Prince of Persia/Headscratchers


 * Why did they decide to make the alternate ending of Warrior Within the canon ending instead of just having it be the default ending?
 * It's not really an alternate ending so much as the Golden Ending. Golden Endings are almost always the canon endings.
 * to Deconstruction the Taking a Third Option...
 * Plus, when you think about it, the alternate ending has a lot more potential. The Prince has not only escaped his fate, he has destroyed it, and it means that Kaileena could, setting the plot up for the next game.
 * A bit of an recurring Idiot Ball event concerning the Clothing Damage: In Sands of Time, The Prince is wounded after, resulting in him tearing off his sleeve and using it as a makeshift bandage. That pretty little piece of fabric was all that stood between his time-twisting adventure and bleeding out, getting a nasty case of gangrene and having to amputate his arm. Later on in the game, he notices that his other sleeve has torn slightly, and dramatically removes it and casts it off. Has it ever occurred to him that he might be injured again and heed that sleeve to bandage himself? And later on, an egregious example: After losing one of his spaulders, he gets rid of his armour, revealing that his chest is covered in bloody scrapes. If he got all those scrapes with a thick leather breastplate, what does he think will happen with nothing but exposed skin?
 * When the Prince removes the second sleeve, it's pretty close to coming off completely. A disconnected sleeve would be useless and very distracting. As for the breastplate, maybe he got the scrapes from landing wrong during his parkour or his fall into the prison, and he removed it simply so he can move easier. After all, it's not like leather armor is weightless or perfectly flexible.
 * This reminds me of something else. Before falling into the prison in the first place, the game gives you not one, but two Sand Pools to recharge your dagger. This also follows a lengthy fight, in which the Prince is likely to have sucked up all the enemies for sand, and even if he used it all up again anyway there are still the pools for recharging. Now, if your time-rewinding dagger is perfectly functional, why would you completely ignore it and let yourself take a nasty fall down a shaft that, given how high a player can fall before dying, should logically kill you?
 * From the way the Prince tried to get up after the fall, I got the feeling he got knocked out from the fall. The Dagger of Time can only rewind time up to ten seconds, so if he's out for more than that, the Dagger won't do much good. Alternatively, Gameplay and Story Segregation.
 * Okay, I know that this is just asking for a Timey Wimey Ball, but there's a big headscratcher in Warrior Within. Let's say that there are three Princes: Prince A, who we only see as, Prince B, who we play as, and Prince C, who we see . Now, the headscratcher I have is this: Why did Prince A die? Couldn't he have avoided the Dahaka as Prince B did, since he There's absolutely no reason why he couldn't have lived, other than making the story a bit simpler.
 * If Prince A hadn't died when he did and instead made Prince B (you) die, Prince B wouldn't have been able to eventually turn into the Sandwraith. It only occurs to Sandwraith-mode Prince B to jump out of the way because he saw Prince A die. Prince C dies and never gets to kill Kaileena, meaning the Sandwraith is never created, and the (hypothetical) Prince D isn't killed by Prince C trying to avoid being killed and AGHHH MY HEAD IS EXPLODING
 * Why did the Empress attack the Prince? She says that it's her fate to die at his hands and doesn't want that, fair enough, but he only attacks her because she attacks him first. What's more, the Prince had said to Kaileena that he only sought an audience with the Empress, so there's no reason why she would think that he'd just run in and kill her.
 * She knew she was going to die because of him, not how it came about or why. She probably thought her nearly-nude henchchick would manage to kill him without ever having to bring him near the island.
 * How does the Dahaka get to the island? I know that it's shown that it can do a teleportation kind of thing, but judging by the fact that it can't teleport past water (shown when the Prince is in the time portal rooms), it would be reasonable to assume that it can't teleport past water. So how did it get to the island? Built a ship?
 * There may be a difference between teleporting through running water and teleporting over the sea. Maybe it's just fresh water, IDK. Plot!