madimpossibledreamer

look a tank can only do so much when you scrapperlock (aka leeeroooyy jeeeeenkins) particularly if you don't communicate

And with this, we have finished Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Thanks for tuning in and sticking with me through this wild ride.

Oh, hey, they were on their way to somewhere else and just happened to attack because of the Vizier. So yeah, you can blame almost everything on that guy. Also, hold on, I gotta use the Dagger and rewind here—where were they going? Azad. Okay. And yeah, they were in India along the way. I can’t quite make out the king, but I think he’s all proud like “my son is such a warrior yay”. And I note that the Vizier is purposefully mentioning the treasure vaults and goading them into going for the treasures. (Why couldn’t he just take…Oh. Right. The tuberculosis + crazy climbing skills were necessary to get to the Dagger. But what about crazy magic? He’s got the market cornered on crazy magic.) And then he just jumps off he horse and flies through just in time to not get crushed by rocks. That is good.

Prince has crazy hat. And still not surprised by magic. Prince just…vault-rolls into the room, and the King is like “oh yes, this is perfectly normal.” They brought up the coughing early on, shocking. …OH. The Vizier is like “I’ll betray everything, just give me one item from the treasure vaults.” Goootcha. I do not remember where the Prince lost his crazy hat. And the King is like “nah, he won that fair and square”, at which point the Vizier has a coughing fit/tantrum and starts extending his plotting. (Would he even have drawn in Sharaman and Prince if he’d just been given the dagger? Would he have used the dagger to destroy the world? Time control’s great for a dying man, but what was he actually planning on doing with it? Turning back time a few seconds doesn’t seem super useful. Nor does slowing down time because it’s not that fast. Undoing the events of x amount of time is a thing that happened, but how do you control it? Because control seems super important and also limited here.)

Also the harems were totally a thing, though the wives were actually treated decently well, and yeah, there was political infighting over who got to be favorite because it’d be their son (probably) chosen to be the next ruler. At that point, though, the smart thing to do would have been to give the Vizier what he wanted and let him go. Why are they still letting him hang around with the King on a horse? When he’s already shown he’ll betray one ruler. All of y’all are dumb, just saying.

Oh, “nor take him into your service”. Okay. So they’re even dumber in that they were like “yeah sure we don’t even know how effective you are as a Vizier other than betraying your own ruler but sure, why not, serve us.

Ohhh, and now they’re in Azad. Okay, cool. All of this makes so much more sense. (Except for Princess Farah. Still not sure how she knows Azad so well, when it’s the Prince who explains that they’re friends with the kingdom and he’s been there before yet needs directions. Which, fair, if you haven’t been in the city often, sure, you won’t remember everything, but still. How does Farah know it and he doesn’t? I’m normally a proponent of protagonists needing more help to prevent from Mary Sue/Gary Stu-ness, but this wasn’t explained at all. Yet, anyway.) And then there’s the point at which the Vizier tricked them into using the hourglass. That’s some good acting. Did he know what would happen? He got the sand-birds to fetch him the hourglass at some point, so does he have some sort of control over them? Because otherwise “make everybody sand-zombies and hope the Prince dies somewhere along the way so I can retrieve the dagger” is a really convoluted plan.

Okay, no one other than the Vizier really gives the go-ahead. And the Prince is annoyed but does it anyway. Even a nod would’ve helped…hang on, sands of time again. Okay, not that we see. Might be a little too zoomed out but even that’s a problem. Little touch that could’ve helped the story, moving on.

Oh, “This is your fault and I can fix it.” Yeah, I guess that’s a tactic. (Though seriously what was the magic chant about? I waaaanna know.) And he’s been so badly burned he doesn’t know who to trust, especially when they’re all saying “I can fix it”. (Could Princess Farah have even have fixed it, other than by the massive “back in time none of this happened” thing at the end?)

Dunno if that’s denial (i.e. that can’t have been my father) or cold (my father died; that was just a monster). Also yeah other than saving the Prince running headlong into columns of sand looks particularly suicidal from this angle. (Not that, y’know, we haven’t had this conversation before about his mental health.) Like: I hate this life, I don’t care anymore, just make me a Sand Creature so I don’t have to think about it anymore.

He also gets super aggressive after diving into that column of sand. HMMMMM. Still confused about why he doesn’t explain he saw the sand vultures carrying off the hourglass and insists “he just knows”. He’s willing to go along with it because there are some answers she’s giving him, but if there’s anything to be done it’s going to come from him. “I move pretty fast. You’ve got to keep up.” She immediately starts trying to leave him behind. Nice.

Still laughing at the bath attendant speech. That is honestly the best humor in this whole thing. Still looking side-eyed at Princess Farah.

The “love” thing came out of the blue to him too. ‘Kay.

Still confused about the failure to use dagger to turn back time and get off bridge before bridge collapsed.

He is very paranoid. Not that I can blame him. That might even have been PTSD—he didn’t seem to recognize his surroundings right away.

And he senses the hourglass. The “infection” thing is getting a lot clearer now. Especially with the distrust thing again. He always gets more paranoid and distrustful after he’s interacted with the Sands. (I mean, I still think it’s true she’s manipulating you for her own ends, but there’s two factors interacting there.) It’s refreshing that this “lone wolf wanting to take on everything themselves lack of trust” thing is actually being shown as a limitation here. Because that? That’s rare. A lot of times they’re just like “oh lone wolf protag. Has no actual bearing on plot. People will still follow them because they’re ‘cool’.”

…Wait, there’s actual visuals here? If you remember this is the cutscene I was weirded out because it was apparently fade to black but there’s actually visuals? …I don’t think that’s even the fog of war bug they were talking about, because fog implies something other than black screen. I just got an audio cutscene. Huh. Now there’s some visual fog stuff. Hmm.

Yuri has some great voice acting, and they did a good job with the expressions.

Ah. It’s this cutscene. Which continues to be awkward. …Ohhhh, and he wakes back up in the tomb-area. What…I mean, okay, we’ve had extradimensional areas before. All the blue tapestry Velvet Water Rooms. But…did she drug him? Use some magic? Is the Vizier not the only one with magic? Yes, also, oh no. You have doomed me to getting places without the dagger and it is bad.

Still not sure why she didn’t give us her other hand. Ah, ‘tis the Generals that are morons. The girl is unimportant? Not everyone is motivated by the things you’re motivated by, you idiot.

Okay, it looks like he was doing what Farah wanted him to, so yeah, in the end it just ends up being the same ending no matter who does it. And no avoiding dumb consequences.

It does look overnight, but I don’t know that they would have been able to have any further time, really.

You lost your dumb hat again.

Not really that much in the later cutscenes. I was paying more attention to those. I wanna look up whether the Velvet Rooms or some of the other stuff was explained in the game booklet, but I wanna avoid spoilers for the next game, so I won’t.

Cannot stop from singing along again.