madimpossibledreamer | Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Game Review/Commentary 41

(weird noise) I am back. It has been a slightly strange day, but that’s okay because I was actually productive today and now I get to play some Prince of Persia, so I’m happy.

What on Earth just happened there? I tried to sign in and it promptly booted back to the sign-in screen. That’s normal.

Anyway, here we go. Oh, it is muted. That is not good. Don’t remember how high I usually put it, but I think that’s probably good.

I don’t really know what to talk about for these prestream things. I also don’t know why I started this early, but there you go.

I had an interesting discussion about literary themes and aspects of Hellblazer today, which was cool, but yeah, I don’t actually know. It is Jojo’s Friday. I’ll be posting Jojo’s later. I’m going back to school, which is weird, but it’s good. Hopefully it’ll actually get me a non-retail job. We’ll see. It’s kind of scary but actually nice going back, so. I don’t know.

(mumbles) That’s a thing. Surveillance capitalism. Yeah, yeah that makes sense.

Updating Steam. It’ll finish eventually. They have Bayo on sale, but I don’t know that I actually wanna. (Bayonetta. They actually have it on sale pretty often. It’s a good game, but I’ll have the chance to get it again.)

I do like the outfit in the movie. I’ll probably—after this I’m going to have to rewatch the movie again and see. I think the biggest difference that I’ve noticed is the lack of sand monsters.

(The game has more of an emphasis on personal responsibility and tragedy. Not that the movie doesn’t, but it’s not the Prince Dastan who releases the Sands, and while the change in regime would certainly have been devastating to the empire and probably others it’s not the postapocalyptic Everyone Is Dead or Sand People situation in the game. And the Vizier had more of a hint that he was a villain than Nizam did, and the vizier was a traitor in the first place to his own people and foreign so they maybe shouldn’t have trusted him as much as they did. Dastan was like ‘family-trust’ which is a far more understandable ruse to fall for. Personally, rashly letting loose the Sands of Time is a more hubris-type mistake [well, if you’re not counting the end of the movie, but I’m talking the beginning Spur to Adventure moment]. Also I think it’s interesting that the Assassins are in the movie given Ubisoft and that the game was supposed to be the Prince’s bodyguard on first concept, but in the movie they’re definitely antagonists. There’s far less parkour from everyone involved but the parkour moments in the movie were cool and some of the stunts would probably have been a little dangerous. Then again, the Assassin’s Creed movie that came out much later was a lot worse, I feel, though it did have some awesome parkour. Maybe it’s just trying to fit a much bigger story with a ton of lore into the confines of the movie but the writing sucked. The dagger was awesome and right on. Like, no question. You can argue the end of the movie and maybe the end of this game were happy endings, but the rest of the Prince of Persia games…well, again, I’ll have to rewatch or just pay attention when I play Two Thrones ‘cause that might also qualify but the rest are definitely not happy endings. Both the movie and game had a good hint at the Steins;Gate alternate timeline trauma.)

And there’s also a different feel with Nizam-slash-the vizier being Sharaman’s brother. The movie definitely has more of a focus on family as opposed to—I mean, in Forgotten Sands you get to see the brother Malik which I think is funny because they knew they already used that for a character. In the—well, he—spoilers. He didn’t end up playing as big a role as I was hoping, but.

I do think that’s interesting that they focus so much more on that. So you feel—I mean—You kind of feel a lot more alone in the game but also you don’t because you’re there and you’re playing it with the Prince, so it’s kind of like it’s you and the Prince against the world. (There’s also Farah, but unlike Tamina, she’s not there all the time. Tamina is similarly antagonistic in the adjectival sense when she tries to stab Dastan, but unlike Farah she doesn’t shoot you in the back all the time. Plus the whole drifting sands you may have jumpstarted the apocalypse thing is pretty quiet. Kinda peaceful, at times, in all of the most horrifying of ways.)

So. We’ll see if this is the right amount of sound. Also I may have forgotten to turn off the loading music again. There we go. Sands of Time OST. (The movie one. It’d be redundant to play the game OST too.)

Oh, that might be a bit loud. Okay.

And I don’t need to see this again. Probably. (You sure? It’s a cutscene you probably ignored even if you did watch it.)

*whistles along with the loading song.) Oh, yeah, they prevent you from changing the volume while you’re in the game. I forgot about that.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I was here and I stopped before I—(healed). Because I ran in and started healing and went ‘I just saved and also there’s no monsters around. No munsters. I don’t have to worry about that.’

Hello, Prince. Say hi to everybody. Or just stand there.

*giggles* He’s like ‘you’re ruining my boots by standing in this water; can you please get out of it?’ Fine.

Are these invincible? No.

What happens if you jump on this, by the way, Prince? (nothing?)

Also, that rug is put in a strange place on the floor. Part of it is up against the wall. (And by this, I mean a corner is actually sticking up slightly on the wall, because I actually remember that rug.) It makes sense because it’s underneath these chairs, so someone just forced it underneath there as a—this (other) rug is actually put in a place that makes sense.

And then they have these not-stained glass wall sculpture things. I forget what that’s called. Is that fresco? …No, I think that’s painting. *whispers* I don’t know.