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Something in the Way He Moves: The New Prince of Persia

By Steve Wark

Quite a crowd gathered outside the SAT on Thursday for the first meeting of the season. According to an impromptu survey by Jason Della Rocca once the audience settled into their seats, half were there to learn about the new Prince of Persia game from the Team Leads, while the rest wanted to socialize and drink free beer. Knowing what your audience wants and expects was the theme for the evening.

The SAT filled up fast...

The session opened with a short presentation from Gordon Bellamy of Image Metrics, the sponsor of the meeting. Gordon played a short video interview with Emily, who demonstrated the company's accomplishments in facial animation. The interview has been making the rounds of technology and culture publications, broadcasts and blogs in recent weeks.

Then, the Team Leads for the Prince of Persia game took the stage. Producer Ben Mattes introduced the speakers: Francois Emery (Level Design Director), Andrew Walsh (Narrative Director), Thomas Delbuquet (Combat Designer) and David Wilkinson (Animation Director). Each speaker addressed the problems of introducing a revamped Prince of Persia into an open world environment by asking fundamental questions like, "What makes a good Prince of Persia game?" and "Who is the new Prince of Persia?"

The PoP Panel: Thomas Delbuquet (combat designer), Francois Emery (level design director), Ben Mattes (producer), Andrew Walsh (narrative director) and David Wilkinson (animation director)

The key, according to Mattes, was remembering the focus of the original PoP games: amazing acrobatic sequences. The game world was designed as a network of challenges (such as combat, puzzle or story sequences) connected by multiple paths. Throughout the game, players make decisions about which paths to take and which goals they want to pursue as they explore their world. Those choices affect everything else in the game, from how the story is presented, to how the enemies manifest their abilities, to how Elika, the Prince's companion, uses her powers to assist the Prince.

For all that action, the highlight of the presentation was Animation Director David Wilkinson's standing up to demonstrate how the new Prince just…hangs out. The new Prince doesn't stand around like a doofus. Instead, his stance says everything about his character: he's a lighter character than the grimly determined original Prince, arrogantly confident in his abilities that he fights with his sword point-down and so laid back that he’s always slouching. Wilkinson stood up and demonstrated the new Prince's cool new pose - equally ready to fight a demon, run along a crumbling wall or banter with Elika.

David provides a very, uh, colorful, description of the Prince's stance.

The Q&A session was lively. Good questions from the floor were rewarded with custom Prince of Persia t-shirts brought back from the Penny Arcade Expo. Questions included the Prince's inconsistent accent (Answer: someone will always hate the accent, so the focus was on clarity), story management in a non-linear setting (Answer: it’s difficult and requires a lot of team communication), and the decision to move away from a realistic art style towards something more illustrative (Answer: this is a game, real life is boring).

Finally, the door prizes were raffled off and audience members filled out a post-meeting evaluation survey, to help the Advisory Committee make sure the remaining events of the season meet audience expectations.

Ben takes further questions after the panel.

The drinks & socializing contingent of the crowd should be happy with the plans for the October meeting: a night of networking and drinks at an as-yet undetermined location. Watch this space for details.