I’d long ago abandoned any hope that Ubisoft would ever actually finish its remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Originally announced in 2020, the game has slipped more times than a drunk man on an ice rink, and the constant claims that it’s “still in development” only make me believe in it less. But this morning, very briefly, a video appeared revealing leaked documents from an internal 2024 Ubisoft event that proved the game existed in an alpha form. It also suggested that its 20-years-later glow-up could include a much improved depiction of the formerly pathetic and bathetic Princes Farah.
As reported by The Game Post, a ten-minute video created in 2024 as an internal presentation for Ubisoft employees was leaked to YouTube, before Ubisoft swiftly had it DMCAd out of existence. According to TGP, it showed mocap footage, some shots from the game’s alpha, concept art and a bunch of slides laying out the plans for the game. It’s one of those slides that seems most interesting, depicting the original game’s damselled princess, Farah, as a more independent, self-sufficient character. TGP writes, “In this version she is described as 19, cold-hearted, graceful, strong willed, the eldest child of the Maharajah and an agile, trained archer.”
“The Vizier is listed as her former tutor, which helps set up their shared history. Her personality is framed as honest and driven, someone who has spent most of her life preparing to become Queen and prove she is ready for that role.
Her story arc focuses on how her time with the Prince changes her. She starts out strict and duty-focused, with a “think twice, cut once” attitude. Over the course of their journey together, she slowly lets her guard down, learns to trust him, and starts to accept that life is not only about responsibility. The presentation also makes one thing very clear: Farah is not a playable character, but she is still central to both the story and gameplay.”
The leak also revealed this is no longer the straightforward remake of the original, but now in the Assassin’s Creed engine, but is adding new time-controlling powers to the Prince’s arsenal, including a way to freeze enemies in time, with more complex puzzles, and a lot of the game played in a single-player co-op with the NPC Farah.
Thankfully, combat is also getting an overhaul. The weakest point of the original game, it will apparently now better lean in to the Prince’s acrobatic skills and make more interesting use of his sand-controlled time powers. You can read the rest of the details over on The Game Post‘s article.
One of my all-time favorite games, 2003’s PoPSoT was a revelation in third-person action gaming, with the ability to rewind time accompanying its balletic platforming acrobatics. I remember visiting the Montreal developers for the announcement of the game’s existence, playing an early build and being just blown away. “Every action game is going to rip this off for the rest of time!” I confidently declared at the time, only being proven wrong by every single game released since. News of a remake in 2020 was so welcome, once again getting to enjoy that utterly magical ability to undo mistakes, rather than sit through a tiresome death animation and loading screen. It was due in January 2021! Wahoo!
The slips began almost immediately. Just three months after it was announced as existing it was declared it would miss its imminent release, slipping a couple of months to March 2021. The keenly observant will recognize that this didn’t happen. In fact, it was so much worse: by February 2021, Ubisoft announced the game was now delayed “indefinitely.” Something was clearly up: why would you delay a game by just two months if the situation was this dire? After this, things went quiet for a long while. By May 2022, it was revealed that the game was being taken away entirely from its Indian developers at Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai, and given to the game’s original studio, Ubisoft Montreal. Uh-oh. But it was going to get worse. Just a month later, presumably after the new team had had a chance to figure out just how bad the situation was, the game was unceremoniously delisted from stores, with Ubisoft suggesting people cancel their pre-orders. Hopes for a 2023 release were immediately kiboshed.
Again, those chronologically minded will notice that not only was 2023 missed, but the following two years as well. That’s because in 2023, unbelievably, it became apparent that the entire project had been scrapped and started over, with the game now back in the “conception phase.” Jump forward another year, and in 2024 Ubisoft made clear the game wouldn’t be out before 2026. Add another year and 2025’s now traditional announcement insisted the game was “deep” in development, but still there was nothing to see. And it’s been silence ever since.
Over these five years, Ubisoft has sadly developed a reputation, this inability to ship games becoming more and more the company’s norm, with still no sign of Far Cry 7, The Division Resurgence, that Black Flag remake, a new Ghost Recon, and of course the infamous vaporware that is Beyond Good & Evil. The ongoing absence of Sands of Time just seems par for the course. Given this leak comes from something that’s at least a year old, and we’ve still not heard a single peep about this new version of the game, let alone screenshots or a trailer, it doesn’t suggest anything is on the horizon to me. What seemed to start as a simple modern refresh has clearly featured-crept into a completely new game based on the original concept, and one that Ubisoft just can’t figure out how to pull together. It seems vanishingly unlikely anything will appear before 2027 at this point. Which does leave me wondering, couldn’t Ubisoft also give this game a new name and have another team go back to the original plan and upgrade the original for modern consoles?
