PRINCE OF PERSIA

Developer : Ubisoft

Release date : December 2, 2008

Synopsis :

Prince of Persia is an action-adventure and platforming video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the seventh main installment in the Prince of Persia franchise, and the second reboot, establishing a new continuity that is separate from other games in the series. It was released in the United States on December 2, 2008 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (the fifth anniversary of the Microsoft Windows release for The Sands of Time) and on December 9, 2008 for Windows. It was released on March 24, 2009 for Mac OS X via the Cider engine. The game was also released on November 11, 2008 by Gameloft for mobile phones that runs on the Java platform taking place in a 2D environment, and has a feature of enabling the players to control a second character at certain points of levels.

The game is set in ancient Persia, and follows an unnamed player-character, who finds himself in a mysterious land after a large sandstorm diverted him from his course. Here, he meets a princess named Elika, and must work with her to re-imprison the evil entity Ahriman, who has corrupted the land after being released by Elika’s father. Throughout the journey, players traverse many different environments using his acrobatic abilities to scale walls and even crawl on the ceilings, and combat various enemies. The game’s storyline and setting borrowed some aspects from Zoroastrianism.

Prince of Persia received generally positive from critics, and has sold over 2.2 million copies as of January 2009. An expansion pack that serves as an epilogue to the story was released in March 2009. The only other game in the series set in this continuity is Prince of Persia: The Fallen King, also released in December 2008 for the Nintendo DS.

The game begins with the Prince (which is only a nickname, the game does not actually mention whether he is from a royal family or not) in search of his donkey, Farah, in the middle of a desert sandstorm. He then runs into Elika, a princess of the Ahura who is fleeing from soldiers. The two fend off the soldiers, with Elika discovering her magical powers of light. The Prince follows her into a temple which houses Ahriman, a force of evil who is trapped within a tree known as the Tree of Life. Once inside the temple, the Prince and Elika are confronted by Elika’s father, the Mourning King, who faces them in battle. After the fight, he uses his sword to cut the Tree of Life, setting Ahriman free. The Prince and Elika escape the temple, only to find a corrupted world outside.

Elika tells the Prince that in order to restore the world and rid the corruption inhabiting it, they must heal all the Fertile Grounds in the kingdom. They then begin restoring the Fertile Grounds, encountering the Warrior, the Hunter, the Concubine and the Alchemist, four corrupted leaders Ahriman chose to set free.

In the journey, it is revealed that Elika had died prior to the beginning of the game. Her father took her to Ahriman and asked him to revive her selling his soul in the process to Ahriman, thus making him one of the corrupted. Once Elika is revived she discovers she has new-found powers. After gaining even more powers, the two encounter Elika’s father once again. After healing all the Fertile Grounds, as well as defeating all bosses, Elika and the Prince return to the temple to imprison Ahriman. Once inside, however, they are confronted by the king who is now a fully corrupted being. They defeat him, he calls his daughter’s name, turns away from them and throws himself off the platform they are on. Ahriman rises from the corruption below. They battle him, but Elika must give up her very life to finish the spell which seals Ahriman away. She finishes the spell and dies.

The Prince then takes Elika’s body outside. There are four Fertile Grounds there, each with a tree, that according to what Elika had told him, channel the power of all the Fertile Grounds to the Tree of Life. He is given a vision which is the same one both he and Elika shared much earlier that shows her father’s deal with Ahriman to revive her. When they shared the vision at that time she told the Prince that visions come from Ormazd, not Ahriman. The vision (just like the main debate throughout the game between Elika and the Prince was all about Destiny vs Free Will) is all about choice. The Prince re-creates the deal made by Elika’s father. He destroys the four Fertile Grounds around the Temple and returns inside. He cuts down the Tree of Life and takes the light power Elika used to heal the Tree. The Prince returns the Light to Elika’s body, and she returns to life. The game ends with the Prince carrying Elika across the desert while Ahriman’s darkness envelops the world and the Temple is destroyed.

Source : Wikipedia

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