Q&A with Ben Mattes – Prince of Persia engine, characters, and graphics

IGN gets technical with Ubisoft producer Ben Mattes in their Q&A on Prince of Persia (PS3, Xbox 360, PC, DS). Improving the Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360, PS3) engine, devs are able to take graphics and gameplay experience to a new level, putting the “great” in the great outdoors of the game. Read some more after the jump.

By adapting and improving the engine used for Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360, PS3), Ubisoft producer Ben Mattes talks about the “seamless fluidity” that gamers can expect from the latest Prince of Persia (PS3, Xbox 360, PC, DS). As a result, graphics are rich and smooth, and our hero can move better than Altair.

“The new Prince will display 13 times more polygons than the previous Prince, and even more than Altair in AssassinÂ’s Creed,” Mattes said. “Every detail of the faces, clothes and accessories of the characters will feel next-gen thanks to hi-res textures, specific lighting systems and shaders.” Ubisoft went all out on using skin morph, wrinkle map, indirect lighting, and occlusion to provide depth to each character.

Having more power in platforms now than before and new systems to take advantage of, the new Prince of Persia will have crisp detailed graphics that its predecessors and even competitors do not. “The richness and the high quality of the Persian environments have always been a key element of Prince of Persia games,” Mattes said.

Thanks to next-gen technology, we are able to create vast outdoors worlds Prince of Persia fans have never dreamed of as most of the game takes place outside in a fantastic mythological Persia. Whereas in previous Prince of Persia games, the player was mostly confined inside palaces or cities.

Possibly the most exciting feature on the new Prince of Persia is the non-linear game experience. It’s up to you how and when to progress the storyline, as well as the endings.

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Buy: [Prince of Persia (Xbox 360), (PS3), (PC)]

Via IGN