Prince of Persia: Warrior Within — Did You Know…?

1. Although a primary sword weapon initially, the wooden stick ends up relegated to a secondary weapon once you pick up the Spider Sword — but only if you don’t already have a secondary weapon at that stage. Although a weak weapon it had great durability. Until the Prince carries it in his left hand. Then it becomes as fragile as any of his secondary weapons and breaks after a few hits.
   
2. The Wooden Sword Secondary suddenly takes on the same striking properties as a Mace!
   
3. When you acquire the Spider Sword the cutscene shows The Prince menacingly wielding the new sword, and his original wooden stick as a secondary weapon — even if you’ve picked up a mace from one of the Raiders you defeated on your way in! Of course, when the fight starts you have the mace (if you picked it up) and a quick Orontes’ Grudge ([] /\) will knock everyone around you down.
   
4. Even taking the crazy combos and mental fighting style of Dante from DMC3, the Prince fights more aggressively than any other swordmaster. And his left arm seems much stronger than his right. You can tell this by the fact that his secondary weapons break so easily. Official sources would have us believe this comes from shoddy weaponry work on the Island of Time, but notice that the Empress’s minions can attack the Prince’s block all day and never wear down their weapons. They can hit him and each other many times, yet every time the Prince picks up their weapons they have full charge. And then it breaks with only a few uses!
   
5. When you come to a curtain, the game engine will treat any instance of the Prince touching the curtain bottom as the equivalent of a full slide. When you reach the central area at the start (after defeating the 1st Crowmaster completely) and the door shuts behind you you can jump straight to the bottom of the curtain. It saves time and lets you make a stylish shortcut to the floor. (This works best in T2T though).
   
6. After sliding down a curtain, if you rewind time, the curtain still remains sliced.
   
7. You can actually jump onto ledges (balance beams) from a fair height provided you land squarely on the flat part and don’t enter ‘falling’ animation. For example: the area above the platform you fight Shahdee #2 on just after the save fountain (where you use a rope to wallrun to a ledge) — you can leap from the top to the ledge on the other side. Similarly in the Clockwork section when returning from the highest points after the traps. You can do a massive jump to the elevator–type platform’s ledge.
   
8. One more applicable to speedrunning: the spiked logs and rotating blades DO provide some form of horizontal collision boosting. In some cases that can offset time involved in waiting for a gap and standing after getting knocked down. This seems a bit random, though, so will only work in a segmented speedrun.
   
9. More of a battle and speed movement tactic, this one. When you do a vertical wallrun and automatically flip off, you can perform a forward roll the instant you land. Aside from this, however, the Prince has a short recovery period. If you have your weapons drawn when you do this, though, you can perform any of the Prince’s dodges and rolls the very instant his feet touch the floor. This includes side rolls and backflips.
   
10. This applies mostly to FFFS (Free Form Fighting System)–related goodies: in the midst of battle the Prince can pick up a secondary weapon without exposing himself to the vulnerable frames during his ‘kick up the sword’ animation. Simply roll over or next to the weapon (side or forward roll) or even backflip over it and press the pickup button. The Prince somehow grabs it with no animation. This includes during the backflip where he has no hands on the ground.
    
11. When the Dahaka breaks through the wall and leaves you a ledge to jump to, you face some raiders and blade dancers before running up the wall and jumping from wall–to–wall. You experience a camera cutscene just before to show you where you need to go. If you stand at the very edge of the platform next to the wall you can run up it without ever triggering the cutscene.
    
12. The second Shahdee battle features her doing an animation where she entices you by slapping her bum if you move far enough away from her. She cannot cancel that animation and must complete it. During this you can perform a rolling slash, which hits up to a maximum of 3 times.
    
13. Battle #1 with the Empress of Time features her declaring: “I had hoped the Dahaka would kill you,” but in the good ending, when the Dahaka appears, she shouts: “What is that thing?”
    
14. The teddy bear 2ndary weapon (that does insanely tiny damage) returns health to you if you hit anything breakable with it — not only enemies!
    
15. If you time bringing up the pause menu right, you can bring this up between a battle cutscene (such as a decap) and when you can control the Prince again. You can then play the game for a short while with the pause menu still onscreen and active. So if you move around the various options will highlight with your movements.
    
16. Probably well–known, this one, but when the Prince declares: “It’s time to find a way off this rock” after the first Empress fight, he stands at the bottom of the area where you wallrun to get into the castle at the start (by shimmying up some pillars). In fact, he tries to escape towards that way before the Dahaka grabs him.
    
17. After you flee from the Dahaka after the above point, you have to activate 3 waterfalls so you can stop the Dahaka getting into your chamber, giving you the time to pull out 3 blocks of stone. Each time you have to go up some stairs, turn right and wallrun, etc. At this point the Dahaka appears — but he actually comes from the same area YOU came from!
    
18. The Dahaka grabs the Prince on at least 2 occasions (once as the Prince and once as the Sandwraith) but doesn’t swallow him — he throws him away instead, even though he wants to ‘remove’ the Prince.
    
19. You can’t memorise the sequence for the time portal trigger switches because they change randomly each time! Sometimes you can activate the first one if you run up it twice.
    
20. If you time your jumps accurately enough while triggering those switches you can activate one and jump to press the one on the opposite pillar. I’ve done this numerous times, though not necessarily activated them successfully.
    
21. When the Sandwraith first chucks the axe at the Prince, you can see the Prince actually look behind him as he dodges the axe. Yet when you as the Sandwraith throw the axe, the Prince does NOT look behind him, and therefore does not see the Blade Dancer who tried to kill him, and whom you killed to save the Prince’s life!
    
22. The Sandwraith actually throws the Spentas Axe at the Prince, an unbreakable secondary weapon. If used by the Prince it unfortunately takes life from the Prince with each successful hit. You can find one in the weapons rack in the area where you face the Thrall Boss. It will instantly decap any non–Boss enemy it hits if you throw it (including the Executioners upstairs — provided they don’t roll out of the way).
    
23. During the battle with the Dahaka you can opt to do nothing by letting him floor you, and then lying there with your guard up. If you do this, you get treated to a Dahaka Chase Death–style cutscene with the Dahaka suddenly sucking the Prince up and removing him from the timeline.
    
24. You can actually attack, but not harm, the Dahaka without the water sword. When you run through a waterfall to reach a Time Portal, the Dahaka stands for a moment, then yells to the skies in anguish before disappearing. The instant he goes into his ‘Foiled again’ animation you can run out and start attacking him. Very occasionally, usually when kicking him, you’ll get a sound of striking flesh, but you mostly hear a clang and see the recoil of the Prince attacking an unbreakable wall. You can even combat rebound off the Dahaka during this.
    
25. In the Foundry, contact with the molten metal pouring down from the pipes will instantly kill the spiked hounds.
    
26. Throwing any enemy into a trap (such as floor spikes or rotating blades) results in an instant kill, even if the enemy previously had full health.
    
27. In some areas enemies can’t seem to follow you. At the top of the main castle steps you can cross over into the castle and stand at the border. The 4 opponents there throw 3–hit attack strings your way all day but never touch you. It looks hilarious in 1st person view, especially if you stand in the right corner because a Silhouette keeps throwing knives at them in his attempts to hit you.
    
28. The water tower’s first life upgrade: after you turn the lever to open the door and access this place you come to a small bridge. You can in fact leap from this bridge straight to the platform you need to drop down to from above. I did a roll as I hit the platform and took no fall damage. What a time–saver!
    
29. The Warrior Within features as a serial killing Butcher on the cover of an Arabic horror book called Euphoria of Hell.
    
30. You can actually get the Life Upgrade after the Central Hall — which you should grab after getting Eye of the Storm — before getting EotS by simply rolling up the stairs repeatedly and into the small hole in the wall that opens up.
    
31. The cutscenes prior to the Prince facing the Empress, the ones that take place in the Hourglass Chamber, sport some very minor and subtle differences. In his first encounter the Prince says: “Time is running low. You ready?” As he says “you ready?” he looks to his left at the Empress. After he returns to the exact same point following his Sandwraith adventures he says the complete 2 lines AND THEN looks at her. This shows us that he know her secret.
    
32. Another well–known one, but you can fight all the Boss battles without using your mega Sand Powers. If you have enough skill you can get away without even using Recall! (I can do them all except the Griffin: I have to use Recall for that one, but I’ve gotten a lot better.) Yes, this also includes the second Empress battle. You need to battle her near the ledge. Once she slows down time you can hang off the ledge and she won’t attack you.
    
33. If a Boss regains any health then you’ve done something wrong. You had the opportunity to kill them and messed it up in some way (I have the Thrall Boss and Dahaka in mind here, and the Griffin if you avoid it for long enough by running away from it).
    
34. If you have taken the Water Sword before becoming the Sandwraith, you still see the Scorpion Sword in the video…
    
35. “What do you want from me?” We hear this cry of the Prince’s twice: once as the Prince, and then as the Sandwraith. At this point the Prince suddenly has the same secondary weapon that you do. Easily noticeable if you’ve picked up the glowing Light Sword.
    
36. You cannot see the Prince as the Sandwraith in the hole where the Golem in the big fireplace throws him.
    
37. You CAN see some points where your actions as the Sandwraith have had an effect: most notably in the Library. When you come in, you have a great big barrier in front of the entranceway, but open access inside. You have to break down the wall, and turn one of the levers to move a bookcase aside. As the Prince you find no breakable wall there, and a bookcase partially blocking your access (a table prevents it from closing completely).
    
38. I think pretty much everyone knows this one: the game developers have backmasked the Dahaka’s speech. If you wait until he finishes saying something, then Recall time, you’ll usually hear him speak properly. Sometimes he says really cool and hilarious things like: “You are quick, mortal. QUICK TO DIE!” At other times he comes out with such mundane rubbish as: “You … will be … removed!”
    
39. As a neutral NPC, Kaileena has the same effect on the Prince as fire and water. After he activates one tower, he meets Kaileena in the Central Hall who gives him the Lion Sword. At this point you need the entrance to the garden area up, so activate the lever for this, or leave it alone if you’ve just come from there. Now climb onto the lowest level platform and jump onto Kaileena. You’ll notice that the Prince has the same reaction as though he’d jumped onto fire or a save fountain. You can also achieve this by vertically wallrunning up a pillar and jumping off onto her.
    
40. Why on earth does the Dahaka remove the Sandwraith in the past? And why does he accept the Prince’s unwilling sacrifice later? (I personally submit that the Dahaka ‘found’ the Prince in the past in order to prevent anomalies in the timeline by having one person in two locations at the same time, wreaking havoc through time travel.)
    
41. You can battle the Empress a second time even with full health upgrades if you simply forgo picking up the Water Sword. Sometimes it can prove a little tricky avoiding the trigger for it. The easiest way involves deliberately missing the life upgrade at the Prison (above the room with the Thrall/Stone Brute Boss), and picking it up later when you return through there as the Sandwraith. You trigger the “Time is running low…” conversation before you can reach the Sword, and when it finishes you find yourself upstairs, so don’t have to tiptoe your way around the Sword.
    
42. People refer to the Dahaka Boss Fight as the ‘alternative ending’, but in fact the lack of life upgrades leading to a second showdown with the Empress forms the true alternative ending, especially in the light of T2T.
    
43. Very few of the puzzles and platforming section require a mandatory use of EotS. Those that do include the walkway to the Garden (which needs you to use it twice), the first door–opening floor switch you encounter after getting the EotS sand power (which leads to the Southern Passage), one of the rising blocks in the mechanical tower activated by a wall switch, possibly the last life upgrade’s door activation switch, and the run to the Prison life upgrade.
    
    Those that do NOT require use of EotS, despite what folks may think, include every spike/blade–based platforming section (yes, including the one in the Mystic Caves where you have lots of saws moving side–to–side very quickly on the ground), the corridor leading to and from the Mechanical Tower in the Central Hall (which you activate by wallrunning vertically and hanging from a platform), the wall platform activated in the save room where the Brute throws explosive dogs at you, and the section in the mystic caves where you activate a floor switch and then have to jump from stalactite to stalactite to reach the door you open.
    
44. As with most games of this type (such as DMC or GoW), the Prince has abilities in cutscenes that do not manifest in gameplay. This occurs more in T2T, but sections in WW include the ability to wallrun higher than ingame (see the cutscene where he tries to flee from the Dahaka after saying “It’s time to find a way off this rock” — you come to that area at the start of the Island section and cannot vertically wallrun to that particular ledge he does!), the front flipping jump before the final Boss battle, and the ability to survive huge falls (such as when the Dahaka throws the Sandwraith away — plummeting into water from that height kills the Prince ingame).
    
45. When going in to the final battle, before entering the cutscene go into first–person view so that you see the whole platform. No Kaileena there!
    
46. When coming out the mech tower as Sandwraith, you’ll have to go through the room where you fought the first Golem, and you will see another Golem now. If you ignore it and just continue on to the platform with 3 Keepers, you can look down from a window up there. You can’t see any monsters.
    
47. When you first try to pick up the Scorpion Sword for the first time, the Dahaka chases the Prince after knocking the sword into the pit, and the Prince escapes to a Portal Room. If you leave that room afterwards, and go to the room with the pit, you’ll see the Scorpion Sword still there on its stand even though it fell into the pit! You can run at it but the Prince will ignore it and never pick it up.
    
48. The game engine treats all voices in cutscenes (those that actually feature the Prince moving around or standing around, so this does not include him remembering things like when he killed the Empress, or recalling the Sandwraith getting removed by the Dahaka) as ‘music’. This includes speeches by the Prince, flapping wings and cries of the Griffin, etc.
    
49. Dante from DMC3 has instant access to his chosen weapons — on–the–fly switching. The Prince must go through the animation of unsheathing his weapons, but he has a form of Instant Holstering. If you wallrun or jump with your weapons out and ready, the Prince will suddenly have his weapons holstered the instant he catches onto a ledge without having to go through the motions of putting them away. Handy…