This is adding depth, and at the same time I kill the guy and then get to take his weapon. When the enemy has its back to me, I can perform the Strangulation move, one of the most powerful in the game. I can throw weapons too, then I stun the enemy, and we have kept the famous counter move from the original. As soon as he has two weapons in his hands he can enter this dual weapon fighting mode, which is pretty devastating for enemies. When the Prince is surrounded by enemies, he has some powerful attacks available to him. The cool thing in gameplay in PoP2 for the secondary weapons is they don't last that long, so we encourage players to get new stuff as often as possible. You also have secondary weapons now, and the way our secondary weapons are designed is exactly the same concept in Lord Of The Rings for the Orcs weapons, you know, they're kind of cheap, they're made quickly. We call it the Freeform Fighting System because I can use pretty much whatever is around me to fight. Tell us about the Freeform Fighting System. The cool thing about that is that each and every action the Prince does in the past will actually impact the level design of the new future when he goes back to the present, which means, for example, in the past he's blocked in a room or can't access anywhere, etc, and finally he finds a time warp which allows him to go back and do some stuff which will change the level design of the map. As I told you, the Prince will be able to travel back in time for centuries. But location is one thing, but location is only one dimension in space-time. It will be pretty much a huge castle, called the Castle of Time, where most of the game will happen. He awakes on a strange island, where the main part of the game will happen. We don't want the player not to play - we do want them to find out about the story in full, but we want him to play. This means you have playable moments even when there's a dialogue - it's totally immersive. Interactive cinematics are basically showing an event that occurs, or dialogue, but still leaving the control to the player. Tell us about these 'Interactive Cinematics'. Our goal is in cinematic moments to keep the player as in control Interactive Cinematics. There is one thing we don't want the player to do is sit around watching cinematics, so it's short memorable Hollywood moments in terms of camera placement. The Prince travels to the past not for 10 seconds anymore, but for centuries. We're aware that this was a pretty cool story telling technique, and we're trying to come up with the same concept with a different realisation. Will you still start each level with a glimpse of what you're supposed to do? What I do know is that we have 12, 14 finishing moves, but that's not counting all the different moves you have. It's almost incalculable, because it depends on do you do a wall attack, do you do a rebound attack. How many moves has the Prince got in total? The Prince is trying to stay alive as long as possible, and has to head for where the Sands of Time are being kept long enough in the past before even the creation of them. What's the purpose at start of the game, when you're on a ship? Could it scoop game of the year for the second year running? Read on. And in the run up to the game's release, Ubisoft kindly allowed us an hour or so to look at the game in action in the company of the game's producer Yannis Mallot, who took time out of his busy schedule to show off all manner of cool new additions to the game, including a much improved fighting system, time travel, bigger levels, a darker art direction and - believe it or not - better visuals all round. Fine, buy inferior games then, see if we care! Hopefully the deafening applause that The Sands Of Time received will awaken the slumbering audience when the sequel lands later this autumn - ditto Beyond Good & Evil if there's any justice in the world. Without a recognisable licence attached to it, most gamers played safe and chose to ignore it and plump for the big names instead. Critically, Prince of Persia was one of the most universally acclaimed games of recent years, but getting you lot to buy it was a tougher job than it probably should have been.

Prince of persia 2