Jade Empire - Definition and Overview

Jade Empire is an epic action roleplaying game being developed by Canadian developer BioWare. BioWare's past titles include the critically acclaimed Baldur's Gate series and Neverwinter Nights, as well as the extremely popular Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Jade Empire is based in a mythical China that never was, 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 levels up they gain fighting styles (either martial arts, weapon or magic styles). During combat the player can switch between styles at the touch of a button. Instead of selecting an opponent to attack and watching the character, the player controls how the character attacks, similar to a fighting game such as Mortal Kombat. The traditional RPG stats are also done away with. They are replaced with 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 characters 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. It is this balance of fast fighting combat and RPG strategy that will hopefully create an interesting hybrid game.

BioWare have announced the release date for America as April 14 2005, with releases in other countries following soon after.

External links

• Official Jade Empire website (http://jade.bioware.com)
• Bioware website (http://www.bioware.com)