Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The second game, released in 2004, in a Continuity Reboot series of the Prince of Persia games, with one of the most amusing Darker and Edgier twists in history. The storybook "Arabian Nights" feel of the first game was replaced by sexual content (including several Stripperific female characters, graphic violence, language and heavy metal music by the band Godsmack. Followed by Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.

Following the events of the previous game, the Prince is being hunted by an unstoppable beast, the Dahaka. The creature is apparently a guardian of the timeline and wants to ensure that the Prince dies like he was supposed to. In a desperate effort to avoid this fate, he travels to the island where the Sands of Time were originally created, hoping to find a way to avoid this whole mess.

Tropes used in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within include:
  • Actionized Sequel: Warrior Within was taunted as having a more complex combat system than its predecessor, as is implied by its title.
  • Alternate Ending: If you get all the life upgrades, you are able to acquire the Water Sword, which turns out to be the only weapon that can even harm the Dahaka, who turns out to be the True Final Boss. By defeating it, the Prince is able to save both him and Kaileena from their fate -- but regardless of the ending, the end shows Babylon under attack by a prototypical version of the Dark Prince and Farah being held captive. In this case, the basic story of the alternate ending is the canon for the next game, which Kaileena acknowledges in the opening narration.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The combo attacks are Oronte's Grudge, Ptolemaios' Anger, Wrath of Cyrus, Rage of Darius, Azad's Furious Retaliation, Zaroaster's Ire, Asha's Fury, Ahriman's Revenge and Mithra's Vengeance. This video's description looks up each name and concludes that sure, they're all ancient Persia-y, but "it is quite clear that only a few are actually suitable to name combat attacks after."
  • Autobots Rock Out: The title song is "Straight Out Of Line" by Godsmack and the combat music by Inon Zur is heavily stylized on Godsmack's typical sound. The music blaring when you're being pursued by the Dahaka is an instrumental version of I Stand Alone.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: The game is much more violent than the previous games.
  • Bondage Is Bad Implied. Countless enemies, especially the Initiates (sometimes also called Executioners) the player encounters during the last quarter of the game, wear hardly anything but black leather straps.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: In the Alternate Ending, after the Dahaka falls down into the water, it rises again one last time as a gargantuan, skyscraper-sized monstrosity, but since water is its kryptonite, it promptly falls back down and dies.
  • Darker and Edgier: The game amped up on the profanity, violence and sexual content with a darker tone.
  • Death's Hourglass Used subtly: outside the throne room, there is an hourglass that counts the time until the Empress will create the Sands of Time. However, as the Prince finds out to his dismay, the Empress dies to create the Sands, so the hourglass was counting down until the Empress's death.
  • Dramatic Chase Opening: The Prince is running away from the Dahaka.
  • Dual World Gameplay: On the Island Of Time, it had to be explored in the past and present with decay changing pathways and accessibility and the characters present.
  • Escape Sequence: The Dahaka chases.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: The Prince discovers that the only way to get The Dahaka to stop chasing him is to let Dahaka kill his past self.
  • Game Breaking Bug: The entire Sands trilogy has its fair share of buggy code, but Warrior Within is a particular standout. There are quite a few scenarios that can render the game Unwinnable, such as being transformed into the Sand Wraith prematurely or the final time portal simply refusing to work (and many of these feature irreversible, game-restarting conditions caused by save points in point-of-no-return locations).
  • Guide Dang It: Finding and collecting all the life upgrades to unlock the alternate ending could be a pain in the ass.
  • Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The very first boss battle.
  • Hotter and Sexier: The women are more scantily clad.
  • Idiot Ball: The Prince and the Empress of Time seem to play tennis with it.
  • King Incognito: Kaileena.
  • Male Gaze: Shahdee's ass-first introduction is a particularly blatant example.
  • Real Is Brown: Warrior Within's art director said in a bonus commentary on the disc that the game was designed to be basically monochrome to make it easier to unify designs. The Forgotten Sands also have this, but it takes place in a desert kingdom so this is at least somewhat justified. Then again, all of the games take place in a desert kingdom, so...
  • The Reveal: Two major ones, the strange creature you see but never interact with is you. And the Empress of Time is Kaileena.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: The Prince can gain sand by smashing objects in the environment. See Why We Can't Have Nice Things.
  • Screw Destiny: The motive behind the Prince's actions.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Kaileena sees her own death in the timeline and attempts to correct it by sending her army after the Prince, which of course brings him to the island and gives him motive to kill her. Because the Prince had no prior knowledge of this and only sought to prevent the Sands of Time (which had already affected his life) from being created, his own quest to change his fate counts as more of a Stable Time Loop.
  • Stable Time Loop: The Prince goes to the Island of Time to prevent the Sands of Time--the source of all his misfortunes and the reason he is being hunted by the Dahaka--from ever being created. However, he ends up being the one who creates them when he kills Kaileena, the Empress of Time, who is the Sands in human form. The rest of the game is spent subverting this.
    • This one is a Stable Time Loop inside a Stable Time Loop: the only reason the Prince has the chance to do this is because Kaileena foresaw her death, tried to kill the Prince to prevent it, and lost the ensuing battle, thus creating the Sands and catching the Prince in his own time loop.
  • True Final Boss: The Dahaka, provided you find all the life upgrades in order to acquire the Water Sword, the only weapon capable of harming it. Otherwise, the final boss is just Kaileena, which leads to a major Downer Ending with only the bleakest of hope as the Prince is freed from his curse, but at the cost of just about everything. The Alternate Ending was actually made canon in the next game, which Kaileena acknowledges in the opening narration.
  • Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him: The Empress. She employs several round-about measures to kill the Prince: she sends Shadee after him, curses one of his swords, forces him to solve puzzles in two towers laden with deadly traps and mooks, and all the while hopes the Dahaka will finish him off if he doesn't die on his own. When all this (predictably) fails, the Empress goes one-on-one in a sword and sorcery duel and naturally does not emerge the victor. Depending on the ending, she dies twice. She never, however, utilizes her greatest tactical advantage to its full potential: the fact that she and Kaileena are one and the same person the whole time, and thanks to an amazingly lucky stroke of timing, the Prince walks in on Shadee trying to kill her when he first meets her. This causes him to assume Kaileena is a beleaguered servant, and upon saving her, he puts his trust in her completely to the point of trying to take her away from "the evils" of the island all the way up until she decides to confess who she is and tries a direct approach. What does she do with this amazing upper hand instead? She tries to talk him out of killing her. She should have just kept up the ruse, and while he was bemoaning his fate, walked up behind him, stabbed him, taken his medallion, and been done with it.
    • She was kind of falling in love with him. Hence the reluctance to murder him.
  • World of Buxom: All of the female characters have very large breasts.