A pitch video for a new Prince Of Persia leaked years ago, and people only just noticed

A pitch video for Prince Of Persia Redemption has appeared, a hitherto unknown and apparently cancelled entry in Ubisoft's fantasy stab-o-parkour series. It shows several minutes of mocked-up jumping around, swordfighting, magic, and an impressively vast beastie. What's weird is that this video has been on YouTube since 2012, barely unnoticed until yesterday. It has been confirmed as real by Jonathan Cooper, who was the animation art director on Assassin's Creed III at Ubisoft Montreal, so... huh!

It's a a pre-rendered video used to help big the game to the big brass, giving an idea of what they'd want the game to be like but not actually a game. While we don't know exactly when Ubisoft gave up on this idea, I should note that games are pitched, mocked up, passed over, and cancelled all the time at big companies long before we'd ever hear about them. This might be disappointing but it isn't shocking. On with the vid!

That's some Uncharted-grade spectacle right there. I quite like the look of that.

"Wow - haven't seen this in ages," Jonathan Cooper said on Twitter after the video was spotted. "Amazing work from animation director Khai Nguyen (For Honor) and team. This target game footage (pre-rendered game pitch) inspired our own pitch for Assassin's Creed 3 as they did such a great job making it look like real gameplay."

That AC3 pitch video was made in 2010, which helps date this. Some speculation connects PoP Redemption to an Ubi project in 2010-2011. Either way, it didn't happen.

We've not seen a proper new Prince Of Persia game since 2010 (the latest was 2018's mobile runner, PoP: Escape). That is a shame. While Assassin's Creed may echo a lot of Ubisoft's modern Prince Of Persia games, with the swords and parkour and historical settings and that, I would still like more PoP. There's a lot to be said for short, straightforward stories with levels rather than sprawling open worlds - and magic that's just magic rather than tosh about ancient aliens in the Internet or god knows what.

Speaking of, Ubisoft will today show the first gameplay trailer for Assassin's Creed Valhalla on Microsoft's Xbox stream.