzzles. And that's exactly where we wanted to go in Prince of Persia 2.

Having the guy scratching his head and having to find the puzzles just for opening the door in my opinion is kind of weak. This is exactly what we wanted to avoid and in Prince of Persia 2 the puzzles will always be linked either to the narrative gameplay - unfolding the story - or new events or to stuff that is worth doing the puzzle for.

One thing we've found interesting is the interactive cinematics, when the characters lock swords and stuff - can you tell us more about that system and why you chose it?

Mallat: I strongly feel that the videogame medium is different in the entertainment industry based on one thing - it's the pad, it's interactive, you have to do stuff. And this is what is cool. I think that developers that put cinematics in their game, it's only because they haven't found the right way to tell the story while still playing the game.

This is one reason behind our desire to bring what we call interactive cinematics. It's a mix between Tokyo/Japanese gameplay and Hollywood. What we call interactive cinematics in the game are moments where either the story is told or unfolds, where something is happening but you still play the game.

For example with the first boss where you lock swords but you still have to play, you have to press buttons so that you still maintain balance and there's a dialogue happening. It's so immersive. The player at this moment is doing exactly what we want him to do in a videogame - play, hear, understand, unfold the story, watch. You know, it's multimedia.

Have you conducted a lot of research into the likes of the tales of the Arabian Nights and the whole mythology era around the Prince legend?

Mallat: Yes, we've been conducting a lot of research, especially on Persian mythology. Each name in the game is a true Persian name that has a meaning - the Dahaka, for example. Dahaka is a meaning of fate. Some people say 'don't you fear that you're losing your Arabian Nights environment going darker' but if you read the Arabian Nights carefully there are some nasty moments, some really gory stuff.

So no, we haven't lost anything. On the contrary, we're gaining stuff, we're just talking about the same world from a different point of view but it's still ours. It's ours. I mean in our eyes it's Prince of Persia. It's a different way to say it, that's all.