Of the Prince and the Pahlevan
The Prince of Persia series of games are probably among the most popular games of the past two decades. The goal of this post is to delve into the cross sections of Prince of Persia and Garshasp from the settings and story standpoint and a little bit of gameplay. Prince of Persia is a game made by the western Countries and us being the Persian developers of Garshasp get a lot of questions regarding the overlap of Garshasp and the Prince.
Lets look from a few angles:
Inspirations:
The story of Prince of Persia series are inspired from the book of One Thousand and One Nights. A book written in post Islam Persia (after the invasion of Iran by Arabs) which contains one thousand and one stories. Sinbad as among the most popular characters of the book. The main creator, Mechner, specifies Shahnameh as a source also but there doesn’t seem to be much influence.
The story of Garshasp is inspired from Avesta which is an ancient book written by Zarathustra and also “Garshasp Nameh” written by Asadi Tusi, written a bit after “Shahnameh” by Ferdowsi. The main characters and events in the game have had the most influence from Avesta which is is a main source for Persian Mythology, most of the stories of this book have roots in more ancient times and the main theme contains huge elements of fantasy, unlike the book of One Thousand and One nights which has a more realistic style to it.
Settings:
Prince of Persia belongs to the stories from a point in time where Arabic culture is popular and which is the advent of the Islamic Architecture for buildings. This can be seen from most of the buildings and designs in the series. The type of swords (curved) used in the game are all Arabic swords (Saif). There are a lot of Indian symbols in the game also. There is even some Arabic texts written on some walls in some series. Overall the Prince of Persia games do not usually seem that Persian to the Persians.
Garshasp does not belong to a specific time in history, it belongs to the time of Mythology. Hence no particular architectural style has been followed in the design of the game. However great effort has been done by the artists to not use the post Islamic elements of Persia and study the ancient art of Iran to create a fantasy mythological art style which is highly inspired by the ancient pre Islamic Iranian themes. No Arabic or Indian symbols are used in the game. The same is true for the music composed for the game.
Character:
The Prince in Prince of Persia is of course a prince which tries to fight the evil rulers and there is usually a princess around where he is trying to rescue. The character is very skillful in acrobatic moves and has a slim build.
Garshasp is a type of super hero which is often known as the “Adventurer Type”. He works for nobody, does not stay in one place for long, travels a lot, is really powerful and fears nothing. He is known in Avesta as the Monster Slayer and he lives his life to punish the dark forces of Ahriman. A dark future haunts his life and he will play a big role in the final battle of the universe. His sole is put to sleep by Ahuramazda in order to be waken at the end of the world when the bounded time transforms again to unbounded time.
Now a little about gameplay
Gameplay
Prince of Persia is usually heavily relying on platforming elements, then combat. Combat is much more important in Garshasp than the platforming elements.
Prince of Persia is mostly traversing indoor areas, Garshasp is mostly outdoors, starts out from a city under fire, travels to a jungle, then to the Mountains and finally in a cursed temple.
Prince of Persia has the standard third person camera but the camera in Garshasp is pre-directed cinematic camera.
Some Notes:
The name Dahaka is used in Prince of Persia series which is in fact a transform of Azhi Dahak which is the main Deev in Persian Mythology. Azhi Dahak is the brother of Jamshid who dethroned him and brought darkness to the world. It is part of the back story of the Garshasp game.
Ahriman is the name of the main boss in Prince of Persia 2008. Ahriman is the root of all evil in Persian Mythology.
Elika speaks Farsi in some parts of Prince of Persia 2008.
The Deev in Prince of Persia 5 (Forgotten Sands) speaks Farsi, quite a hilarious fact, smells like some lame Hollywood conspiracy.
Some trivia:
Garshasp started out as an RPG title, the decision to switch to the action genre was decided a little after some team members got heavily involved with playing Prince of Persia (The Two Thrones)
One of the main programmers considers POP – Warrior Within to be one of the best games made ever.
The whole team agrees that something with the combat in Prince of Persia – Forgotten Sands is awfully wrong. (How can the beautiful designed combat mechanism in the previous series turn into this funny thing?)
Although Prince of Persia was the game to push the team over to the action genre, God of War has had the most influence on the development process of “Garshasp”.
Really REALLY nice entry. I am a real big Prince of Persia fan and this makes the upcomming release of Garshasp much more anticipating
Personally, I found Sands of Time was the best game simply because of the beautiful architecture, the witty writing,the sound track, Farah,reverse time, the way you absorb the Sand Zombies and fight like a Medival Batmam beating the crap out of the enemies and still possess a sense of superiority,the hidden fountains, the somewhat innovative puzzles and the vizier battle of course.
Warrior Within was definetely the second best game of the whole franchise because of the dynamic Free Form Fighting system, the harder plattforming with harder traps and more Sand of Time abilities, the more complex storyline dealing the consequenses of SoT, the Dahaka hunting, the enemy designs as well as the sound tracks but the best thing was the astounding environment design with the power to visit past and present.
But just out of couriosity, some questions from a fanboy ^_^:
1. What is the team’s consensus about Sands of Time and Warrior Within?
2. Did you find that Warrior Within was the only PoP-game that had a ancient Persian-only theme? All the weapons in the game contain a name derived from the Avesta, and the names Shahdee, Kaileena and Dahaka sound alot Persian to me.
3.Did you guys liked Farah from SoT aswell?
4. Have you guys also played the old Mechner Classcis? What do you think about “The shadow and the flame” ?
5. And what about Prince of Persia 3D? Did you liked it aswell?
6. How would you have turn Garshasp as RPG? Something like “The Witcher” or more like classic Zelda games?
(This is just my 0.02$ as an ex-PoP fan, or to be precise, as a fan of the ex-PoPs.)
1. I don’t know about the rest of the team, but I like WW the best, out of all the PoP games (including the classics.) My second favorite is SoT. Then come the two classics (the original and the Shadow and the Flame,) then the Two Thrones, then Price of Persia 3D, then the latest released one (simply and confusingly titled just the “Prince of Persia.”)
I love Warrior Within because of the reasons you listed (a very nice compilation, by the way!) plus the fact that the prince is much more cynical, mysterious and dark in that installment. The double-ending and the Godsmack track don’t hurt either. The most important factor is obviously (for me) the platforming. I like my platforming hard and troublesome! (I even liked the expanded PSP version – called “Revelations” – despite the fact that some of the platforming sequences were simply torture!)
I haven’t played any of the releases for Wii, DS or mobile platforms, so I can’t comment on them.
2. I am not that well-versed in ancient Persian mythology to comment with authority, but I would say that even if it is true about WW (and it may well be,) the inspirations and allusions do not pop out at all. As an Iranian, I don’t play any of the PoP games and immediately go “Aha! This is a game that takes place in Persia!” The inspirations seem more Arabic to me.
However, this might not be entirely fair. Much of the history of Persia is intertwined with Arabic influences and vice versa, to the point that it is hard to completely separate the two (not impossible though.)
However, modern Iranians do not usually appreciate or welcome this influence, which makes the job more important, and causes any slight errors annoying.
3. If you mean as opposed to Farah from TT, then definitely yes! But I personally rather disliked her from the very beginning. Not the designers fault, though! I disliked her for her personality and behavior, which means that she had enough depth to be worthy of dislike! In TT, I never even tried to think of her as a person. She was just there to help solve some puzzles and nag.
4. Absolutely! I even remember the command line arguments you had to type in order to enable the cheat keys! (“megahit” and “makinit” respectively.) The Shadow and the Flame was a great game, with great graphics and fights, but I never got to finish it (due to its copy-control mechanism which prevented you from progressing at some points. I never found an original version to finish!)
5. I kinda liked it. Can’t say I remember much from it. I remember that my impression was that it had great graphics (3D!!!) and I liked the bow, but it kept crashing on me (could have been due to faulty disk or hardware.) I was never tempted to go and play through it again.
6. Believe it or not, the game that is called Garshasp now started out as an RPG. Its story, main character and name were different, but the strong Persian mythological theme was what drove the game then as it is now. We even had a full story to work on (IMHO, better than the one we have now!) I’m not an idea guy in areas of story and design (I’m just a lowly programmer) but I’d say making an RPG based on Garshasp’s stories and exploits is not hard (Making it what we like it to be is another matter entirely!)
If we were to make a Garshasp RPG however, we’d possibly go for a Diablo-like style. That’s one of many possibilities that have been tossed around the studio in the past years.
However, it were Price of Persia and God of War that convinced the team to change genres and go for an action-adventure game! But we do love RPGs and we might revisit the idea someday. It’s definitely on our minds, but a proper RPG with the same artistic quality is hard and our team is very small.
A great game like Witcher is another possible example of the kind of game that Garshasp would have tried to be if it was still an RPG.
I think you are not completely true about the architecture!
I dont say pop SoT is completely Persian architecture but as far as i know Taaghe kasra which is sasanids capital palace had Gonbad ( dome ?) and Ivan which is the essential element of Islamic Architecture. so for me there is no such arabic architecture. in my opinion thatwas just mixture of Persian and Indian and Byzantine architecture!!!
anyway I loved pop sot a lot : story , atmosphere , gameplay , reverse time…
@Mohammad
I’m not really sure if I am right or wrong about it honestly. Arabian architecture came up in the Medival after the Arabs took over the whole Middle East and assimilated everything.
my friend! surely Arabs don’t have much to say when it comes to architecture and most other areas of sciense but the game has arabic theme elements. .@Mohammad
@yzt surely we don’t love them and when we see arabic themes mixed up in games with ours we just go crazy! i can accept indian themes better and easier.
it’s really a terible story that westerns think that “abu ali sina” was an arab and they think that we are like arabs. we should show/express ourselves in our games/movies and any other media type that we can. we can make it happen again. our dreams can become true again and we can be on top of the tower again. persians that know and understand everything well and others appreciate them.
there is a fun factor in differences:) wheter you want or not, you can not have those **** femail characters in your game
. there are other fun factors like filtered twitter and facebook pages. our current situation is fun in general but generally it’s not fun to be in a situation like this!
@amir
what a great comparison
I played prince of persia game i think it was a disaster it dosent have a story and … i hope garshasp will be better than this..
@BLOOD mage
Why the hell doesn’t this have a story?!
Care to explain?
Hello, guys!
My name is William Guterres and I’m from Brazil.
I saw a post from “Garshasp” guanabara.info site and want to tell you: Congratulations!
I really enjoyed the game’s graphics and interactive action at the time of battles.
I was also very glad you have made this project (or almost all of it) by using free software.
I hope you will be able to publicize this project to the world and they can get a great game company, or perhaps make Fanafzar in a big game company.
Again I congratulate you for this wonderful initiative. And who knows, in a not too distant future we can together accomplish some project games.
Regards to all involved, carefully
William Guterres
Sorry for my English. Google helped me in a few words.
Hello fellows! First of all, Congratulations for the excelent work, even more excelent because of the fact you used Free Software! Surely this will be a game i will play.
One question, which software did you use to make the 3D models?
best wishes, bye !
Thanks for the nice words.
Our artists use 3D Max and ZBursh to create the 3D models and make the environment objects.
Hi,
I just discover your game, it seem amazing!
In my country (France), the game is even not referenced in major video games sites, so i speak of your game to them, i hope they will do their work, these lazy dudes!
And i love ancient Persia, you guys are very lucky to be the heirs of this great culture
Will your game be downloadable via steam or something equivalent? Are you planning to spend money in publicity? (your game need to be known!)
I hope you lot of success! =)
Hi! i just found out about this game and wanted to thank you folks for your efforts… but as we all know it, the so-called “game developing” in Iran is just a joke. i mean, “game developing” is a business that’s first priority is making a profit and expanding it. but here, there are no publishers or investors for obvious reasons so it’s just a waste of time imho. besides, when there are much better games out there that are maybe even cheaper(copy versions), ppl don’t even bother playing iranian games. anyway, i wish you guys good luck
I love what you guys have done with all the authentic Persian theme and stuff.
But please, don’t let racist comments be published through your channels (I’m talking about a few comments on this blog and many many more to come as the game gains fame).
You have done a fantastic job, don’t let it get ruined by some of your fans racism and hatred.
I’m a Persian guy, I hate what Arabs did to us in the past, and I hate the ones of them who are proud of that disaster and name their companies and children after the massacre their ancestors have done to us.
But it’s just not a good idea to talk like we are the neo-Nazis! Let’s face it! We are Iranians, and the world isn’t used to the idea of “good old lovely Iranians!” (although last year’s protests lessened it’s severity quite a bit!) They expect to see something “not nice” and stick to their ideas. So, even a commenter on this development blog have to be extra careful with what he/she says/writes.
Lets show em that despite what media says or what our government does, we ARE THE good old lovely people
Looks intriguing and the art looks very promising – good luck, guys
Personally, I think that the depth and richness of Persian mythology deserves an RPG that can properly explore and present it. I also reckon that nowadays Persian-themed games would sell better due to an interest in Iran in the West. No such thing as bad publicity
Looking forward to the finished product.
Best,
A fellow gamedev in Israel
is it normal ? i cant see the text in the comments section(where the comments are)