Jade Empire

Jade Empire
Jade Empire game cover Jade Empire game cover
Developer(s)	BioWare
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Platform(s)	Xbox
Release	April 12, 2005
Genre(s)	RPG
Mode(s)	Single player

Jade Empire is an epic action RPG developed by Canadian developer BioWare. It was published by Microsoft and released on April 12, 2005 in North America.

Overview

Jade Empire is based in a mythical setting inspired by ancient China, and allows the player to progress through an adventure based on traditional martial arts. Unlike previous BioWare games, Jade Empire does not use a turn-based combat system. As the character progresses through the game they are able to discover new fighting styles (either martial arts, weapon or magic styles) and upon levelling, may enhance those styles. During combat the player can switch between styles by hitting a pre-assigned direction on the D-Pad. Instead of selecting an opponent to attack and watching the character, the player controls how the character dodges and selects attacks, either a Power Attack or a Normal Attack from whichever style they have currently selected. The traditional RPG stats are also done away with. They are replaced with just 3: Body, Mind, and Spirit. These primary stats control the secondary stats of Health, Focus, and Chi, respectively. By entering focus mode the player slows down time for everybody but their character, allowing them to attack at high speeds. Focus is used up whilst in focus mode but replenishes slowly over time. Chi is a character's spirit energy. They can use it to heal themselves, charge up a powerful chi strike that deals large damage, as well as using it as "mana" when casting spells in magic styles.

Jade Empire's dialogue and quest systems are handled in a way that is very similar to Bioware's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games for the Xbox and PC. Players can speak to NPC's in the game's towns (and other areas), asking questions for information to learn more about the world, the storyline, and other characters. Many of these NPC's will offer the player quests that can be completed for experience points and items. These quests often have more than one method of completion; depending on whether the player chooses to follow a "light path" or a "dark path" (referred to in the game as The Way of the Open Palm and The Way of the Closed Fist, respectively), they can choose to either respond to questions or take courses of action that are consistent with the philosophy they follow. For example, an NPC might seek the help of the player because he owes a gambling debt and fears for his safety. A player following The Way of the Open Palm would assist the NPC by giving him the money to pay off his debt, or perhaps reasoning with his assailants to get them to leave him alone. A player following The Way of the Closed Fist would simply betray this NPC by either informing his enemies of his whereabouts so they can collect from him, or even kill the NPC and take whatever money he happens to have on his person. The path that the player takes will affect certain dialogue trees, whether or not the player receives certain quests, and ultimately the overall ending to the game.

There is also a little vertical scrolling shooter included in Jade Empire as a mini-game. Once again you have your Health and Chi gauges. Chi is replenished by shooting enemies, and is used for whichever of the 3 special attacks you selected for the game. The yellow "Focus Spheres" will upgrade your primary cannon up to 3 times.

Jade Empire also features the constructed language Tho Fan developed by Wolf Wikeley, a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University of Alberta.

Philosophies

As mentioned previously, much of the game places a certain amount of emphasis on the two major philosophies in the world of the Jade Empire, the Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist. While these can easily be equated to a "Light Path" and "Dark Path", one who follows the Way of the Open Palm is not necessarily good, and one who follows the Way of the Closed Fist is not necessarily evil.

The "Way of the Open Palm" basically states that the key to maintaining the universe is by being in harmony with nature, one's surroundings, and one's station in life. As an effect of being in nature with one's surroundings, one is expected to actively assist in lessening the chaos in the area, through the assistance of lessening burdens. While this seems "Peaceful", the Way of the Open Palm is strict in another form: one should not act outside their station and purpose in life. This in turn, can lead to the dark side of the Way of the Open Palm.

Looking at the aforementioned example, a person with a gambling debt, an evil follower the Way of the Open Palm, judging that the debtor attempted to act outside of his station and thus violated the harmony of the universe, may give the debtor the money - in the form of a gamble the Open Palm follower rigged so the debtor would win. While this SEEMS to have helped out the debtor, it has in fact ENCOURAGED the debtor's gambling problem, only dooming the person to wind up in the same situation again - perhaps even worse next time (Similar to Knights of the Old Republic 2, where you can give a homeless man money, resulting in him being mugged.). The debtor is thus unable to act above his situation, whilst the short-term effects around him contribute to harmony.

On the other hand, the "Way of the Closed Fist" follows the philosophy that the purpose of life is to follow the ways of chaos - to face one's challenges head on, challenge one's station in life, and work to become self-reliant. The emphasis of the Way of the Closed Fist is combat, turmoil, and constantly challenging oneself, which is why many of those who are evil tend to be considered to follow the Way of the Closed Fist, in that they bring about chaos in the universe. However, such people can no more be classed as true followers of the Way of the Closed Fist than common thieves can be classed as revolutionaries.

Using the same example as shown before, a good follower of the Way of the Closed Fist would indeed inform the debtor's collectors where the debtor is hiding, but from the point of view of the follower, this is hardly a betrayal. Following the beliefs of the Closed Fist, it would be meaningless for the debtor to get out of the situation through someone else's help - instead, forcing him into a position wherein he is forced to deal with his problems directly allows him to grow, and thus become stronger than he would have been otherwise.

The more extreme variant of this, usually used by the ones who use the Way of the Closed Fist to justify slaughter, would be to kill the debtor oneself, then take the money the debtor had. The claim therein would be along the lines of "if the debtor was not strong enough to survive me, he didn't deserve to live." However, this is not truly following the Way of the Closed Fist, rather simply contributing to chaos for one's own benefit.

Plot

Introduction

The game casts you as a martial arts student under the tutelage of Master Li, head of the Two Rivers martial arts school. The name of this student is determined by your choice of character at the beginning of the game. The sex of the character you choose affects the romance options, see the 'Romance' section further down, but you get the same storyline no matter who you choose. You can decide to follow the path of the Open Fist or Closed Fist as the game progresses, but no matter which path you follow, you still get to choose from the Open or Closed fist ending at the close of the game.

Chapter 1: Two Rivers.

The student's training is rudely interrupted as he town of Two Rivers, where the martial arts school is located, comes under attack from an agressor in a strange ship, who summons ghosts to attack the student and their friends. The attacker is defeated by Master Li who comes to the students rescue, and reveals that the attacker was a Lotus Assassin, one of a mysterious order serving the Emperor, head of the Jade Empire. Master Li explains that student is the last of an order of Spirit Monks, that he himself is the brother of the Emperor, formerly known as the Glorious Strategist. He sends the student down to a cave beneath the school where they receive part of a Spirit Monk amulet and receive a vision of the Water Dragon, the entity whose 'death' at the hands of the Emperor resolved the Jade Empire's drought problem but left spirits roaming the land. Dawn Star, one of the students at the school, and a friend of the player, is kidnapped. The student rescues her but returns to find the village in flame, and Master Li kidnapped. The student, Dawn Star and Sagacious Zu, a man who they met in the swamps around the village, head off in a borrowed flying machine towards the Imperial City, where Master Li has been taken.

Chapter 2: Tien's Landing

The student and their party crash land their machine in Tien's Landing, and, through completing a series of endeavours, manage to pick up a new flyer and a wind map that will getthem to the Imperial City. The flyer is taken from the camp of Gao the Greater, the father of the disgruntled student from the first chapter, who also dies at the student's hands. Along their way they encounter:a mysterious woman clad in black, known as Silk Fox, an inventor known as Mad Kang, Cha Kai, a monster charged with protecting the amulet the Spirit Monk now holds, Black Whirlwind, a boisterous fighter, Henpecked Hou, a baker who teaches the student his 'Drunken Master' fighting style and Sky, a rogue out to avenge his daughter's death. All of these characters join the student's party, with the exception of Silk Fox who promises to meet with them when they make it to the Imperial City.

Chapter 3: Imperial City.

The student and their party land in Imperial City and meet up with Silk Fox who is revealed to be Heavenly Lily, daughter of the Emperor. She is unconvinced that her father's is behind the sickness the plagues the land, and that Death's Hand, the black armour clad head of the Lotus Assassins is responsible. The identity of Death's Hand is unknown, although he did participate in the slaughter at the Spirit Monk temple. The student and their party infiltrate the Lotus Assassin's training ground and recover the last part of the Spirit Monk amulet, though Sagacious Zu, who is revealed to be a former Lotus Assassin who turned against his masters, is killed by Death's Hand. Silk Fox takes the students to the Imperial Palace to confront her father, the Emperor.

Chapter 4: Imperial Palace.

The student and their party fight their way through the Emperor's throne-room where it is revealed, much to Silk Fox's shock, that her father, the Emperor, is responsible for the illness plaguing the land. He is aware that the Water Dragon's defeat is stopping the dead reaching the underworld but just doesn't care and has now become almost immortal. Neverthless, with the pieces of the amulet all together, the student is able to defeat the Emperor and rescues Master Li. Who promptly kills him.

Chapter 5: Spirit Monk Temple.

It transpires that Master Li had never really changed his ways. He wanted the power of the Spirit Monk amulet and the Water Dragon for himself, so he was infinitely patient and, over the course of twenty years, trained the student to defeat the Emperor. So having killed the student and taken the amulet, Master Li now rules as head of the empire. However, the student is not yet beyond hope, and the Water Dragon's fading spirit is able to restore him to life.

Chapter 6: Defending the temple.

Unfortunately, Master Li is also aware of the students resurrection and sends the Imperial Army to the Spirit Monk temple, where the student and their party are now. The student and his party manage to defeat the army, as well as Death's Hand, who is revealed to be the enslaved spirit of the Emperor's other brother. The student either chooses to free Death's Hand or enslave him himself.

Chapter 7: Back to the palace.

The student and their party fly back to the palace to confront the Emperor. As they make their way through the palace they discover that the way the Emperor stopped the drought was by cutting open the Water Dragon's corpse and letting the water that flows from it feed the empire. The student chooses either to destroy the Water Dragon's body, thus freeing her spirit and allowing the dead to find the underworld, or taking her power for their own use. If the student chooses to take the dragon's power, they must kill any members of their party who disagree. The student eventually reaches Master Li and defeats him in combat, and the fate of the Empire is resolved, one way or another.

Endings

If the student chooses to free the Water Dragon's spirit, then the end sequence shows the people of the Jade Empire cheering the student and their party. If the student chooses to enslave the Water Dragon then the end sequence shoes the Lotus Assassins kneeling at the feet of the student. After this end sequence, there are short text summaries detailing the fate of any characters who survived the adventure. These vary depending upon whether or not the student chose to enslave or free the Water Dragon, and also what romance options the student pursued.

Dawn Star: She either settles down with the student, settles down on her own, rules the empire with the student, or if the student talked her into a closed fist philosophy and abandonded her, wanders the Jade Empire alone.

Silk Fox: If the student does not romance Silk Fox, she will become Empress of the Jade Empire. If the student does romance Silk Fox and the student is male, the student and Silk Fox will rule the empire fairly, or with a rod of iron. If the student is female, Silk Fox will either rule the empire fairly with her lover, sorry, 'companion', or will again rule with a rod of iron, both the student and Silk Fox dressing up in the Silk Fox costume to silent dissenters.

Sky: Sky will roam the empire as a do-gooding rogue.

Black Whirlwind: Unsurprisingly, Black Whirlwind will roam the empire cutting heads off.

Henpecked Hou: Henpecked Hou goes back to trying to spend as little time with his wife as possible.

Chai Ka: Chai Ka will either return to the heavens, freeing the girl who's body he inhabits to live her life. Or the girl will end up wandering the empire, out of her mind.

Death's Hand: Death's Hand will either become more evil, mutating so badly that his armour cannot hold his demonic form, or he will spend the rest of his days wandering the empire as a crusader for good, in order to make up for his past misdeeds.

Romance

Jade Empire gives the player-character the option to form a romantic relationship with a number of the non-player characters, including characters of the same sex. Successfully romancing a character results in them standing outside your tent on the eve of the battle against the golems, whereupon, unless you choose to reject them, your character and the NPC will lean in to kiss (although if the character is of the same sex, the camera will pan away before the actual kiss itself). Dawn Star is not directly open Male characters can romance Dawn Star, Silk Fox or Sky. Female characters can romance Sky or Silk Fox. Male characters can also romance both Dawn Star and Silk Fox at the same time. If this is the case, the cutscene and dialog at the tent implies that Dawn Star and Silk Fox spent some time together in their grief and lead you off for a menange-a-trois.

Whichever character you romance, romancing also allows you to persuade them to follow a particular way of thinking. For example, the normally calm and collected Dawn Star can be persuaded to stand up for herself and become an altogether less mellow person, effectively following the path of the closed fist.

Criticisms

Although generally well liked by reviewers and players alike (even winning 2005 Xbox Game of the Year from IGN.com) some elements attracted comment. One was the problem of loading screens, a problem shared by Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic. Some effort was taken to combat this, such as having the “team gathering/home base” areas separated from the main “town/village.” Going there would bring up a mini-loading bar, rather than a whole new load screen. Also, some areas incorporate the use of an elevator device to mask the game loading to a new area; these include the Imperial Palace and the Headquarters of the Lotus Assassins. This serves to remove drag time in waiting for the game to load, but one area of the game that draws constant attention to long and frequent load times is the arena sequence, in which the player must endure a loading screen before and after every match.

Another area that attracted some concern was the ease of the battle system. Even on higher difficulty settings the tactics are rather facile and tend not to change. For instance, the player attacks until the opponent blocks, the player then uses the special attack to break though the block, and the process is thus repeated. Though one could argue that certain enemies being immune to certain styles adds a layer of depth, it is really only a matter of switching to a different style and then adopting the same principle of attack, wait for block, then special attack.

Some have claimed that the game is too short, which can be true if one is to play the game and undertake only the mandatory quests. Several of the game's quests are optional. According to the developers, the playtime is approximately 26 hours (assuming that no dialogue or cut-scenes are skipped and all the quests are undertaken.) Also, compared to Bioware's most famous title Knights of the Old Republic, there is little variety in locations (for example, Jade Empire only has one major city and two small towns).

Bioware was criticised for having expropriated the folklore of Asia while excising the Asian people themselves. Such critics note that, despite the game having some 350 superficially Asian characters, Bioware employed only one Asian voice actor (Kim Mai Guest). In that Jade Empire was developed primarily for a mainstream (some would say white) Anglo-American audience, then passed on to Asian-Americans and Asians abroad as representative of Asian culture, Jade Empire could be seen as an example of ethnocentrism. Others note that the character models themselves portray a very western sense of Asian-ness.

Awards

• Included on Game Informer's "Top 50 Games of 2005" list

Characters

For a list of characters in Jade Empire click here.

External links

• Official Jade Empire website
• Bioware website
• Jade Empire at MobyGames
• Review at The Adrenaline Vault
• Netjak Review
• Gamespot Review
• 1up Review
• Tea Leaves Review
• IGN Review
• On stereotyping in "Asian" character models