It’s looking like the troubled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake has lost one of its most important assets: Yuri Lowenthal, the voice actor who played the prince, famously narrated the entirety of the original 2003 game, and is currently renowned for playing Peter Parker’s Spider-Man in the excellent Insomniac games.

Yesterday, Tom Henderson, currently one of the most trusted voices in gaming leaks, reported that you should “forget everything you know” about the Prince of Persia remake — and revealed that Lowenthal would no longer be in the role.

Ubisoft would not tell me whether he’s still attached to the project; Lowenthal’s agent said he can’t comment because he’s under an NDA. Those non-denials are not confirmation, but since it should be pretty easy to confirm that he’s still attached without breaking an NDA, it sure sounds like something’s changed!

Switching to a different actor would be surprising because Lowenthal was not only cast but actually appeared in the remake’s 2020 announcement trailer and helped its initial press push, tweeting, “Thank you, Ubisoft Mumbai and Ubisoft Pune, for helping me to rewind time for real.”

Prince of Persia series creator Jordan Mechner replied to him on Twitter that same day, revealing that Lowenthal had done motion capture work for the new game as well — he got to wield this wooden Dagger of Time in the process. In 2021, Lowenthal told USA Today that the whole remake cast got to work together to capture the game’s performances “like we were doing a play or shooting a movie,” not just voice sessions in a recording booth. He made it sound like the game was done, just having some difficulties in postproduction.

At the time, he also suggested the game was going to “keep all of Jordan Mechner’s brilliant writing” and thanked Ubisoft for not picking a “younger, hotter actor” instead of him. (Insomniac infamously replaced the original face of Lowenthal’s Peter Parker in Spider-Man with a younger, more boyish actor for its remaster and later games.)

Now, Henderson is reporting the remake has been entirely remade from scratch, with what one source says is a more “realistic approach” and that it has new combat and parkour animations that required new mo-cap.

The original Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of my very favorite games, and I’m not sure I’d buy a remake without Yuri Lowenthal.