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Fridge / Prince of Persia (2008)

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Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

  • The Prince's endgame decision to bring Elika Back from the Dead, releasing Ahriman all over again, is treated as a terrible idea... by Elika herself (since there is nobody else to discuss it with). As the Prince himself points out in the Epilogue, his impulsive decision is actually a very logical one in the long run: it's better to resurrect Elika for a small hope of defeating Ahriman for good than give the world a few centuries of peace before Ahriman conquers it anew with nobody left to challenge him. So why doesn't Elika see his point? Because she doesn't care about stopping Ahriman long-term. She is dead tired of her obligation to fight him, but her instilled sense of duty doesn't let just her walk away, like the Prince would have at the beginning. Her answer to this dilemma is a Heroic Sacrifice (twice)—after all, nobody can say she didn't give it everything if she dies. So, she is not pissed at the Prince because he undid everything they worked for for so long, but because he wouldn't let her rest like she wanted to all along. Turns out, Elika is a much more flawed individual than she first appears to be.
    • This adds some depth to one of the earlier conversations that follow the first fight against the Warrior; the Prince doesn't believe people do anything for altruistic reasons. He claims that the Warrior chose to sell his soul to Ahriman and save his people so that he would be remembered for his sacrifice, and the people who fought Ahriman instead of submitting to him wanted to be rewarded in afterlife. Elika calls the Prince a cynic, but he insists he's a realist. If Elika wanted to die to have peace and chose to do so in a way that would most likely not label her as a coward, the Prince may actually be realistic in his cynicism. Of course, this doesn't mean Elika didn't have any real concern over the world's safety. She is a complex human just like the Prince, her father, and everyone else.
  • For players who felt like the ending wasted all of their effort, there was a solution for them: turn the game off and stop playing. The credits rolled as the Prince carried Elika to the altar. Basically, the game was telling them, "Hey, you can stop playing now. Game's over."
    • If you can't bring yourself to just walk away... well, neither could the Prince.
  • The combat system, where you fight enemies one on one with a heavy emphasis on Counter-Attack, is basically one massive call-back to the original Prince Of Persia

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