Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes has taken responsibility for the “no death” aspect of last year’s game. Defending the franchise reboot against complaints that the game was too easy thanks to Elika being able to save you from any sort of death, Mattes did concede that he might have swung the pendulum a bit too far into “casual” territory.
“I guess I made the mistake of projecting my own attitudes,” claimed Mattes. “I believed that, as a consumer base, the gaming industry had evolved to the point where they were punishing themselves for their failures… The idea with the Elika mechanic was [that] if you were a really good player, a single fall — when she had to pull you up — would be devastating thing because it ruined your perfect run.
“We can’t continue to punish players for not being super leet haxxors but we have to do enough of that so that the guys on NeoGAF [hardcore message board gamers] won’t sell the game back.”
Brilliant. Now who was the genius that decided to try and do nearly everything in the game with one button so that the Prince didn’t do what he was supposed to do 50% of the time? Quite frankly he’s the one I’d like to punch in the balls for making PoP so much worse than previous games in the series.
