We had a good time watching Ubisoft Forward on Monday (especially the Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed segments), but one bit of disappointing news came in the form of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake.
Don't get us wrong, it's great to hear something about it, but we've been waiting for this game since 2020 - and to hear that it's still another two years away is a bit of a bummer. There's a good reason for it though, as Ubisoft Montreal became the lead development studio on the project back in 2022, taking over from Ubisoft Mumbai and Pune.
In an interview this week, creative director Bio Jade Adam Granger and game director Michael McIntyre (no, not the famous UK comedian) explained that the game's pre-production phase has finished and full production has begun:
Michael McIntyre: "We finished our pre-production phase; we are now in full production, which means that we have built a small version of the game that allowed us to validate many of our ambitions with the remake."
BJAG: "The landscape of remakes has evolved a lot since the first inception of the remake of Sands of Time. There have been some big players that clearly redefined the bar. We made some big changes to the 3Cs (Character, Camera, Controls), and had to build prototypes to make sure that our new controls still feel good with the old gameplay, and sometimes we need to change them. It's a little bit faster in terms of conception, but production-wise, there's no difference between creating a remake or an original game. It takes time and craftsmanship and people, which is why we have reinforcements from other studios to help us here."
It sounds to us like Ubisoft Montreal essentially started from scratch when taking over the project, so it's naturally taking a while to bring this remake to market. It just feels extra painful because the game once had a 2021 release date!
Anyway, there's a lot more to read over on the Ubisoft website if you're interested about how progress is coming along, and hopefully by the time we get to Ubisoft Forward 2025, we may have some proper footage to glance over.