You’re absolutely correct, of course. Jade Empire is exactly the game that Bioware wanted to create and, more than likely, exactly the sort of game that the market wants.

I have played Spiderweb software games, but I haven’t checked them out recently. Thanks for the reminder.

Don’t worry about it — welcome to the weblog. I read your review as well, and thought it was interesting. I’ll share this comment there as well, but since I’m here…

I think the key to understanding Jade Empire is to look at it from a strictly commercial standpoint. Bioware is a company that has made succesful products by combining good technology with other people’s intellectual property and licenses (D&D, Star Wars, etc.) Jade Empire is about more than just telling a good story and creating a game, it’s about Bioware trying to create their own, wholly owned intellectual property. It’s actually a pretty big gamble on their part. If they succeed, though, they’ll be able to take treasure baths for a few years.

Given that, it doesn’t surprise me at all that they are being conservative in terms of some of their gameplay choices. They _need_ to dilute some aspects of the game to appeal to as many people as possible precisely because this is their own IP. They need to get it in front of as many eyes as possible, to create demand for future games in the “Jade Empire Universe.” (This is also, in fact, why the game takes place in the “Jade Empire Universe” rather than in “ancient China.” — the former is trademarkable, the latter is not).

All of that being said, I don’t necessarily disagree with your characterization of their design decisions as “non-risky,” and I tried to touch on that in my review.

Have you looked at any of Jeff Vogel / Spiderweb Software’s games? I think he’s doing a lot more of the Ultima-style, character-driven, risk-taking storytelling that you might be pining for. I beta-tested Geneforge 3, and I think it’s right up your alley. You should check it out. (http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/)

The reviews I saw for JE seemed to indicate it was miles and away beyond KotOR, or any preceding CRPGs in story, combat, and innovative gameplay. I haven’t found that to be true. Have I enjoyed playing it? Sort of. Were my expectations too high going into it? Probably. Do I hate it? No, but I do find it sadly lacking in the very qualities I saw trumpeted in early reviews.

Again, sorry for the attitude.

Most of the best games I’ve played recently are well implemented, but do not really introduce any truly new mechanics. IMHO there are good reasons why this kind of innovation is rare, and in general high production values and good gameplay and packaging are more important and innovation in most cases.

Does anyone actually consider JE to be “revolutionarily great”? Most of the high reviews I’ve seen praise it not because it reinvents the wheel (or invents a newer, rounder one), but because it is implementing the same gameplay everyone wanted, with great style.

That’s okay; not every game has to be a daring experiment.

It does what it sets out to do very well, though, and I’m having a lot of fun playing it.

To preempt CorvusE’s semi-snotty “how many RPGs have you played?”, I’ve been playing pretty much as many RPGs as I can get my hands on for the past 20 years or so. I’ve played better RPGs in the past, but I’m still really happy I bought JE.

The characters are extremely well done and will stick around as some of the most interesting personalities ever created in an RPG. The Black Whirlwind should get a game for himself!

Your dialog choices are also very cool, I have yet to find a situation where I have to pick a response my character wouldn’t want to say. Excellent stuff.

I also love the combat system, in KotOR I spent like 50% of my time either watching the paused game or working the horrible inventory system – Jade is nothing like this – the combat is reasonably fast and the difficulty levels make hell of a difference. If you feel underchallenged, Grand Master mode is very very hard, not quite as hard as the highest level of Ninja Garden perhaps, but close.

If you own an Xbox, get this game. It’s as good as it gets for an Action RPG for the Xbox.

When you are running around lost, you can hit “b” to jump and roll to break up the boredom of running around lost. This isn’t quite as good as the Ratchet and Clank flippy jump or wrench wacking. But I’ll take it.