My first step into the game was naming my character, so onward did Gonzalo go and after a short cinematic introduction I was left in charge of the game. After jumping around and trying to make sense out of the controls my slow progression started. I quickly noticed that my position on the map triggered events like fireballs, arrows thrown at me and ledges falling off. Good! That felt pretty immersive up to that point.
Narration happened as I was still in control of my character, and that was a nice surprise. It happened regularly; discovering a new area often came with narration informing me of my character's thoughts and objectives ( ex: "i could not rest until I had found her again." as I was chasing the girl.).
The present tense used in the narration as I was moving through the obstacles definitely made me feel like I was making the story happen. If the player is good enough, the flow of the story can be quite well paced and there is enough interactivity to keep the illusion of control.
As far as cinematics go, although sometimes lengthy, I believe they are necessary as they explain the story to the player and introduces the characters as well as the world of Prince of Persia.
What Jesse Schell calls "string of pearls approach" is quite obvious in the game since each node of the story is followed by gameplay which is rewarded by another node and so on.
However, The tutorial texts, crazy camera and intricate sequence of actions required to pass obstacles often frustrated me and were more of a distraction from the story than anything else. I eventually gave up trying to reach the dagger because of my poor skills, although I really wanted to know what would happen afterwards.
In conclusion, the linear storytelling was good and kept me interested, however the camera and controls made me too frustrated to keep trying.
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