That was quick! Hot on the heels of yesterday’s Ubisoft announcement of a new Prince of Persia title come the first concrete details of the series’ next-gen debut, as well as the first screenshots of the game, all thanks to the French magazine Joypad.

Looking at the scans of the magazine, it’s apparent that the leaked concept artwork from last year is indeed indicative of the franchise’s new direction. Not only does the Prince sport a new look, plus a new weapon – the gauntlet – but the visual style has also been revised. Ditching the more realistic approach of the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy, the developer has (as reported yesterday) chosen a “brand new illustrative art style” for the new PoP outing, one that resembles the ones found in Street Fighter IV and Okami.

Courtesy of NeoGAF Forums, we’ve added a long list of all the bits of information known so far:

• Prince feels Amano-inspired. Looks like a celluloid/animated character (a bit like SFIV). The style itself is still in progress.
• Corrupted world needs to be healed.
• Story is much more “1001 Nights”-like, more fantasy, less grounded in reality but instead more magical yet still credible, more poetic.
• Player must unleash light-wells to heal the corrupted world, which shoots light into the sky, reminiscent of SotC and Okami.
• The transformation of the world is in real-time, with plants growing back to life as the world heals back and as the player can still move, instead of a mere cutscene, sky changes back to its normal color, etc., to give a strong sense of control and success to the player.

• No more time rewind and such.
• They are not making a second Assassin’s Creed, they are making a new PoP.
• Art style was difficult pass through the management, but they never refused it, and eventually loved it.
• Story specifically: Orhmaz and Arhiman, twin gods, one good one evil, celestial battle, Orhmaz locks Arhiman away in a box which he hides into an faraway oasis deep within a desert. Centuries pass, and comes a troublesome thief (the prince) and Arhiman is freed somehow (not deep explanation given). Prince must undo his mistake. This is what they refer to as a more “1001 Nights” kind of story, like a fable.
• More open/organic environments. Has a Zelda-esque feel, old-school in themes.
• Bosses/player use backgrounds during fights (one shot shows an enemy pushing the prince against a wall as if trying to choke him, or another throwing him in the air).
• Game went through a few iterations; originally too open (felt big but not enough to do), at one point it was more like Assassin as far as open world (going where you want), but players would get lost and wander aimlessly and dynamism suffered as a result. Now instead it is more focused with a clear road, but multiple paths can be taken (free to move from one map to another, back and forth, etc., more open than previous PoPs).

• The demo map shown to the journalist, old of a few months, has been scrapped design-wise because it was too Assassin-like, now it’s more fantasy design-wise.
• Game world is made of nodes connected by paths, and you can go from one node to another as you wish (this is what they mean by less open, but non-linear; you can see the paths, but you don’t have to going from A to B to C). The game adapts as a result (enemies from later visited locations might be more difficult, etc., for example zone A might be more difficult if you access it at the end, but if you accessed it at the beginning then it is easier, even bosses, depending on what order you fight them, adapt as such).
• Prince can slide along any walls using his glove. Game is as much vertical as horizontal.
• Prince has more possibilities of movement.
• Bosses inspired by MGS’ boss quality; they are fewer but they have a story, a reason to be, they leave more of an impression on the player. Some are former nobles, sometimes acting against their will.
• They wondered if they should make just more enemies and try to do a God of War game and try to beat it on its own ground, or go for something different. They went with fewer enemies instead and a new combat style. Combats are duels. You can see the expression on the faces of the characters/bosses. Movement/action in fights is more like Advent Children, more cinematic in presentation.
• 140 people working on it, more to come, people from many projects.

It’s a lot of information to digest, however, the one piece that really stands out is the omission of time powers which, like anybody knows by now, is what made the franchise so renowned in the first place. The team reasons such a startling decision by saying that the feature has been overused in videogames over the past few years and has got to the point where it’s nothing special. To make up for the loss of time powers, Ubisoft has added a new ability that has yet to be revealed.

Prince of Persia (working title) is scheduled for release on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC this Fall.