Shortly after Christmas I applied some Best Buy gift cards toward Prince of Persia (the new one that for some reason has no subtitle).  The series has been riding on the goodwill created by 2003’s masterpiece The Sands Of Time.  And I have to take a moment to state again just how much I loved that game.  Since then, they released two sequels that didn’t even come close to living up to SoT.

Apparently someone at Ubisoft Montreal has decreed that their games must end with obnoxious cliffhangers.  There was at least kind of an ending to Prince of Persia.  Part of the ending was interactive, and I simply did not want the Prince to do what I had to make him do to complete the game.  So I will give them credit, as this means they did a good job of making me identify with the Prince to some extent.  Of course, after you do this, you get an ending that might as well say “please insert a credit card to buy the next sequel.”

Last week Ubisoft released “Epilogue”, a downloadable episode that takes place immediately after the ending.  Since it was only ten bucks, I bought it (the first time I’ve purchased any DLC, actually).  Well it didn’t really clear up anything, and actually ended more abruptly than Assassin’s Creed’s abortion of an ending.  I didn’t think that was possible.

I don’t understand this decision.  I’m sure someone at Ubisoft thinks “if we make a cliffhanger ending, then more people will come back for a sequel.”  I’m not sure this is a valid line of reasoning.  What they’ve put at the end of their games are essentially a mechanism to make the player very angry, not to generate sales of the sequel.  I don’t think that decent endings prevent anyone from playing the sequel.  Sands Of Time had one of the best endings of any video game that I’ve ever played, and I have come back for three sequels now (four even, if you consider Assassin’s Creed to be a “spiritual sequel”).  If a game is good enough, people will come back for more because they like the game that much.

All that said, I really enjoyed this game.  But can’t I expect the reward of a decent ending after having put twenty hours into playing your game?