The news leaked earlier today was true: A remake of the 2003 classic "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" will be available early next year on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store for PC (as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well). This PlayStation 2-era game has been completely reimagined with Assassin's Creed's Anvil game engine, which is a bit ironic considering that Assassin's Creed began as a prototype for the new Prince of Persia.

Senior producer Annu Koul said in an interview with PC Gamer last week, "It's the circle of life. "Koul is at Ubisoft Mumbai, where game director Pierre-Sylvain Gires He is working with Ubisoft Pune on The Sands of Time Remake.

The remake features completely revamped graphics and motion capture of the character animations from the original Sands of Time. Said Gires, "We decided to utilize motion capture, first to enhance the cinematic aspects with facial capture, and then to make it more emotionally rich."

Yuri Lowenthal reprises his role as the prince, and actress Supinder Reich replaces Joanna Wasik (who, to my knowledge, has not acted professionally since the original game) as Farrah. In the original game, the two main characters never actually met in the recording booth, or at all, Gilles said. Having Lounsall and Leitch acting together, he says, allowed for a more emotional recreation of the drama and comedy of the original story. If it works as well as he thinks it will, the "Sands of Time" remake may become a favorite telling of this story.

I won't and can't spoil the story. The Sands of Time was released 17 years ago, and I don't remember what happened. But I do remember enjoying it 17 years ago. (If I saw Jake Gyllenhaal's movie of the same name in 2010, I don't remember anything about that either, except that it had ostrich people in it.) [This follows "The Matrix" in 1999 and "Max Payne" in 2001. In other words, you can pause and slow time, rewind and redo combat and platform mistakes, which has become a minor design cliché in the decade and a half since "The Sands of Time."

The remake also motion-captures combat and platforming animations, but its purpose is to recreate the charm of the original with modern technology, not to make it "Assassin's Creed. Prince of Persia game.

According to Gires, the biggest change overall is the camera." The flexible camera will allow for perfect framing of combat and platforming. The camera and combat were rarely praised in 3D platformers at the time, because the camera and combat were rarely praised in 3D platformers at the time. On that note, a combat aiming system and difficulty mode have also been added. The developers have attempted to recreate the balance of the original with a normal difficulty setting, but there is also an easier "story mode" and a hard mode. In the latter, "you have to be very particular about which techniques you use," says Kool.

In the past, Ubisoft Pune and Ubisoft Mumbai have supported the development of projects led by others, such as Far Cry 5, led by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto. This is the first game led by Ubisoft's India studio and is where the story of "The Sands of Time" begins. Cool said during his presentation, "It was an honor and a great opportunity to use our experience to recreate an environment as detailed as the Maharaja's palace."

Prince of Persia writer and designer Jordan Mechner says he "didn't play an active role in the remake," but the studio consulted him and he was "thrilled" to play. 0]

Patrice Desire, the original director, was the director of the first "Assassin's Creed" game before leaving Ubisoft in 2010 (their relationship has since become complicated). More recently, he directed Ancestors: A Human Odyssey for his own studio, Panache Digital Games.

Original producer Yannis Marat, who went on to run Ubisoft's Canadian studios, resigned earlier this summer following allegations of workplace misconduct and harassment at these studios. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot recently apologized for this situation, and his apology was posted before today's Ubisoft Forward event.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake will cost $40 when released on January 21, 2021. As noted above, it will be released on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store, with no mention of a Steam release. It will also be offered as part of Ubisoft's Uplay+ subscription service.