Whatever Happened to Prince of Persia Redemption?

Prince of Persia Redemption

As a longtime fan of the Prince of Persia games, the 2010s have been a sad decade with no new mainline entries in my beloved series. Recently, another dagger has been pressed into the heart of Prince of Persia fans like myself.

In May of 2020, a gameplay video of something called Prince of Persia Redemption was making its way around the Internet.

The clip had been around for a while, though — YouTube has it dated at March 1, 2012. Fans began suspecting this was a new Prince of Persia game that had, for some reason, been cancelled.

As it turns out, they were right. Jonathan Cooper, who was the animation director on Assassin’s Creed III, confirmed on Twitter that this was indeed footage from a cancelled Prince of Persia game.

Wow – haven’t seen this in ages. Amazing work from animation director Khai Nguyen (For Honor) and team. This target game footage (pre-rendered game pitch) inspired our own pitch for Assassin’s Creed 3 as they did such a great job making it look like real gameplay.

Jonathan Cooper

He also pointed out that, while it looks like gameplay, it’s actually a fully rendered cinematic designed to be a game pitch. It was such a neat concept that the team made a similar pitch for Assassin’s Creed III.

And, as a true heartbreaker, Cooper also said this:

Sadly Ubisoft are generally quicker to cancel Prince of Persia games than others IPs because AFAIK original creator Jordan Mechner still holds license rights so the profit margins are lower. Would love to see a new one though. I’ve always wanted a PoP set in contemporary Iran.

Jonathan Cooper

Personally, when I watched Prince of Persia Redemption footage, it looked to me more like an HD version of Temple Run than a Prince of Persia game. However, I have to admit that the setting and presentation were fantastic. This had the potential to be a good Prince of Persia project if only Ubisoft would have seen it through to completion.

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