Prince of Persia: Time travel as a narrative device

So, I just finished Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for the GC. I've had it for a while, but got stuck on what I thought was a glitch. I powered through it over a few days, which I really miss in games. Not being so long that you need actual WEEKS to finish them. The platforming was EXCELLENT, smooth and sublime. The combat had good mechanics but was WAY to dependent on spamming enemies at you and was just a chore. Overall, well worth playing through. But what I want to talk about was the narrative.

Yes ladies, he does take his shirt off. 

Prince of Persia has surprisingly strong story chops. The plot is a pretty bare bones "things go bad, use magic artifact to fix" set up, but the characters carry it. The prince ends up paired with a princess who knows a lot more about the magic dagger of time than he does. They pair up to save the world and OH GOD NO! NOT NPC ALLIES!!!

Shock of all shocks this over decade old game does NPC partners better than most modern games. She follows along with out getting stuck, helps activate switches and most crucially is helpful in combat. Not very, as her arrows mostly act as a distraction, but she also manages to NOT feel like a burden. She can die, but most enemies will ignore her and only rarely did I have to go save her. She never died in playthrough, even though I didn't really keep a close eye on her. Also, she and the prince have believable chemistry. Which is really important later.

A major gimmick of the game is the various time powers the dagger confers on you. Reverse time is really handy for the various traps and platforming falls you may take and keeps the pace up. Now a term we are gonna need going forward is Ludonarrative dissonance. Thats where gameplay contradicts story. So when Aeris died in FF7, you really wanted to give her one of your pheonix downs to revive. But you couldn't, because the plot said so.

Don't bury me at sea you asshole. OPEN YOUR INVENTORY

Now giving the player the ability to reverse time and correct mistakes almost at the start leaves you WIDE open to being smacked with ludoscabibdiscobiscuts. And wonderfully, the story manages to avoid that. Though there were plenty of opportunities, Prince of Persia never puts its characters in mortal danger during cutscenes. But then you when you lose the dagger for a bit, things get interesting.

The big danger of time travel narratives is the potential to render character development moot. "Oh no a tragedy happened. But then I used time travel to undo it. So no one needs to struggle or grow as a person." BUT, this game gave you the ability to reverse time in gameplay, so randomly taking that away for a BIG DRAMATIC DEATH SCENE would summon forth the dreaded lugobastardabiggledaskets. And Prince of Persia KNEW that would be a problem. Prior to the deaths scene, you lose your dagger. The princess run off with it to save the day and you worn her NOT to use up the sand. When you fail to save her, you get the dagger back and you find out the dagger WAS out of sand. So even with the dagger in your hands you couldn't save her.

Where it gets interesting is when the story ends. The story does pull a big reversal of time maneuver, but that isn't the end of the story. Prince tracks down the princess (who now hasn't met him though the prince remembers) and proceeds to tell her the story THAT YOU JUST FINISHED PLAYING. Which is TOTALLY awesome, because the way they set it up is was brilliant.

Ever time you pause the game, the prince ask if you are ready to continue. Every time you save, the prince says this is where he'll pick up the story. And when you die, the prince stammers that that isn't how the story went at all. What was at first a neat little quirk becomes a totally awesome literary flashback device.

And to finish of the game, the prince uses the dagger to call take backs on an ill advised kiss.

Frankly, Im shocked this series didn't stay more popular. Oh wait, no im not. Because its owned by ubisoft, modern masters of sanding the edges off of everything until all their games are the bloody same.