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 gamerlifemedia forward of Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown’s Innovation in Accessibility win at The Sport Awards 2024. Up in opposition to Name of Responsibility: 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 customary 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 feel it’s the other with all our accessibility options,” Boutin advised gamerlifemedia 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, after we learn critiques, the sport was nonetheless thought of very, very difficult.” It’s the character of the sport and its controls that enables for this sense; what’s distinctive about it’s the sense of freedom and fluidity of its motion. “Our controls convey instant enjoyable, and make the sport simple to study, however onerous to grasp,” senior producer Abdelhak Elguess mentioned.
Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown was launched in January and was a right away hit with critics, and it was the primary huge Prince of Persia sport since 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. There was plenty of strain to get the sport proper. “We began first with the DNA, as a result of while you assault such a giant model, it’s important to respect the model, however we additionally wished to shock our gamers,” Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown sport director Mounir Radi advised gamerlifemedia.
Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown certainly has plenty 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 specific motive for some choices, just like the high-contrast swap. A primary for Ubisoft, the high-contrast mode impacts colours and distinction. One developer observed that in cinematics, the mode spoiled sure story particulars, like an enemy turning into an ally, for example. (All items of information in Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown are labeled internally so {that a} mode like this could possibly be utilized accurately to totally different property.) The developer then added an possibility to show off the swap for cinematics in order that gamers may stop themselves from being spoiled. “That is the type of element that comes with the truth that everybody was concerned in accessibility,” Boutin mentioned.
The massive 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 wish the participant to be misplaced,” Pic mentioned. “It’s essential as a result of it’s exploration-driven. We wish the participant to discover by himself to find the whole lot — 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 while you play a Metroidvania sport.” The first aims are on the map, however the path to get there may be nonetheless right down to exploration.
Picture: Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft
“We stored 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 eager about how a photograph mode could possibly 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 sophisticated, and it took a while and iteration to strip it right down to its closing model.) “It was a great way to maintain the participant lively within the remark of the world,” Pic mentioned.
In the course of the growth course of, Boutin and Pic mentioned, 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 modern 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, transferring on to tasks like Ghost Recon, Rayman, and Past Good and Evil 2, the crew members are immensely pleased with the work they created. Radi confirmed to gamerlifemedia that Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown offered greater than 1 million copies, however an Insider Gaming report from October recommended that the sport didn’t meet Ubisoft’s inner expectations.
“Truthfully, we had a troublesome yr with Ubisoft,” Radi mentioned. “Every month is a brand new drawback. However with these nominations, it’s our method to present what sort of sport we are able to obtain after we work collectively and after we work with our coronary heart.”
