Jade Empire is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare, originally published by Microsoft Game Studios in 2005 as an Xbox exclusive. It was later ported to Microsoft Windows personal computers (PC) and published by 2K in 2007. Later ports to macOS (2008) and mobile platforms (2016) were handled respectively by TransGaming and Aspyr. Set in a world inspired by Chinese mythology, players control the last surviving Spirit Monk on a quest to save their tutor Master Li and defeat the dark forces behind his kidnapping. The Spirit Monk is guided through a linear narrative, completing quests and engaging in action-based combat. With morality-based dialogue choices during conversations, the player can impact both story and gameplay progression in various ways.

Development of Jade Empire began in 2001 as a dream project for company co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, who acted as the game's executive producers. Their first original role-playing intellectual property, the game reused the morality system from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, but switched to a real-time combat system. The game's many elements such as its combat system, the world and script, the constructed language created for the game, and the musical score by Jack Wall drew influence from Chinese history, culture and folklore. Upon release, it received generally positive reviews but sold below expectations. It was followed by a PC version, which provided the basis for future ports and itself met with positive reviews.

Gameplay

thumb|left|The protagonist faces enemies during an early portion of the game.

Jade Empire is an action role-playing game (RPG) in which players take control of a character most frequently dubbed the "Spirit Monk"; the Spirit Monk has six available pre-set character archetypes with different statistics: these statistics are split into health, magic energy (chi) and Focus, used to slow down time during combat or use weapons. The characters are divided into three male and three female characters, with a fourth male character being available in later versions.

Design

Art director Matt Goldman took inspiration from multiple eras of China's history when designing various aspects of the world, focusing between the Han and Ming dynasties. The environments were modeled on landscape artwork from the Song dynasty, while the color palette drew from the green-hued art of the Tang dynasty. For ancient artifacts based in an ancient civilization, Goldman drew inspiration from bronze artifacts dating from the Shang and Zhou periods. The wild areas were directly inspired by the Huangshan region. Different regions of the game were designed to reflect the differing social classes present in the Jade Empire. In addition to its Chinese inspiration, Goldman drew styling elements for both clothing and scenery from Japan, Thailand, Tibet, the Khmer Empire, and unspecified areas of South and West Asia. The monsters, while taking inspiration from brief descriptions in Asian literature, were mostly original creations for the game's world.

Jade Empire: Special Edition

A version for Microsoft Windows personal computers (PC) began development at BioWare due to demand from their strong PC-based community. While developing the port, BioWare upgraded hundreds of different textures by hand; additional content including new fighting styles, new enemies, and the seventh character previously available in the Limited Edition of the Xbox version; refined the enemy and followers' artificial intelligence and reworked the controls for a keyboard and mouse. While the team had the option of publishing the title through Microsoft Game Studio, Microsoft were focused on developing games for Windows Vista alone, which clashed with BioWare's wishes to make the game available to a wide audience. For this reason, the team developed the PC version themselves and sought out a different publisher. In a 2015 article, Mike Williams of USgamer said, "Jade Empire was such a unique game for BioWare, but it's one the studio never followed up on."

During the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Jade Empire with "Role-Playing Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Character Performance - Female" (Kim Mai Guest as Dawn Star), as well as nominations for "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction", "Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition", and "Outstanding Character Performance - Male".

Sales

Upon its release, Jade Empire debuted at #3 on The NPD Group's video game sales chart for the month of April 2005. Writing for GameSpot, Tor Thorsen noted that its third-place finish came "despite [its] being released in the middle of April". It also secured second place on that month's Xbox chart, behind the debut of Doom 3 on the platform. In May, the game fell to last place on NPD's multiplatform top 20, and to seventh in the Xbox rankings. It was absent from both lists by the following month. According to NPD, the game's North American sales surpassed 385,000 units by May 2006.

In the United Kingdom, Jade Empire debuted at #7 on Chart-Track's multiplatform sales list for the week ending April 23. David Jenkins of Gamasutra called this "an unremarkable opening", and suggested that its sales had been damaged by competition from the newly released Unreal Championship 2. It fell to 12th place in its second week, and to 20th in its third. IGNs staff wrote of this decline, "The Bioware-developed game has been well reviewed over the past month, but that hasn't helped it from rapidly dropping down the charts." It was absent from Chart-Track's multiplatform top 40 by its fourth week of release. Conversely, on the firm's sales list for Xbox games, Jade Empire opened in first place and held the position for its debut 14 days. It fell to #5 in its third week, but remained in the top 10 until the week ending June 18. By the end of 2005, Jade Empires sales totaled 45,000 copies in the United Kingdom, a performance characterized as substandard by Eurogamers Kristan Reed.

As of July 2005, sales of Jade Empire had reached 500,000 units. BioWare's Greg Zeschuk later lamented the decision to release the game for Xbox, rather than as an Xbox 360 launch title. Speaking in 2013, he noted that "game sales are down [right now] because people are waiting for new consoles, and we released Jade Empire into that kind of window." Zeschuck concluded that "it would've been great to put off a bit and polish the game a bit more." However, BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk stated in September 2011: "It's an IP, it's a setting that we were really passionate about, and we still are. Both Greg and I were big believers in the IP... We're just looking for the right way to deploy it." In 2009, GamesRadar included Jade Empire among the games "with untapped franchise potential", commenting: "The original game had all the trappings of franchise material with engrossing characters, magnificent settings, and a unique take on martial arts-fueled RPG combat. But until hard evidence of a sequel's existence materializes, we'll continue yearning for BioWare's one-off hit to attain franchise status."

Dakota Grabowski of GameZone listed Silk Fox and Death's Hand as #10 and #8 on their list of top ten BioWare created squadmates respectively. Kimberley Wallace of Game Informer included Wild Flower in her list of best BioWare characters; she called her unique among Jade Empires cast of interesting characters and said "part of what makes her such a delight is seeing this child's interpretation and perspective on all the complex issues you face and what the spirits are telling her to say. As the journey goes on, it becomes a game of the two disparate perspectives talking through her, but part of the fight is trying to give Wild Flower the freedom and life she deserves." Jason MacIsaac from EP Daily also rated Wild Flower as among nine of the best BioWare characters.

Notes

References

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