Hello and welcome back to another community update for The Rogue Prince of Persia!
Sorry it's a bit later than planned, the game delay threw us out of loop a bit ^^
This time around we’ll be going into the art direction of the game, this also includes a bit of a dive into the absolutely banging soundtrack and who’s behind it, and we’ll touch on our animated trailers too.
As always, if you prefer to watch/listen, here is a YouTube version:
First, let’s start with the the art of the game itself.
Art Direction
Persian miniatures
Since a Prince of Persia game is above all an epic and adventurous tale, the team was inspired by old Persian miniatures, that were often used to illustrate books of Persian tales and are often said to have a dreamlike quality.
The Rogue Prince of Persia IS a tale that someone is recounting – at the very beginning of the game there is a narrator saying exactly this, so it already seemed to be a good fit.
Battle scenes, myths and legends were the main scenarios depicted in these miniatures, so that was another tick in the box.
On top of that, the painters were often supported financially by the royal family, and this is a game about a Prince of Persia, so for us that sense of nobility seemed to be a natural fit for the game.
When discovering those Persian miniatures we were all charmed by how bright and colourful they are. The use of clean colours, which you can clearly see in our art direction, were captivating. But these pieces of Persian art, while beautiful, don’t have much sense of depth and are quite busy. When you’re playing a game, even a 2D one, you need to be able to distinguish the foreground, background and gameplay elements.
Franco-Belgian graphic novels
So, to counter this, and also probably because we have mostly french people in the team, we also drew heavy inspiration from Franco-Belgian bande-dessinée artists. Bande-dessinée essentially means graphic novel.
Obviously, there isn’t one style for all these artists – there are a wide variety of schools and styles and everyone is unique. Even a single artist will change their style between different projects.
But we can say that the sci-fi/fantasy work of Moebius, the pseudonym of Jean Giraud, was a big inspiration in particular. His work also used vivid colours, like the Persian miniatures, with clean lines that are occasionally broken, giving it a distinct style.
Epic backdrops framed central characters with unusual colours, inspiring your imagination to run riot and lending a dreamlike quality to the image.
This was particularly inspiring to us as the game’s story IS a dreamlike myth – the Prince has a bola which takes him back in time every time he dies, and he needs to save his country from an invasion that’s using a dark magic that corrupts those who use it. It’s not exactly grounded in reality.
Of course, working on the Prince of Persia IP also means that we’re also going to draw inspiration from the series, and you’ll see the impact of every entry in the series on our game, from the rotoscoped sprites of the 1989 version (and its purple skin Prince in the DOS version ;) ), to the classic Sands of Time and beyond.
Put this all together and you end up with the unique visual identity of The Rogue Prince of Persia, and it’s one that we are proud of.
So we’ve covered the art direction, now let’s go into an immensely important element of any game -the soundtrack.
The Soundtrack
We really wanted to pay respect to ancient Persian music styles, but with a modern, urgent twist that would fit the action-platforming gameplay. The idea was to make you feel immersed in the world our artists have created, but to also have a beat always driving you forward, just as the Prince cannot rest until he has saved Persia.
We were a bit stumped here because let’s be honest, that’s quite a niche request. But then Yoann Laulan, who was working on the music for Dead Cells with us at the time, mentioned “Persian trap”. Curious, we turned to Google and an artist called Asadi popped up.
From the first listen we knew it could only be him.
Asadi is a Persian-American electronic music producer and artist with a unique sound. Using a wide array of traditional Persian instruments such as the Setar, the Tar and the Daf, Asadi expertly blends the unique melodies he creates with electronic, hip-hop and trap influences. The result is inspiring (check out the YouTube video above from 4:00 to hear some of his creations).
Asadi has tailored each track to fit perfectly into its own level, whether that’s the heavy oppression of the Tower of Oblivion, the tranquility of the Oasis, or the pulsating boss fight against Berude the Unstoppable. Without his efforts and enthusiasm, The Rogue Prince of Persia would be much poorer.
We finally have news about the release of the OST, which will be on 31st May and you can pre-save it here - https://ubisoftmusic.ffm.to/therogueprinceofpersia-ost
Last but definitely not least, he also worked to elevate our animated trailers to a whole new level. And yes I said trailers plural, because there’s one you still haven’t seen yet…
Animated Trailers
Speaking of the animated trailers, let’s talk a little bit about how the animation studio La Cachette brought our version of the Prince to life!
La Cachette are the talented studio behind the animation of the award-winning series Primal –the series where a dinosaur and caveman team up to kick ass and take names. They’ve also made episodes for Love, Death and Robots, Star Wars: Visions and more. So we were pretty confident in their ability to make us some amazing character-based trailers, and they definitely delivered.
They’ve already helped us to show you a Prince who is highly skilled in acrobatics and combat and who will stop at nothing to stop the Hun invasion of his beloved Persia. Who can’t stop himself from helping anyone in need of aid, bound by his duty to protect his people.
Combined with Asadi’s stirring compositions, these trailers reflect the headstrong yet caring hero you will discover in the game.
So that’s about it, I hope that this has given you a better idea of our inspirations and how much care we have put into designing the Prince and this game. We are all extremely excited to have the opportunity to make our own entry in this historical and iconic video game series and can’t wait to share it with you all.
Thanks for being here and we'll be back soon!
Matt and the Evil Empire team