Jade Empire (SE) - the best game BioWARE made to date

[Domi]

I wish I could beat you to it with my female character, but I don't think so. MoTB is my next endeavor once I finish loving Bishop via Toolset in OC!

[Avenger]

Hmm. Is the composer of JE's music the same as the composer of ToEE's music???

There are some quite similar scores (obviously not the oriental themes).

[Skandrae]

I loved the dialogue in this game, most of it was hilarious...but the game still kinda disappointed me. I personally thought the fighting was bunk. Every single enemy in the game, from the first grunt to the final Fu Manchued boss, fell to the same flip-punch-flip strategy, even on hard. I can't speak for Jade Empire mode though. I understand that there's going to be a sequel-what would be awesome is if they had a good-evil meter seperate from the closed-open fist meter. It didn't really work well, for example, they specifically tell you at one point that, when encountered with slavers selling slaves, the open fist thing to do is kill the slavers and free the slaves, and the closed thing to do is force the slaves to fight the slavers for their freedom. I picked 'kill the slaver, take the slave and her free daughter and sell them yourself' option and I still got closed fist points, which is obviously wrong.

[Avenger]

Dunno, i failed to play through the beach fight in Jade Master level.

This isn't my type of game

[Avenger]

"I picked 'kill the slaver, take the slave and her free daughter and sell them yourself' option and I still got closed fist points, which is obviously wrong."

 

What's the problem here? That you got no open fist points?

But you simply took someone's 'property' and sold it yourself.

This is as closed a fist as it will ever get

 

 

If you wanted to say, i still got open fist points, then i would have to agree.

Sadly i didn't try these options, so i can only guess.

[jester]

@fell to the same flip-punch-flip strategy,

 

reminds me of good old Karateka which only needed a foot swipe for the entire game.

[Skandrae]

"I picked 'kill the slaver, take the slave and her free daughter and sell them yourself' option and I still got closed fist points, which is obviously wrong."

 

What's the problem here? That you got no open fist points?

But you simply took someone's 'property' and sold it yourself.

This is as closed a fist as it will ever get

 

 

If you wanted to say, i still got open fist points, then i would have to agree.

Sadly i didn't try these options, so i can only guess.

Well, no. My point wasn't that I got closed fist points. My point is that the game blatantly gives that situation in an example at the beginning of the game, and says which way was closed fist. Closed fist is supposedly 'not evil', just like open fist was supposedly 'not good'. But the way they did things, that was kinda what they seemed like. You should've been penalized for doing things like that.

[Avenger]

From what i got they still used the 'evil' and 'good' alignments, but in a way that one 'good' and one 'evil' deed wouldn't quench each other.

You could have 'mastered' the good way when doing x number of good deeds, regardless of the number of evil deeds. Theoretically, you could have mastered both ways, if there are enough events.

[Skandrae]

My point isn't how they were handled, it's that they ran contrary to what the game said. I don't remember the exact words, but at the beginning when they explained the philosophies they stressed that there was a difference between 'closed fist' and evil, and 'open fist' and good. They stated that the monks did not do good or evil. Closed fist was supposedly a kind of the-strong-survive philosopy in which your character was supposed to respect and support the stronger, like letting the slaves battle for freedom in my earlier example. However, evil is more self-serving, which is what I did (take the slaves and sell them myself) which is in no appreciable way following that philosophy. There was a similiar difference between 'open fist' and good. My problem was, the game didn't reward you for good RP and picking the the closed/open fist options instead of the blatant good/evil options. It didn't even differentiate when you made the choice, though it clearly outlined the differences. IMO, next game they should penalize you by taking away closed/open fist points by picking good/evil options, but have those options reward you better money/experience wise. That would make for much better RP.

[BigRob]

One could argue that killing a slave master and selling the slaves on is an illustration to the slaves that their status as property only exists in the minds of others, so all they have to do to free themselves is to walk away (murdering anyone standing in their way at the same time).

 

Of course, there is a lot of overlap between good/evil and open/closed fist, but oddly, I've been pleasantly surprised at the number of times so far that there has been a distinction in my game. I guess despite the explanation, I expected it to default to a measure of the number of random murders you commit, as in KOTOR (where it did make some sense).

[Skandrae]

Too-shay.

I'm certain I could dredge up some other examples from memory though...

 

But that would require something like work, which I am averse to in all its many forms. Suffice to say A.) what you just said COULD be interpreted that way....but that is a rather large jump and personally, isn't the first conclusion I'd think the slaves would make. Plus, I refer back to the fact that earlier in the game you are GIVEN the answer to that particular situation as an example, and shown the closed fist/ open fist approaches to it.

And there's no way you could apply that kind of thinking to all thee situations in the game. It really was just good/evil given another name. I could give you dozens of examples...

Regardless, I still think there should a good/evil dynamic to oppose the dynamic of the philosophies. That would just be really, really cool as it would open the possiblity of choices that were both closed fist and good, or open fist and evil, such as slaughtering

a group of unarmed slavers, or destroying the slavers' base with innocent slaves still inside.

[Domi]

Divorcing the martial style philosophy from the everydays' perception of good-evil does sound like a good idea, but I am not sure how it could have been handled. Perhaps, they should have left the Open Palm-Close Fist stuff to the combination of the player's choice at level up, books in the game and the discussions with the actual martial artists, and affected your prowess and techniques accessed. While the Good-Evil slider was on the developper's mercy and depended on the 'freeing the slaves' things and affected the story-line and dialogue choices.

[yarpen]

My dream is: Jade Empire with Samurai's Champloo soundtrack. Is there a possibility of implenting there alternative music?

[CrazeeFFan]

Just wondering, but has there been any official information about a sequel being worked on? I really enjoyed Jade Empire - it's one of the first games in a long while that I have, actually.

[Guest bluenose]

Just wondering, but has there been any official information about a sequel being worked on? I really enjoyed Jade Empire - it's one of the first games in a long while that I have, actually.

 

Jade Empire 2 was on a list of games Bioware were "considering" for development, but that was before they were bought by EA.