We are all familiar with the tragic tale of the Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake. The game was announced, put on hiatus, and recently brought back to life with no definitive release date. Still, according to a known source for this type of content, the build that we all saw in the early trailers does indeed exist, with certain players having trophies for the game. Does this make the Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake the new P.T.?
Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake – Is the game out there?
If you are familiar with the tragic tale of the Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake, you will know full well that to the public eye. The game is dead and is currently undergoing a full reboot via Ubisoft Montreal. However, according to a few curious tweets by Lance McDonald, well known for their video game exploits that span unlocking the camera in God of War 2018, unlocking the final secret in Nier Automata, and, more famously – enabling 60 FPS on Bloodborne, shared another secret with the world – Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake is out there and could be the new P.T.
To preface all of this, here are Lance’s tweets to support the existence of the title:
In reply to another user asking for a source or further information, they simply state that they will have to take their word for it.
The event timeline, according to Lance’s tweets:
- Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake was ready for the PSN, even going as far as to being added to the PSN servers.
- The backlash from the game caused Ubisoft to pull the game from the servers.
- Japanese (and other?) players were able to decrypt the game with the help of the pre-order encryption keys.
- Japanese players have been able to play the game and are also able to unlock trophies, as evidenced by the trophy unlocks for a game that shouldn’t exist.
However, after I headed over to the game’s page on PSNProfiles, I made another discovery. Someone HAS been unlocking trophies for the game. If you don’t hover over the completion rate of the trophies, you will see a 0.00. However, hovering over them actually shows a percentage, even for the platinum! As of the time of writing this, the highest attained trophy is
Sand Bearer – Obtain the Dagger of Time. & Visionary -See your first vision. (Both trophies have a 71.4% Achievement rate. They are also the first trophies you should get when playing the game. Both events happen at the very beginning of the game. First, the Wazir betrayed the Sultan and opened the hourglass with the dagger of time.
The remaining trophies sit at a 57.1% completion, including the Platinum trophy for the game.
Now, many of you will undoubtedly point out the presence of “Recent Players” showing the player JoinTheClub having no trophies in the game. However, if you also head to their profile of the trophies they earned for the game, you will see they didn’t get any trophies. Otherwise, the square box would be green in color.
Now I will hear people in the comments say – that perhaps JoinTheClub could not sync the trophies due to them not existing on the PSN. The link you provided could be a false positive. Also, his stats for that list ARE counted, but only on their local console.
For argument’s sake, let’s say that the skeptics are right. Then this should mean JoinTheClub should be the ONLY trophy holder, and each of those percentages (especially Sand Bearer & Visionary) should be a 100% completion. But the bigger percentage divide indicates players who started up the game AND progressed to that point in the story. It can only be assumed that after the first vision, fewer players stopped playing the game until the legendary 57.1% of players who did achieve the platinum trophy achieved this remarkable feat.
Ok, with that in mind, this is where Lance’s explanation of Japanese players having trophies in the game can explain the phenomenon. How else do you explain the phantom percentages?
The only explanation is that the people who have earned these trophies have very strict privacy settings. These could that their identities while still sending data back to the servers.
One last argument that will undoubtedly come up – then how come the same data can’t be seen on exophase? I can’t answer that. If we compare another game, like Deathloop on Exophase, we can see that there is indeed a way to see unlocked data. We need to investigate this further. However, the anomaly of PSNProfile’s mystery Platinum holders is still one that gamers will need to answer.
We saw a similar event occur for Golden Eye Remake. With that, only a couple of playtesters for the game have unlocked the game’s achievements.
Is the canceled Prince of Persia Sands of Time Remake actually out there?
Unfortunately, the answer is a paradox in itself. Where P.T. had plenty of time on the PlayStation Store, and users could download the game en masse and attach the license for the game to their accounts, there have been workarounds for people to redownload the title to their consoles.
However, a title like the Remake, which may have gotten pre-orders on the PlayStation Store itself, never came out. This then leads us back to the phantom PSNProfiles list of people who have the platinum. These curious 57.1% of platinum holders. There can’t be more than a handful of people who have the game and only 57.1% of the players who could pull off this feat only saw the platinum trophy through.
With the recent jailbreak of the PS5 and the even older jailbreak of the PS4, there is a small possibility that someday, someone might be able to share the playable build of the game, and we can get a look at what could have been. Similar stories have occurred in the past as well. The Golden Eye Remake’s fabled Xbox 360 port as an example of this. That, too, was a once-fabled game that was rumored to exist. Then it had a full playthrough spring up on YouTube to prove it is indeed alive and kicking.
What are your thoughts on this entire scenario? Let us know in the comments section below.
