Once upon a time, way back in the days of 1989, there was a princess forced to marry an evil vizier, and a prince who braved the dungeons of the palace to save her.  Fourteen years later, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time hit shelves and won an entirely new audience with its charms.  I was one of them.

I had a friend my crew and I used to tease, and I don’t even remember the origins of the joke.  We just always used to tell him we knew he was playing Prince of Persia when he said he was busy and couldn’t hang out.  So when I went to E3 and saw a booth for a new Prince of Persia game, I had a whole new barrel of ammunition.

In December that year, I got the game for him, and started playing it for myself after he had finished with it.  Even when I sat on the couch and watched him play I was entranced.  I loved the Prince’s arrogance and sarcastic sense of humor, and the witty barbs he traded with Farah.  The platforming looked stunning, the combat acrobatics were of kung-fu movie smoothness, and the settings were both exotic and fantastic.

Hooked as I was, I was excited to hear about a sequel, and doubly excited because I was beginning to work for the publisher, Ubisoft, as a Frag Doll.  Tenuous though it was, I had some kind of link to the game, a little thing to be even more proud of.  Warrior Within was a change of pace - darker, sexier, hardrockier.  As removed as it was from the Prince I knew, it nevertheless retained the slick platforming and reworked the combat to add a ton of new combos I could never quite get the hang of.

Then The Two Thrones was announced.  The third and final installment of the trilogy.  Final?  Yeah, right.  No successful series ends.  It just keeps going, doesn’t it?  Well, not this time.  I asked.  This is it.  This is the Prince, returning to Babylon, reuniting with Farah, fighting against the army that has invaded Babylon, resisting the new Dark Prince, the manifestation of his negative traits, and becoming an epic hero along the way.

As we get nearer and nearer to release, which is later this week, actually, I’ve decided to go back through and play both Sands of Time and Warrior Within again.  I got a copy of The Two Thrones early.  I’ve had it for a week or so.  But I haven’t played it.  I’m determined to do this right.  I’m done with Sands of Time (one of the most stylish endings I’ve ever seen in a game) and 75% finished with Warrior Within.  I’m taking tomorrow off work to stay home, finish it with the alternate ending, and then get cracking on The Two Thrones.

I WILL finish this trilogy the right way.

When we started looking at doing podcasts as Frag Dolls, I didn’t need to blink before I knew who I wanted to talk to, and what I wanted to talk about.  I contacted Ubisoft Montreal and arranged a conversation with three of the developers: Ben Mattes, the producer, Jean-Christophe Guyot, the creative director, and Corey May, the scriptwriter.  The three of them were amazing to talk to, and I am perfectly aware that I sound entirely inadequate next them.

Thank you to everyone who is a big a fan of the game as I am, and thank you to Ubisoft Montreal for one of the best games I’ve ever played.  And thanks to Plantronics for the shiny new headset they gave me to do the interview with (DSP 500 is gooooood).

Click here to listen (MP3, 17.2MB, 36:42)