#elika

[lolotheparagon]

Rewatching all the Prince of Persia 2008 cutscenes with the titular Prince and Elika really made me realise how absolutely adorable their chemistry was

I’ve never before seen two characters that aren’t a couple yet act like they’ve just got married.

Just look at these interactions complied from these gifs:

And for good measure, here’s the twirling animation when they’re pole vaulting together 💖

This is so sweet, I love these two.

I really wish the Prince of Persia franchise would make more characters like them. They’re just great.

[mentalmeles]

K..Kibby……

[cordylinerubra]

[marikbentusi]

This game still pops into my head every now and then because of the animations. Especially those like the ones below that are super easy to miss but still have a lot of care put into them.

edit: apparently tumblr doesn't let you swap out images anymore so here's a version with some minor fixes :V

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

There was a thread posted today on the Feh subreddit asking about people's crackships, and the comments on it are been a delight. Somebody sold me on Eirika×Eliwood

.

[yettofindaname]

Playing Prince of Persia 2008

So last week i got COVID, and was out of work for a few days. I use a dual-booted computer with windows/linux at home - with linux as my main but Windows to use a few windows exclusive programs and to play games on steam. With a lot of time on my hands, but little willpower to do anything challenging, i booted the old copy of PoP 2008 on the steam library, created a new game and got into the hidden valley with the worst walking infrastructure the gaming world has to offer.

A bridge salesman would really clean up in this place. -The prince

Now everyone who played this game already talked gameplay: How the moving-around-part is cool and the single combat with combos is meh. So let's say something else.

In a review from 2021, the reviewer talks about how the game's stylized graphics keep it timeless, and there is a care on the design of every level such that it feels like looking at a painting someone carefully crafted. This is a hard agree. The stylized looks+ the no death mechanic feel very modern, in a way. In the 2008 market, there was this flow towards more realistic games, and also a expectation that Prince of Persia was meant to be challenging, and this game subverted both. In this aspect, the game would be more successful if it was released today than in it's original climate.

Nolan North is here as the Prince. This game came the year after Uncharted 1 came out and was a huge success, and Nolan is here to bring that sweet uncharted rizz to the game. And bring it he does! Does it fit well with the game? Well, I liked it - but it's more of Nolan redoing a wisecracking adventurer in a magic antiquity setting. This is maybe not just ubisoft copying naughty dog's homework, but a trend of the 2000s to have these very, well, very 2000s people around having adventures in other epochs. Reminds me of this post about how everyone in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is a 2000s hero except James Norrington (who suffers dearly for it), so while the game style and gameplay were ahead of it's time, this part really feels right were it belongs.

Elika - chosen one of the god Ormazd and last of the Ahura people, tasked to the keeping of the evil god Ahriman in his tree prision - plays more of an straight man role to the prince's joking and lamp-shading shenanigans. Her design is a very 2000's design: Where most video games hot girls are more about boobs-and-ass design-wise, she is all about that impossibly thin waist line. Overall a great character, and the banter with the prince is funny and fresh, she makes for a great part of the fun in the game.

Every creative endeavor is, for the lack of a better word, an aborted process. Animators would polish their animations forever if not for the cruel team leads to rip the file from their hands to give to the next guy on the pipeline. Planned features get scraped as the deadlines tighten, and so turns the world. PoP 2008 is no different.

- A central gameplay feature is the power plates: When the prince and Elika jump on them, the game's movement mechanics change, and a kind of minigame starts, based on the magic of the plates: The Green plates give the Breath of Ormazd, where the prince can run up, down and around walls like they are the floor, while avoiding bumps and obstacles on them. The Yellow plates give Elika a long term flight ability (Wings of Ormazd), the prince rides on her back and you use the arrow keys to avoid obstacles mid-air. The Red plates catapult you both to a next destination, and the true obstacles are the chain of conventional moves between the red plates. Aaaand the blue plates are the same as the red plates, but blue. We can see that the inspiration died after the red plates, if not with them. Every level has 45 light seeds (game 'currency', to trade for more plates), where 40 are accessible by normal routes, and 5 are accessible using a set of plates of a specific color hidden on the level. Many of these hidden plates are red (easy to place after the level was done) but almost none are blue, the most uninspired plate.

- The game has 4 main areas split into 4 sub-areas, each main area assigned to a boss. Each main area needs two power plates to complete - The Citadel, for example, needs the red and yellow plates. We can imagine there was space (there are literally unused closed gates in the corner of the areas) for 4 more areas, each for the unused combination of 2 of the plates, with 4 more associated bosses, that were removed from the scope pretty early in the project.

Speaking of bosses, the five bosses of the game incidentally make for a near perfect dark version of the heroic Five Man band. Its kind of sad they never interact or even acknowledge each other, but it's one of the limitations of the game onset from it's original design.

- The Mourning King is the Hero, a noble ruler who sold his soul for the somewhat noble - if selfish - motive of resurrecting his daughter.

- As his foil and Lancer, both in combat style and motivations, we have the Hunter, also a noble ruler who sold his soul for the cruel prize of hunting men .

- The Alchemist -> Brains, all mad scientist like.

- The Warrior -> Brawn, he literally cannot be damaged in combat.

- The Concubine -> The Chick, the Only Other Girl in the story. Does illusion magic stuff.

In the finale, Elika sacrifices herself to seal Ahriman back to the tree - and the ending is centered around you - the prince - redoing a bargain her father previously made and breaking the seals in exchange for Elika's life - undoing all your progress in the process. This is weird to me: While we see a growing relationship between Elika and the Prince - Story-wise they know each other for like, 8 hours tops. And there are few lines of dialogue that feel like a true romantic relationship developing. And it's also disrespectful of Elika's final wishes. But everyone bashes this ending, so I will do a first in gaming history: I will defend the ending of Prince of Persia 2008.

Why the Ending of PoP 2008 is Okay, actually:

First, the romance thing - two things come to mind: First - though there is little romance dialogue, there is much romance touching and physicality. Elika and the Prince are maybe one of video games more intimate couple in terms of physical interaction in gameplay. They move together, depend on one another. When they climb vines, Elika grabs herself onto the Prince's back, when they drop of a ledge onto the floor, the prince catches Elika and places her on the ground. They do a cute little spin together when changing places atop a wooden beam. This relationship is not mainly on the story, but is a core feature of the play of the game itself. Second: This is an 1001 nights themed story, where this kind of spontaneous, love at first-sight thing is a theme - this is echoed in the finale, where if you got every light seed in the map, the final seed that resurrects Elika is the 1001st light seed.

But outside of the romance, there are reasons grounded in friendship, and those hit harder for me: The Prince is a well traveled guy, and many of the dialogue lines with Elika revolve around this growing notion that Elika has spent her whole life trapped in this dwindling secret valley, desiring the amazing things of the outside world, but bound by her sense of duty even when all the other members of the kingdom shirked this duty and went away to the outside world. That the reward for her selflessness, her hard and unwavering faith in the god of light - that left her fighting for all of creation alone - was death. That would piss off our guy, damn - it pisses ME off. Elika fucking deserved to see the world, to enjoy herself! Damn this absent god that let her fight for the right to kill herself. I would want my friend to be free, and also we have the final point...

Ahriman's current prison (at the end of the game) is absolute dogshit - held together by strings, sticks, spit and a prayer. And the last magical maintenance staff is dead in your arms. Minutes later Ahriman is already fucking with your mind, and while you could get out and move on, the next wanderer to fall in the valley can be persuaded to cut the five flimsy-ass trees for as little as a bag of free candy. While a more cowardly person would want to get the fuck out and never come back you on the other hand want to see a chance of this business having a clear end to it. So you go back, get the magic power from the tree and resurrect the last of the Ahura, hoping to get her stronger, or to get a lead to finding more of the Ahura who went away, or even Ormazd himself.

The game would have everything lined up for a sequel along these lines (and it kinda has, in the DS spin-off game) but the whole franchise was cancelled and left for dead. It's so delusional to hope for a sequel even Nolan North himself said to a fan to go write some fanfic to scratch that itch.

And that's it for Prince of Persia 2008 for me. One thing that made me happy was that when I had just finished the game, and had the PoP 2008 content itch, i found the page @fuckyeahpop2008, that let me see some cool memes and content fans made of the game. The last big burst of activity in the page was 2014, so I'm indulging in the vintages, the 10 year old PoP memes. Thank you @fuckyeahpop2008 - your page, and your love for the game means a lot for me - and is really nice to indulge is this love, kept fresh in tumblrs servers for 10 years. Cheers for anyone playing the game, now or in the future.

[tinyspacefox]

And can you feel the love tonight?

How it’s laid to rest?

It’s enough to make kings queens and vagabonds

Believe the very best

-Elton John

—————————————————————————————————

First post, yay!

Recently played and finished Prince of Persia (2008) for the first time. Despite its flaws I loved the game from start to finish and thought I had to show the two main characters some love.

I only wish we could have a proper conclusion to their story arc. Preferably one where they live happily ever after, but honestly at this point I’d take anything over nothing.

At least the latest Prince of Persia game (The Lost Crown, which I also enjoyed) seems to have been well-received. Fingers crossed that a PoP ‘08 sequel is on the horizon. Until then, I’ll have to rely on fanfics to fill that void.

[wouldtheybecomeafearavatar]

Would Elika from Prince of Persia (2008) become an avatar of the Extinction?

[pedroam-bang]

Prince Of Persia (2008)

[blossomblade]

When I was testing close-ups a few years back. I was still leveling up my NIN, and it seemed like a good opportunity to use our old FC's dojo.

[reveminte]

My favorite couple from my favorite game. They are so cute together change my mind 🙈❤️

[unforgivablemesses]

[mentalmeles]

Was going through my old sketchbooks and found a sketch of Elika from a couple years ago that I never shared for some reason

[couldtheydestroythering]

Elika

Source: Prince of Persia (2008)

[can-they-assemble-ikea-furniture]

Assume they have access to ikea furniture

[bearpillowmonster]

Prince of Persia (2008)

This is actually the first PoP game that I bought because, well-

Just look at it. It appealed to me most, he's got what looks like a cybernetic hand, a blue and red head scarf keeping some sort of mystery about him, nice balance between grit and cartoon. And really even the gameplay, a big wide open world, and the girl stays right along side you. It was the makings of something great, but then...I played it.

I don't even know if it was two hours. I just felt like I had enough, like I had seen everything it had to offer already and here's why:

STORY

Background information first. The game has a decent story with the Prince looking for this donkey that has a bunch of treasure alluding for an adventure that happened off screen when he comes across Elika who is being chased and one thing leads to another and she releases darkness out of a tree. Ok, maybe that doesn't sound too great but it's more character based. The struggle between her and her father is interesting as you see the darkness overtake him, which gives you all the reason to bring an end to this madness. You see flashbacks of her because she doesn't really want to talk about what's going on or give you context so it's fed to you little by little, she's not even interested in the Prince, she just sees him as beneficial to her journey and over time the two grow fond of each other, which is how it should be.

The cartoony nature lets for a variety of unique animations, like her climbing on your back when you're climbing up vines, doing a little twirl when you switch positions, catch each other when they fall and just overall a ton of fun stuff that makes up for the fact that you can't play as her. Unfortunately, the Prince really just makes jokes, he isn't given much, they made him too pun-oriented as even Nolan North was confused by it but whatever, it's a disconnect. So what's the issue here?

THE PREMISE

Well, you have to get your fair share of light orbs- wait an effing second-

Yeah, that but it's the whole game. Like there aren't even enemies to keep you busy really. It splits the map up into sections where you climb these huge towers and trek landscapes to get to what amounts to a fountain, you fight a boss at the fountain, unlock it, and poof, light appears so you backtrack through the level (which does have varying paths but you definitely backtrack) in order to collect the orbs. There're little dark blobs that block your way sometimes and platforms can indeed have an enemy every now and then but it's not rewarding for anything, you don't get light, you don't get currency, you don't get anything, they're just another obstacle, not anything special, just a random nuisance.

COMBAT

The combat is a lot different, it has a sort of fighting game element where it locks you in a battlefield, and you skirt around each other like Contest of Champions. It's not "bad" but it can be annoying because of the control scheme. I learned it over time but it basically creates its own buttons. Red glove. What does it refer to? What did you map that button to? Grey glove, uh, block? Sword is obvious. But it doesn't show you the buttons, just the symbols and it's not much more in depth than that. I played this on PC and honestly those colors resemble the Xbox control style, the PS3 version has the actual buttons (and I don't have an Xbox controller so I had to fight with my PS4 controller to figure it out) but I think it helped that I played with a controller this time around because I used a keyboard and mouse on that dropped playthrough.

You get the rapid press sometimes but it's not necessarily how fast you press it, it's how early you start. And like sumo wrestling, getting too close to the edge for either of you will lock you in a heated quick time event to launch the other over the edge.

Perhaps one of the divisive parts though is that you don't "die". It's like this, falling will just have Elika catch you and put you at the last platform. Fighting, you're given a chance to save yourself with a quick-time event and even if you fail, the enemy just heals themself a little.

Then you have the "hub" of sorts which leads to the temple but traveling this empty wasteland takes a while because of your walk speed. I don't mind it in the confinement of these areas with the structures but when there's nothing there and you're just trekking...speed it up. Luckily if you unlock the fountain then you can fast travel.

They even have cool traversal methods that you learn by taking so many light orbs back to the temple (in the hub) but they're not free abilities, they're limited to where the spaces are.

The "power plates" eww, that's their official name? You couldn't say like "Ephereal Tiles" or some sort of lore based jargon like spirit energy emits from them, juicing you up with power for a short burst? Spirit Burst?

And you have what amounts to this huge wide open and lush background painstakingly created with breathtakingly beautiful places that you can't wait to explore but you barely even notice them. Like you probably see this picture and think what fun is in store for that place and what set-piece it might hold but the camera pits you against these wood and stone structures and that's about it, the rest goes relatively unnoticed, you don't go and walk around these places at all like you'd expect.

WHAT BROUGHT ME BACK

This.

A three hour video but a well made one at that. He mentioned that it's enjoyable playing as a side gig, just something to turn music on and play like it's Minecraft parkour and so I lodged that in the back of my brain and here I am, with a new approach and a new opinion on a game that I thought I'd never return to.

So I'm done complaining because I did indeed keep coming back to it and enjoying myself by viewing it from a movement standpoint. And yeah, it's not the best use of its appealing assets but I still found something in it.