Ubisoft India Explains Why Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake Looks the Way It Does

The Mako Reactor says: “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake developer Ubisoft India addresses the controversy surrounding the graphics in its reveal trailer.”

[phoenixwing]

from what i read it looks like they spent more time making the engine work for time manipulation and single player story gameplay, which got in the way of making the visuals look good (they don't outright say it got in the way but that's my interpretation considering the evidence). I also found it interesting they were shoehorning their open world engine into making the game.

[RpgSama]

"So we decided to go for a unique visual treatment to make this game standout from other games. It’s not another Assassin’s Creed, it’s not like the same Prince of Persia from 2008. It has to be unique. This magic, this fantasy is shown through the saturation, through the light, so it also a challenge to redefine the visual identity of the game with this remake"

What a bunch of BS, the game looks like CRAP, this is not about "a visual style" it looks like a remaster made by a team of very few people with almost no resources and even less time.

[LOGICWINS]

They Craig'd it. Plain and simple.

[IanTH]

"it looks like a remaster made by a team of very few people"

That's what I was thinking, but one of the leads actually said that this has been in development for 2 1/2 years and by a team that has been, at times, up to 170 people! What the heck have they all been doing? lol

[RaidenBlack]

But, AnvilNext 2.0 engine was also used for R6 Siege. And Anvil was created to be very scalable.
Anvil 1.0 (successor to Scimitar) was used for PoP Forgotten Sands even! So, things could've been better.
If they had problem with the Anvil architecture, they could've used Massive Entertainment's Snowdrop Engine.
Snowdrop was made for Division series but it is also touted as being very scalable and was used for South Park: The Fractured but Whole.
I can't comment on the complexity of the implementation of the time manipulation feature.
But only upside I can say, that hasn't been commented on is: IF this game runs @ 60fps smoothly, then the visual choice can be appreciated to some degree. If Performance is super smooth then at least that's commendable.

[Emme]

Snowdrop was even used for Mario vs Rabbids" on Switch!

[RaidenBlack]

The reveal trailer was of an older build.
Here's a screenshot of the newer one and its still not final.
.
https://i1.wp.com/twistedvo...

[Nitrowolf2]

"It has to be unique"
Short of it, they didn't want it looking like other Ubisoft games. Yeesh, there's so many different approaches to that, seems like a bad excuse TBH

[-Foxtrot]

It's Ubisoft being lazy shits at the end of the day.

They don't mind making most of their games look like copies but Prince of Persia is suddenly a big no no

....Sure

[kayoss]

If youre going to make a remake of an old game. At least put some effort into it. Youre telling me a game developers that is capable of making great looking games, cant get Prince of Persia to look pretty? Like you said, its laziness and a quick cash grab. They realized that doing a good remake will take more time so they just half a$$ed it and came up with some excuse.

[MadLad]

Essentially "we didn't want it to look like our AAA titles, because we budgeted the hell out of this, so we simply couldn't"

[lelo2play]

Game looks meh. This Remake needs a Remake from a competent developer.

[ClayRules2012]

Agreed. I wish Bluepoint was doing this Remake!

[Bathyj]

They are busy on something better

[ClayRules2012]

@Bathyj

Haha, yes, I’m looking forward to the new Remake they have coming to PS5. It looks...like a TRUE “REMAKE” if there’s anything beyond that, I don’t know.

[Bathyj]

Hopefully after that Sony buys them and announces they've been working on a resistance trilogy remake

[ClayRules2012]

@Bathyj

Oh, a Resistance trilogy Remake would be awesome, especially on PS5. Here’s hoping, and that Sony buys Bluepoint!

[MadLad]

A company like Bluepoint, who specializes in remasters/remakes, wouldn't let themselves be bought, being it highly limits their chance for projects.
They act as contractors, and having access to as many companies as possible makes sense.

[LordoftheCritics]

I don't know if it was a right call to give such a high profile game to a new team.

[-Foxtrot]

I honestly never even knew they had a Studio in India

I'm guessing Ubisoft threw this remake at the weakest studio they had...

"“Anvil engine is mainly for open-world games,” says Senior Producer Annu Koul"

So basically they created an engine to do nothing but open world games? I bet this is why we've had nothing but samey games from them for years.

[LordoftheCritics]

Reminds me of Frostbite being shoved into everything EA. Andromeda RIP

[RememberThe357]

Wouldn't it be cool if the people running these companies actually knew how to run these companies?

[anonymousfan]

Lmao at least it was remade... Did no one else notice how lazy Nintendo was when they ported Mario 64 ? That game age really badly and they couldnt even bother giving it a widescreen mode.

[TheGameDeflators]

Well one of them is a port and the other is supposed to be a remake. Big difference there.

[anonymousfan]

Yup pretty much what I said already... One is a lazy port the other one is a remake although I 100 % agree an ugly one. Ubisoft may have a terrible artistic vision... Nintendo is the laziest company in this comparison.

[TheGameDeflators]

You're comparing apples to oranges.

[SullysCigar]

Regardless of their excuses, first impressions matter and this looks awful. It's squandering the PoP license, which is sad, because it's fondly remembered and it's been long enough since the last iteration that comparison screens should leave fans in awe. Just laziness Ubisoft.

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

I know this is being pedantic, but there's literally not a single country-named Ubisoft studio. All the studios are named after the cities where they are located. So, India has two studios, Ubisoft Pune and Ubisoft Mumbai (this is the one responsible for the remake).

[kayoss]

Summary of the their explanation:
Ubisoft: We are lazy.

[XBManiac]

Well... Sands of time was made for non hard disc consoles, as Xbox 360 had a base model with no hard disc. So, now, it is no excuse to have any problem with the engine.

[Edgelordsupreme]

Sands of Time wasnt on the 360 or PS4. The hard drive has zero to do with any of this.

[XBManiac]

Correction: PS2 had no hard drive, Xbox had hard drive, but the game was made for the lowest denominator (PS2). Meaning PS2, instead of Xbox 360.

[loxim]

Sounds like they designed a remake of a game that shouldn't have been made in the engine they used for it. They should have built a new engine if they are just complaining about using this one.

[Inverno]

I wish devs were a bit more honest with consumers. Would people really care if the game itself turned out to be great? Visuals aren't everything, just come out and say you just didnt focus on that as much or that it's not a AAA budget remake. Perhaps it'll surprise us… I dont doubt it'll be arse tho if im being honest

[Elda]

The bottom line is POP games have been out of the loop for 12 years now & maybe for that reason Ubisoft may have been fresh out of ideas but lately folks have been asking about POP so I'm guessing they may have thought why don't they bring out the 2003 version with just a fresh coat of paint looking similar to the original which may have kept the cost down instead of making something built from the ground up on a new engine looking much realistic. I'm guessing if this remaster (I refuse to call a remake) sells well then in a few years a brand new POP may release.

[-Gespenst-]

Not sure I buy any of that. Seems more like a perfect storm of not enough money, time, and talent. The graphics are petty horrendous. The faces and the nauseating color and lighting are the biggest issues I think.

[Ausbo]

The problem is not the art style, it’s the fact that the character models look last gen.

I understand it’s a studio that normally doesn’t get to work as the lead studio, but maybe this is why.

[LordoftheCritics]

The models look so out of shape and those pants textures ugghhhh

[Knightofelemia]

They butchered the Ezio trilogy on PS4 and worse on XB1 so the Prince looks bad I don't care I own all the Prince of Persia games and I am glad that Ubisboft pulled the Prince off the shelf and put him back into the lime light. Just hope they use the Prince for next gen and they don't forget about him again.

[BillyG0AT]

Let's call it what it is, it's a port, not a remake.

[SegaGamer]

A port would be an already existing game on another platform and porting it to another one, this is a game made from the ground up, so it's a remake........it's just a very lazy remake.

[Tedakin]

I'm going to be honest, when I saw the trailer where they were cutting between the original version and the remake, I no joke had trouble telling which was which......

[Jpinter]

So apparently the video is from an old build of the game.

[FlameWater]

When tech support needs tech support

[Psychonaut85]

It’s doesn’t look like a stylistic choice though. It just looks like shitty graphics. Borderlands is a stylistic choice. PoP just looks bad.

[SCW1982]

Short answer. They haven’t been given the budget to do this game justice.

[Cikatriz_ESP]

“Essentially it appears to be an attempt at having a different aesthetic sensibility versus most console and PC games on the market...”

So their aesthetic of choice was ‘stiff plastic dolls’?

[Artemidorus]

Nothing new from this company at all and don't be suprised if it ends up being a downgrade from the presentation version.

[Bathyj]

Craig of Persia

[andron]

Hmmm....

[Iltapalanyymi]

TAKE THE

[Cikatriz_ESP]

VEIL CERPIN TAXT

Easily in the Top 5 songs ever made.

[SuperbVillain]

It's hard doing tech support and game development

[Chocoburger]

“For us at Ubisoft quality is of the utmost importance and this is something that we have kept in mind from the start."

LOL! Ubisoft? Quality? In the same sentence? That's how you know its a lie.