If you’re like me, you’re eagerly awaiting the forthcoming Prince of Persia DLC from Ubisoft. If you are me, you recently spoke with François Roughol, a level designer for the recent Prince of Persia, the soon-to-be released PoP DLC, and who is now a level designer on Assassin’s Creed 2. We talked about PoP’s reception, his part in designing the game, the decisions and reasoning behind the game’s levels and gameplay.Thomas Cross: You were a level designer on Prince of Persia; what parts of the game did you work on, and what were your goals in these various areas?
François Roughol: I came in for the final year of production, right as we ended pre-production stage, to design and script five of the Ruined Citadel levels, and script 2 other levels in High Castle. Ruined Citadel, ended up being used for the E3 demo and therefore got to an almost finished stage faster than all others. Having finished most of the level design by then, the region also ended up being the test subject for many of the subsequent gameplay features we implemented. In the end, it was also the first region to contain light seeds, the compass system Elika uses to show you the way, and traps. (Traps were obviously thought of when designing the levels, but only implemented later on).
My goals for this region was to design maps that would help drive the story of the Hunter forward, while maintaining key settings and gameplay elements for each area. In this game, each fertile ground area is a separate level, but so are the connecting junctions between each of them. One of these junctions, between Marshalling Ground and The Sun Temple quickly became a level focused around cracks for instance, and keeps its own unique style separate from that of either connecting levels.
On the other hand, the collapsed bridge connecting The Windmills to The Hunter’s Lair had to be fully integrated with the design of the lair itself, as this pair of levels were deeply linked in the story and gameplay.
TC: Since PoP has come out, it’s been praised and ridiculed for its writing and acting. As somebody who loved both of these elements, I’m curious to know what you thought of them? Did the Prince and Elika seem like believable people to you, and were you at home with the Prince’s tone and delivery (here I’m specifically addressing the English language release).
FR: I think I, very much like many PoP fans, have a love-hate affair with the Prince’s voice. It goes back to the original game, which let each of us define what the Prince would sound like should he actually speak. Some have suggested we should have gone all the way and cast someone that can speak Farsi, others said Naveen Andrews would be perfect for the part, everyone has his own personal favorite.
I still would have liked to see the reactions of the fans had Nolan North not made Uncharted a year before. Everyone saw his name come up and drew definitive conclusions that sometimes were just not there to be made in the first place.
In the end, the acting delivered was just fine, but the game’s writing is much more debatable. The style conveyed in this game was a lot different than what was portrayed brilliantly in The Sands of Time, but this entire trilogy was done and we needed a new approach to the franchise.
TC: People specifically took issue with the Prince’s mannerisms, and how they were seemingly at odds with the fantastical, magical elements of the story and world. Was it the intention of Ubisoft that he sounds so much less “fantasy-like” than his fellow characters, or was that something that occurred naturally as the character was fleshed out and brought to life?
FR: Others would have a much more educated answer to give you here, but my take on it is that it really actually serves the game and the story as the Prince emerges out of the storm into this world with no clue what role he will play in the grand picture. By setting his manners and tone so differently than those of the people that actually live in this world every day, it gets the message across that you were just never supposed to be there but for the will of the Gods.
In that sense, the Prince comes across to me as a young man who has lost his childhood spirit and refuses to believe in fairy tales anymore, until he gets to live one through to the end.
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