I’m going to diverge from my typical theme for a bit here. After reading over a lot of the recent discussion over the newest Prince of Persia game, I was struck by how much disagreement there was about the ending. First I wrote a comment on one of the blog posts I was reading, but after some thought, I decided I should share my take on it in a more public location so people have the option to respond.

If you haven’t finished the game yet and you have any plans to see the ending for yourself, please don’t read anymore. Spoilers ahead. If you don’t care about spoiling the ending, this might not make much sense to you anyway, because I’m going to be mostly discussing the details of the story and the ending.

One thing that’s surprised me so far about the response to this game is that it seems nobody has been reading quite as much into the ending as I did. It seemed clear to me that the developers were trying to subvert some stereotypes with it, and I think they might have tried a bit too hard to be subtle. It may be that they had greater aspirations for the ending (and the story in general) and ended up scaling them back in the end, but left bits and pieces of their original ideals remaining in the ending. If this is the case, it’s hugely disappointing, because I believe Prince of Persia’s ending is far more interesting than it appears at a first glance.

Once Elika is dead, approaching the altar presents you with another vision. This by itself is kind of a big hint, from my perspective. Earlier in the game the developers try hard to establish that the visions are coming from Ormazd. If that were the case, what purpose would the visions have now that Ahriman is resealed and all is right with the world?

Another detail is the voiceover (which is unfortunately far too quiet, in my opinion) after Elika dies. If you turn on the subtitles, the voiceover’s only caption is ‘ahriman whispering’, which isn’t terribly surprising – but there’s something else at work here. There are *two* different voiceovers, with distinct voices and distinct tones, each telling you a *different message*. Only one of them has a subtitle, and that one is Ahriman. Who is the other voice? The Ahriman subtitle goes away when it’s speaking, so it’s not him. Based on the previous hint, I think it’s not too hard to come up with a plausible guess. The mere fact that Ahriman is able to speak to you even after Elika has sacrificed herself to seal him away indicates that your victory is far from total.

The third detail is less concrete, admittedly, but ties in with the first two: Throughout the game, you’re essentially cleaning up a mess that was created by the people who were supposed to be protecting the world from Ahriman in the first place (the Ahura). He was sealed away long ago where he could supposedly never harm anyone, locked in place by all these fertile grounds and whatever other plot mechanisms were keeping him sealed. Unlike in many traditional stories in this vein, he did not break free as a result of his overwhelming might, or through the actions of his willing minions – he was released, by one of the people who were supposed to ensure that he stayed locked away – of his own free will, without any manipulation or deceit.

Based on this, by sealing Ahriman away again, what has the Prince actually accomplished? This also ties in with some hints given to the player in some of the story dialogue, in that according to Elika, Ormazd is *gone*. Nobody knows where he is or why his presence is no longer felt, when clearly he was a strong presence in the time before Ahriman was sealed, and Ormazd was essential in dealing with Ahriman. Contrast this with the fact that according to the game’s story, Elika only gained her miraculous light powers AFTER her death and subsequent resurrection. These powers are clearly intended to have been granted by Ormazd.

Based on all this, here’s what I think:

Sealing Ahriman is the easy way out, and a hollow victory at best. Allowing Elika to die simply to lock away Ahriman is not defeating him at all, it is merely shoving the danger under the rug so that someone else can set him loose again in a few hundred years. It’s not a victory at all – it’s a short-sighted compromise, that gets you back to your thick rugs and loose women as quickly as possible (from the Prince’s perspective). From the player’s perspective, it provides a relatively quick ending to the story, and essentially ties up all the loose ends in the world – the girl made a noble sacrifice, the great evil is sealed, and the prince gets to go about his life.

But a lot of us don’t *want* that ending, because we know it’s not quite right. That’s why most of us kept playing after the credits rolled, and cut down the trees.

If the whole saga of Ahriman and Ormazd, Elika and the Prince, is supposed to be inspired by higher concepts – which it almost definitely is, at least to some extent – then really, the idea of defeating Primal Evil by merely sealing it away is ridiculous. Sealing away Ahriman did nothing to eliminate the evil within the other characters in the story – Elika’s father was willing to sacrifice the entire purpose of his existence in order to see his daughter again. You can easily frame this as a metaphor for the difficulty of confronting the human capacity for evil. Ahriman’s four surrogates (who provide the boss fights for most of the game) are, according to the story, all former Ahura who chose to serve him for their own personal reasons and motivations, instead of as a result of being ‘corrupted’ or manipulated or forcibly ‘turned’ to evil.

In all likelihood the inevitable sequel to this game will prove without a doubt that I’m imagining depth and subtlety where there is none. But for now, I’m going to remain cautiously optimistic and hope for something more than just another tired Light vs Dark saga with a shallow moral fable and predictable ending. Here’s hoping the next Prince of Persia game doesn’t disappoint!