Interviews

Jordan Mechner, Creative Consultant – Prince of Persia: The Sands
of Time

1) What is the
relationship between Ubi Soft & Jordan Mechner?
How do you work together?

Ubi Soft approached me in 2001 with the intention of reviving the
Prince of Persia brand and bringing it to next-generation consoles.
Producer Yannis Mallat invited me to their Montreal studio to see
the initial animation tests the team had made and to hear their ideas.
When I met the team, I realized that this was more than just a business
proposition to them. They were out to make a masterpiece. Yves Guillemot
and Serge Hascoet, in Paris, made it clear to me that they believed
in this team and in the potential of the license, and that Ubi Soft
was prepared to make a major commitment to make the best possible
game. We then engineered an agreement that gave Ubi Soft the exclusive
worldwide license to develop and publish Prince of Persia video games.

Ubi Soft brought me in as a creative consultant to work with the
team to make this game the greatest possible artistic and commercial
success. They have placed a lot of trust in me by inviting me to
come in from the outside and participate in this project. My main
objective in working with Yannis Mallat and creative director Patrice
Desilets is to maintain and enhance the unity of story, character
and game design. At times I work directly with other members of the
team, including level designer David Chateauneuf, art director Raphael
Lacoste, AI programmer Richard Dumas, and game designers Marc-Andre
de Blois and Lionel Rico, to give input on specific areas. Overall,
I try to stay aware of all aspects of the project, and focus my input
on the areas where it will be most valuable.

2) What expertise do you bring into the project?

As a game designer my speciality is telling a story in a cinematic
way within the game itself, and not just in cinematic cutscenes.
My experience as a filmmaker and screenwriter, as well as my previous
games Karateka, Prince of Persia, and The
Last Express, taught me
a lot which I was able to bring to the team on Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time. I worked closely with producer Yannis Mallat and
creative director Patrice Desilets to develop a story that would
support and drive the great game play elements the team envisioned.

Directing the voice actors’ performances in the dialog recording
was a bonus. I did this first on Last Express, which was a dialog-driven
game with over 60 roles. I like to do this job myself when possible,
because I feel it’s a natural extension of writing the screenplay
and designing dialog opportunities in the game. Actors tend to see
video games as a day gig, maybe one step above a TV commercial. To
give performances that are as nuanced and emotionally powerful as
they are capable of achieving in their film and stage work, they
need encouragement from a director who is passionate about the story
and characters, and can communicate that belief and passion to them.

The cutscenes in Prince
of Persia: The Sands of Time posed a special challenge for Ubi
Soft’s cinematics group, because they are
action-packed, often very short, and tightly interwoven with the
game play. Because I knew the story so well, I was able to direct
the voice actors before the visuals had been created, and give cinematics
director Ron Martin and sound designer Simon Pressey final performances
to work with at an earlier stage than would otherwise have been possible.

3) Can you explain how the story was written?

The team had already designed
the central game play feature, and were seeking a storyline that
would bring this great idea to life.
Producer Yannis Mallat, creative director Patrice Desilets and I
sat down together and hammered out a strong, simple story, which
I expanded into a screenplay. That was about a year ago. The story
has undergone a continuous process of revision, mostly in the direction
of tightening, making it cleaner and stronger, bringing out the emotions
of the characters, and of course, reflecting the ongoing changes
in game design and level design. I’m extremely proud that the
screenplay is so tightly welded to the game play. The story drives
the game, and the game play drives the story.

4) What is the
philosophy behind the development of the game: what do you want
to bring to
the gamers who will buy “Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time”?

Since about 1985 I consider
myself a casual, even occasional gamer, so my goal is always to
create one of the 1-2 games a year that will
excite me and draw me in enough to finish it. For me, the world and
storyline are essential. As a player I want to be captivated by an
overall artistic experience, not just a commercial product. I want
to feel that the game creators have something to express, and that
by playing through to the end I will discover their personal vision.
I look for elegance, attention to detail, unity of story and game
design as key values, and if I don’t find them I tend to lose
interest quickly. I hope that all gamers, casual or hardcore, will
see and appreciate these qualities in Prince of Persia –
The Sands of Time.

Another quality that I
think was important to the success of POP 1 is the sheer exhilaration
of movement. The feeling that you are
one with the animated character on the screen, that you are not just
going through mechanical motions to complete the level, but that
you’re flying—a feeling of joy in your own acrobatic
grace. This is much harder to achieve today in 3D for a number of
reasons, and it is one of the key values that I hope will excite
people when they see Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

5) When getting started on the project, did you and the Ubi Soft
team have the same conception of this new game?

My biggest concern was
that if there was to be a new Prince of Persia game, it had to
be something special and not just mapping the Prince
character and universe onto a kind of game that had been done already.
The first time I visited Ubi Soft’s Montreal studio in 2001,
engineer Claude Langlais and character animator Alex Drouin had made
an animation test showing the kind of acrobatic game play they envisioned
for the Prince. I was blown away by what they had done. It gave me
the same little shiver of excitement that I had had 15 years earlier
when I first got the Prince up and running on my Apple II. Back then,
just running, jumping and climbing was a big deal. Since then, so
many games have built and improved upon the basic POP game play,
that in order to recapture the same feeling of excitement and magic,
the team knew they would have to take it to another level. It was
great that they did this test at such an early stage, because it
gave everyone confidence that this was going to be unlike any other
game out there.

At my first meetings with
the team, we shared a lot of ideas, what we hoped for and what
we didn’t want. I felt that their ideas
were exactly what Prince of Persia needed, and I came away feeling
very excited about the potential of what this team wanted to do.

6) How do you see the future of the Prince
of Persia series?

I think Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time will be a hard act to
follow. This has been one of those rare experiences where a great
team and a great idea come together and create something that is
more than the sum of its parts. It is a young team, loaded with talent
and enthusiasm, and I feel sure we will be hearing more from them
in the future! It is impossible to predict how the marketplace will
embrace any title, but whatever happens with this one, I know the
people involved have put their heart and soul into it, and will look
back fondly on the experience.