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Role Playing (Games)

Jade Empire 2 in the Works 34

Posted by Zonk from the we'll-all-get-a-kick-out-of-it dept.
San Jose Mercury News reporter Dean Takahashi shared a small story over the holiday that will be music to the ears of RPG fans. BioWare is apparently already hard at work on a Jade Empire 2 . "I talked with someone who saw code for Jade Empire 2. It's coming for the Xbox 360, and it's real. It's not much as far as scoops go, but I'm on vacation. What do you expect? Jade Empire was BioWare's second big game for the Xbox, following the exclusive Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic title in 2003. It will be interesting to see if Jade Empire 2 will remain an exclusive for the Xbox 360, now that Electronic Arts has agreed to acquire BioWare/Pandemic."
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Jade Empire 2 in the Works More

Jade Empire 2 in the Works

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  • Or at least WinXP?
    No?
    Bad.
  • ... as long as they've got John Cleese in it again. That whole scene was just tremendous. Foolish foreign person!

  • Open hand vs. closed fist. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by steveo777 ( 183629 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @02:50PM (#21886078) Homepage Journal
    One problem I've been having with every one of these action RPGs (KotOR, Mass Effect,..) is that Bioware claims that you don't have to be inherently evil to go down the 'bad guy' path, but in Jade Empire it was the worst. They said it wouldn't be good vs evil, but every time you end up making that very choice. Inherently Good vs obviously evil. Like the end of JE. Kill the dragon and enslave your friends, or don't. Even if you spend the entire game being a bad guy, saving the dragon pops you half-way up the other side. Just doesn't seem to be as blurred as Bioware wants it to be.
    • Lion Head did a pretty good job in Black and White 2 balancing evil with good. It's pretty easy to be neutral unless you're a completely pacifistic or a war lord/dick.

    • The game was offcourse heavily based on KOTOR and in that universe, at least as far a jedi are concerned, you have no greys, only black and white. Evil and good.

      While Bioware talks a lot, they are just a mortal game company and as such they are no different from The Sims where your sim needs total luxury to be happy or every shooter wargame where enemies never ever surrender or retreat.

      What they wanted and what game mechanics allow just don't match up. They talked a lot in the game about how the "good" pa

      • I think you might be reading a bit too far into what I was saying. I had read a few interviews and articles that explained that Bioware wanted to accomplish what you were saying. Closed Fist can make people stronger, Open Palm could harm in the long run. These things make sense depending on the situation. But, there wasn't any 'reward' for taking the middle path. That's not even my point.

        They wrote the story. Anything could have happened in their world. Now, it's not our fault they couldn't come up

      • I think you might be misinterpreting the difference between the two paths. The game discussed a sort of chain of being very heavily, and the two ways of life were different takes on that chain of being.

        The Way of the Open Palm was all about working within your "station," following orders of those above you (without question) and aiding those below you. Its basis was that your station was preordained and you had some inescapable destiny. It was for that reason that you would help those below you in the

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by amuro98 ( 461673 )
          If you look at the philosophies behind religions like Bhuddism, as well as the martial arts and other practices, they all pretty much say the same thing. Your goal in life should be to develop and improve yourself spiritually. However, the normal state of the universe is for things not to change, and eventually stagnate. So, it takes a lot of work and effort to change.

          If open hand dictates you should accept your place and do nothing outside of it, then that goes against the real reason to practice martia
        • I have completed Jade Empire about four times, and I don't really understand where you got those ideas from.

      • If you delve a little deeper into the ideas that this game half-mentioned and then forgot to actually implement you might get the idea that this closed fist talk about making people stronger seems an awfull lot like excuses. A load of bullshit to cover up their selfish actions. Oh yeah I stole from you and killed your family but really I wanted to make you stronger.

        The game actually gives you the choice of not saving a town in order to "make it stronger" (which requires you to actively do something, and not

      • What they wanted and what game mechanics allow just don't match up. They talked a lot in the game about how the "good" path could actually be harmfull and the "evil" path could be about giving people strength BUT it never panned out.

        This isn't a problem with game mechanics but with the script. The premise, as explained by Smiling Mountain at the beginning, was that Open Palm was Law and Closed Fist Chaos. A practitioner of Open Palm would strive to put everything to its place; at best, this achieves har

    • Disclaimer: I loved Jade Empire and am excited for the sequel.

      Everything up until the ending was balanced pretty well I thought. And actually, that end-game decision is actually useful in seeing multiple endings with only one play through. I was good the whole game and then saw the good guy ending. I then rolled back a few saves so I could make the other decision and kill my friends or whatever and then got to see the bad guy ending. I don't think that's the proper way to do it honestly, but it was usef

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by amuro98 ( 461673 )
      That pretty much turned me off from the game. In the beginning the descriptions of Open Hand and Closed Fist sounded good - and seemed to allow for some wonderfully grey areas, but then the game quickly degenerated into forcing you into either The Dark Side/The Light Side from KOTOR. At least with Jedi, the sharp dichotomy makes sense. But in Jade Empire? Not so much - especially since the game explicitly says that "closed fist is not an evil path". Ok, but then why are all the "closed fist" choices cl
    • Have you actually played Mass Effect as a renegade?

      I thought they did a great job here making the renegade choices not senesless puppy kicking/baby eating in nature on a whole.

      I agree wholeheartedly with you that KotOR dark side and JE closed fist were pretty "stupid evil" though.

         
      • I actually have played ME through as (mostly) a renegade, Earth born, ruthless. I like the system in ME because it doesn't seem to reward or penalize your choices, other than opening different missions and such (no gems that can only be used by the mostly evil or good). And I liked the way that you just had to be a dick most of the time, but you were rarely truly evil.

        My beef with that is that in order to be a paragon you had to be 'pro alien' and to be a renegade you had to be 'pro human'. To such an ex

    • One problem I've been having with every one of these action RPGs (KotOR, Mass Effect,..) is that Bioware claims that you don't have to be inherently evil to go down the 'bad guy' path, but in Jade Empire it was the worst. They said it wouldn't be good vs evil, but every time you end up making that very choice.

      Yup, it was supposed to be Law (Open Palm) vs. Chaos (Closed Fist), or so Smiling Mountain explained at the beginning, but every time it got down to Good vs. Evil. Nothing wrong with making a black

  • I don't really see the point of Bioware keeping the game "exclusive." I would think that Bioware, or any company really, would want to reach as many players as possible. The best way to do that is to make the game as cross-platform as possible. That is, to find a good balance between time/money and cross-platform-ness (not a word, I know). That's why all those garbage movie tie-in games are for as many platforms as possible - maximize the number of people buying it by letting them buy it on the platform

  • Hopefully the sequel will fix the other big problem of the first game - the combat system.

    While it seemed to offer more depth and choices on the surface, you quickly realize that weapons were absolutely worthless since they used up chi just to use them. Quickly maxing out one of the melee forms meant you could just button-mash your way through just about every fight. Ok, so it wasn't supposed to be a free-form fighter like Tekken, but geeze, I really had more hopes for the combat system than "punch punch
    • I would have agreed with you if you had said that the combat system was flawed, but saying it was flawed because of the melee attacks? I went with the weapons all the way (not on ghosts of course) and would have said the same thing: charge up the weapons and power through. I guess the fact that you can approach fighting in a few different ways adds depth to the fighting system, but on the whole it could use a great deal of improvement. Still, a very fun game.
  • "I talked with someone who claims to have seen code for Jade 2".

    How about: "You talked with someone who is full of crap?"

    There is no evidence for Jade Empire 2. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Given its sales figures, there is every reason to expect there will NOT be a Jade Empire 2.

    This isn't news - and it's not even good enough to be a rumour.
    • Oh, did it sell badly then? I gave up on the PC "Special Edition" after about 10-12 hours. Maybe that was too soon but I thought the combat was horrible in it and the story, though obviously only the early part I saw, was a total cliche.

      The thing with the combat was there were, from memory, three schools of combat each best used against a particular foe. Actually specializing in a single style would have made the game unplayable for your main character so you had to level up all three schools more or less

      • I'm not sure about your experience, but there was only four forms that you needed. The one that paralyzes humans, the one that steals chi, pick any hand-to-hand and any weapon form and you're done. Every human can be paralyzed. Demons can only really be hurt by weapons, and the chi stealing form refills your chi. Using any other combo just upped your difficulty. But even then, unless you're facing a lot of demons, every fight was rather simple.
  • Get to work on KotOR3. When that comes out (or maybe fable 2) and i can get an Xbox 360 with an built in HD-DVD drive i'll buy one.

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