Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown is designed to be onerous. It’s additionally designed, from the bottom up, to be accessible. This stuff aren’t at odds with one another. Ubisoft Montpellier built-in accessibility choices into each a part of the sport from the beginning; there was nobody crew designated to do the work, senior sport designers Christophe Pic and Rémi Boutin advised epicgamejourney forward of Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown’s Innovation in Accessibility win at The Recreation Awards 2024. Up towards Name of Obligation: Black Ops 6, Diablo 4, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and fellow Ubisoft sport Star Wars Outlaws, the Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown crew set a brand new commonplace for accessibility within the brutal Metroidvania style — and was rewarded for it.
“Some builders can worry that accessibility can dilute your sport’s strengths, and I believe it’s the other with all our accessibility options,” Boutin advised epicgamejourney in a sit-down interview forward of the present. “We enable extra gamers to get pleasure from exploration, extra gamers to benefit from the fight. And on the finish, once we learn evaluations, the sport was nonetheless thought of very, very difficult.” It’s the character of the sport and its controls that permits for this sense; what’s distinctive about it’s the sense of freedom and fluidity of its motion. “Our controls deliver fast enjoyable, and make the sport straightforward to be taught, however onerous to grasp,” senior producer Abdelhak Elguess stated.
Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown was launched in January and was a right away hit with critics, and it was the primary massive Prince of Persia sport since 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. There was loads of strain to get the sport proper. “We began first with the DNA, as a result of if you assault such a giant model, you need to respect the model, however we additionally wished to shock our gamers,” Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown sport director Mounir Radi advised epicgamejourney.
Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown certainly has loads of options that gamers have come to anticipate from video games, like a number of problem choices, subtitles, and purpose help. However the place Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown’s accessibility shines the brightest is in how its growth course of — accessibility constructed into every step — allowed its builders to innovate. Boutin pointed to this course of as the express motive for some choices, just like the high-contrast swap. A primary for Ubisoft, the high-contrast mode impacts colours and distinction. One developer seen that in cinematics, the mode spoiled sure story particulars, like an enemy changing into an ally, as an illustration. (All items of information in Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown are labeled internally so {that a} mode like this might be utilized accurately to completely different property.) The developer then added an possibility to show off the swap for cinematics in order that gamers might forestall themselves from being spoiled. “That is the type of element that comes with the truth that everybody was concerned in accessibility,” Boutin stated.
The large thrill of a Metroidvania sport like Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown is exploration. The crew wished gamers to really feel misplaced, however not too misplaced. And so the crew developed the guided mode to assist with that. “It was a bit tough as a result of we would like the participant to be misplaced,” Pic stated. “It’s vital as a result of it’s exploration-driven. We would like the participant to discover by himself to find all the things — the treasure, the shortcuts. We developed the guided mode to assist gamers that aren’t used to utilizing the map on a regular basis such as you do if you play a Metroidvania sport.” The first goals are on the map, however the path to get there may be nonetheless right down to exploration.
Picture: Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft
“We saved the essence of the joys of exploration,” Boutin added. “We all know that some gamers drop some video games as a result of they hate being misplaced, however they miss the sensation of exploration. That’s what motivated the creation of the screenshot marker.”
The screenshot markers in Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown are known as reminiscence shards, which permit gamers to take screenshots and pin them to the map — it’s like scribbling one thing down in a journal, however proper on the display screen. Boutin had been interested by how a photograph mode might be utilized in gameplay already, and when the Ubisoft crew applied its prototypes, it merely labored, albeit with some limitations. (Boutin added that the screenshot characteristic was initially extra difficult, and it took a while and iteration to strip it right down to its last model.) “It was a great way to maintain the participant lively within the statement of the world,” Pic stated.
In the course of the growth course of, Boutin and Pic stated, the most important lesson was the significance of distributing accessibility all through the sport by default — as a part of the unique design course of, with all builders concerned. At first, there was some reticence among the many crew about this, however everybody was on board after they noticed how the method labored; everybody had enter. To be nominated for this award amongst different video games with revolutionary design (Boutin particularly known as out Diablo 4’s on-screen descriptors) — after which to win — is a reminder that the method works.
Although the Ubisoft crew that labored on Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown has been disbanded, shifting on to tasks like Ghost Recon, Rayman, and Past Good and Evil 2, the crew members are immensely happy with the work they created. Radi confirmed to epicgamejourney that Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown offered greater than 1 million copies, however an Insider Gaming report from October prompt that the sport didn’t meet Ubisoft’s inner expectations.
“Truthfully, we had a tricky 12 months with Ubisoft,” Radi stated. “Every month is a brand new downside. However with these nominations, it’s our approach to present what sort of sport we are able to obtain once we work collectively and once we work with our coronary heart.”
