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”.
