Last
year, Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic brought the Star Wars franchise to a
whole new level by offering a free-form RPG experience and one of the most
compelling Star Wars storylines in recent years (including the recent crop of
movie prequels). The game went on to win several awards, including Game of the
Year from several different publications. Now, Bioware is preparing Jade
Empires, a new RPG set in the magical world of Chinese and Japanese mythology.
The game will feature Bioware’s unique brand of storytelling and non-linear
conversations (as found in Knights of the Old Republic), and a whole new combat
system. If all goes according to plan, Jade Empire should be one of the best
RPGs (not to mention games) to hit the Xbox next year.
You start out the
game by configuring the attributes of your character. The stats are divided
into three different sections, Body, Mind and Spirit. These are important not
only in the combat portions of the game, but also important to your interactions
with NPCs. If your character has high body stats and is pretty tough, then
they’ll be pretty good at intimidating NPCs, if their spirit stats are high,
then they’ll be naturally persuasive and charismatic, and so on.
The new combat
system is real-time, meaning that you perform your attacks like you would in an
action game. You can dodge and evade enemy attacks.
