’Tis the season for console RPGs

[mithriltabby]

rhylar and Mimsy lent us Jade Empire, another Bioware game with Drew Karpyshyn writing. This one is Oriental fantasy, with plenty of inspiration from classic wuxia tales; one of the supporting characters, Black Whirlwind, is very faithful to Li Kui the Black Whirlwind from Outlaws of the Marsh, and has enough hilarious anecdotes that I’m certain that the shades of those teahouse storytellers from centuries ago were applauding when the game came out. John Cleese also does some fine voice acting as Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, who shows up on one of the side quests.

The story is quite engaging, enough that obsessivewoman hardly found any time for reading books while it was on screen. The engine itself is clearly the same as that of KotOR, right down to the too-small palette of faces for NPCs and a continuous-spectrum alignment indicator (ranging from Open Hand— emphasizing harmony and understanding your place in the world— to Closed Fist— emphasizing ambition and discord). There are some definitely PG themes in there; the onscreen action is on a par with a high-fantasy Hong Kong action film, but one can talk with courtesans, including one who is in a rather unpleasant situation.

It took me 33 hours to play through (on Student difficulty, which made almost all the fights quite easy), following through on all the side quests. There are some minigames where you pilot a flying machine (kind of a glider with gunpowder-rocket assist) that are somewhat reminiscent of Galaga, but one can skip most of them if your videogame reflexes aren’t up to the task.