do is just keep trying to do that, and quit griping about the glorious bygone early years,
’cause they’re over!
So how involved were you with thePrince of Persia 3Dproject?
My involvement was limited to giving them the go-ahead at the beginning and offering
occasional advice and creative consultation along the way. It was a Broderbund project.
Andrew Pedersen, the producer, initiated it. It was his baby. He brought the team
together and worked hard on it for two years. So I can’t take credit for that one.
It’s very difficult to take a 2D game and make it work in 3D instead, with full
freedom of movement for the player.
That’s the problem, really. When you convertPrince of Persiato 3D over-the-shoulder,
one problem is how do you keep the controls simple. And the other is how does the
player know what kind of environment he’s in. Because you only see what’s right in
front of you. A crude example is you’re running toward the edge of a chasm. With a side
view you can look at it and see if it’s a three-space jump or a four-space jump and are you
going to clear it or not. If it’s too far, you know there’s not even any point in trying.
Whereas in a 3D over-the-shoulder game, you don’t quite know how far it is until you
try. And even then, when you fall you wonder, “Was I not quite at the edge? Or did I not
jump in quite the right direction?” So it makes it a different kind of game. You gain in
terms of visceral immediacy and, of course, the richness of the environment, but I think
you lose something in terms of a clean strategy.
So you don’t think that making every game 3D is necessarily the correct
approach?
Well, you have to distinguish the real-time 3D graphics technology from a particular
interface. I think there’s a lot that can be done with real-time 3D graphics engines.
Doom, the first-person shooter, was obviously the first prototype and that was the trend
for a couple of years. And thenTomb RaiderandSuper Mariodid the following camera.
Prince 3Dfalls into that category. So I think the challenge is in finding new ways to pres-
ent the action cinematically that will be as much fun as the old games but still have all
the visual excitement of the new 3D games. I think there’s plenty of ground yet to
cover.Prince 3Dhad a few intriguing moments in it that I’d like to see pushed much fur-
ther to invent the next big thing in 3D action games.
I read that you enjoyedTomb Raiderquite a bit. That seemed to be an attempt to
putPrince of Persiainto a 3D environment in order to produce something new
and exciting.
I think the key word there is new. Yes, I was really excited byTomb Raideras a player,
because it was something that hadn’t been seen before. But I think now that that’s been
done, we can more clearly see the pros and the cons of that type of game. If you want to
doTomb Raidertoday, you need to find a way to go beyond what they did in ’96. You can’t
just do the same thing over and over.
344 Chapter 18: Interview: Jordan Mechner