Jade Empire

Long story short, the Dark Side and the Way of the Closed Fist could both be used for good, in a Dark Is Not Evil/Good Is Not Nice sort of way, but you never quite get the chance in KOTOR 1 or Jade Empire. You really should in JE, given how much time is devoted to explaining how it would theoretically be done, but the game never really reacts to those choices any differently from you just being a bastard. You never get to justify your own actions in dialogue, and the game actually awards you *more* Closed Fist points for taking the most dickish options, *then* rewards you with gear that requires you to reach a certain tier of Closed Fistedness, without any regard for how you got there. It's totally inconsistent.

Regarding The Old Republic: it's very hit and miss overall, because like any MMO it's got that 'written by committee' feel to it. I'd say it actually does a much better job of showing shades of gray than KOTOR 1 (Jolee talks about it, but he's not morally gray at all), and while the Sith Emperor is an ultra-Generic Doomsday Villain and just not that interesting until the Post-50 content, that really isn't a huge part of the game unless you're playing a Jedi Knight. The Sith Warrior and especially the Imperial Agent storylines are great, with branching paths and reactive storytelling, and it's a shame so many fans of this kind of classic western RPG have never seen them because they're turned off by MM Os. I mean, I get it. I hate most MM Os myself. TOR's...kinda worth it, though.

Anyway, wrong thread for that. I always thought Jade Empire could've really benefited from another hub after Tien's Landing and the Imperial City— maybe another smaller chapter in between going to the Spirit World and fighting the Empire? Being launched into the siege at the Spirit Temple and the second assault on the palace just felt abrupt, somehow. It's a fair-sized game, but the lack of locational diversity and not having one more big event set-piece makes it feel smaller.

edited 13th Jul '16 4:31:14 PM by Unsung

That's not headcanon.

JE is a ridiculously short game and yes, it really fails in the final act.

I like the siege of Dirge and the whole final palace sequence, but when I got to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, I was just taken by surprise, like 'Wait, we're doing that now? Already?'

Actually, if they could have made the Spirit Plain and Dirge more interactive, with more spirit NP Cs to talk to and more puzzles to solve, that might have solved a lot of their problems right there. A kind of anti-dungeon where it's about exploration and atmosphere rather than pure dungeon-crawling and monster-busting. It almost felt like that's what they wanted to do there anyway, now that I think about it.

edited 13th Jul '16 4:55:07 PM by Unsung

My problem is that you just literally don't see enough of this setting. Compare to something like Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Yes, superior graphical capabilities maybe allowed for more, but KOTOR had the same basic structure, even with far less resources.

In JE, you get My Beloved Peasant Village, another place and then BOOM, the Imperial City. That's it. There are a few dungeons here and there but that's not really exploring anything of interest.

The fact is, you uncover the true villain and then are in FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT until you confront him. There's very little time to reflect on any of this.

Another town, or as you suggested, a "spirit town" full of NPC's could have done the necessary padding but as it is, I feel like the game really falls apart after the reveal. There needed to be more time to digest things.

There needed to be more time, period. The game is about 20 hours. That's shameful. Additional scenes with Sun Li and Sun Hai also would have been good. I get that they REALLY wanted us to buy Death's Hand as the Evil Chancellor but the result is we see practically nothing of either main villain.

I just defeated the Emperor and my only hope is that the different things I've done, and the final showdown, will be enough to salvage the game from how dissatisfied I was last time.

Sorry Wild Flower but you were already dead anyway.

edited 13th Jul '16 5:26:41 PM by Nikkolas

Not Wild Flower!She's just an undead child..nooo

All very true, and while Tien's Landing is actually a deceptively huge area with a ton of quests, the fact that it's played up as just one village makes it feel smaller than one planet in KOTOR, even though those planets took a lot less time and work to design and implement.

The Spirit Plain was obviously meant to be the space where the player reflects on what they saw, but the gameplay doesn't support it. In a movie, that big empty plain with the protagonist just walking across it would work for that— just look at the equivalent moments in Gladiator. But the moment you put control in the player's hands, give them a goal to achieve, a direction forward, a mystery to solve, then you break that spell. It's why Andrew Ryan's death starts as player-controlled but then turns into a cutscene— it's why the very end of Prince of Persia (2008) simply doesn't work. For now, at least, there are times in video game storytelling when you simply have to lead the player by the nose, in exactly the same manner that films do.

edited 13th Jul '16 9:12:47 PM by Unsung

Keep in mind when the game was released - and on the platform. Loading times would've been longer, people would've explored more and we weren't yet used to a fully 3d RPG with branching story options and choice.

JE is very much a prototype of world setting and trying out ideas. It's great, but as with any created piece, it definitiely falls apart on the detail.

I fully agree that if your lore suggests one thing and your game then completely throws it out of the window in favour of COOLNESS then you're missing a trick; that said, the Lotus Assassins had changed a lot by the time of the game and had been warped by the Emperor's shift from "noble ruler with good intentions" to "Undead creature driven insane by immortality and betrayal".

And Avatar is an interesting example - the reason you root for Quatrich isn't because he's super awesome (Though he is quite the Memetic Badass) but because the main protagonist is SO incompetent and SO unlikeable.

Jacob Sully is given a job - talk to the natives, to persuade them to leave the tree or to explain why they won't - he doesn't do either of these things, or offer the dialogue the company offers.

And when he does go full rebel he uses REALLY DUMB TACTICS against a better equipped and better disciplined force. Extended line charges against armour and machine guns? I mean, yes he's only a Corproal, but even JNCO's should have a good grasp of tactical warfare and fighting in close-quarter environments! So, you can handwave that by saying he really is just a grunt good at one on one fighting and no good at planning...

But yes, in that it's easier to root for Quatrich because he is a Father to His Men, capable and utterly pragmatic. It's an element of Draco in Leather Pants, but you have to respect systems that come across as rewarding competence (Which is why you admire the Sith before they go axe crazy over small missteps)

As for SWOTR - I love it but got fatigue over the grind. Though I enjoyed the Sith Warrior storyline. Up until it turns out that, when you get your apprentice, the "good sith" options are rather limited and the expected plot line is one where you are full on "If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!" with her. And the fact that she's SO EASILY SWAYED BY IT.

Seriously, the Jedi have the breaking strain of a twiglet when it comes to the dark side.

Anyway, Jade Empire, it's down to nuance and the writers wanting to clearly show that "THIS IS BAD". But, as you said, the villains don't seem to align to either of the paths, not completely.

Sun Hai seems pretty Closed Fist to me but Sun Li seems too....complicated for such a philosophical system to work. His strategies require too much flexibility. Granted, I still have yet to see the final showdown with him. I'll be doing that when I get up later.

And good point about maybe the Lotus Assassins being as bad as they are because the Emperor has just plain gone mad.

I just feel like the game's words say one thing and then the tone and other words suggest the opposite. The game tells you of the Long Drought and how so many suffered and died for ten straight years with no end in sight. The Emperor had his brother concoct a strategy to solve this terrible dilemma to save the empire and its people.

But then the EVIL SCHEMING BROTHERS betrayed him! And the Water Dragon is your supremely wise and benevolent guide! And the destruction of Dirge is absolutely horrific and evil! Etc.. It goes halfway but it really fails to commit with moral ambiguity and that irks me. It be so ridiculously easy to paint the Sun Brothers as tragic, even sympathetic, figures but instead it goes for "greedy power-hungry royal shitheads like in every other fiction ever."

I think that's because it falls into the story trap of wanting evil villains and clear good guys. Yes, they try to blur the lines with the party members (Silk Fox etc) but agian, it veers to close to cackling evil.

I have yet to find a game that makes evil or "brutal pragmatism" something more than cartoonish or sneering.

Evil is seductive because it offers security and simplicity. Evil should always be the EASY choice. But then you have the gaming option of how do you then reward the good option with mechanics and not just a nice cutscene?

Imagine if your Take a Third Option at the end was the evil choice, but had positives for the majority. And was easier than the good option? Some would complain that it was too easy. Some would assume the game makers were making a point.

Some games now are trying to make it harder to decide who is the best option, but designers do tend to charicature their villains - look how the Legion is CLEARLY a cruel and nasty option. No real fleshing out of them at all. Look at how the Geth "bad guy" side was partitioned out into "Fanatics" - rather than making a tech race that is justified in its homicidal attitudes - organics struck first and continue to do so - they feel they are the wronger party etc.

The Lore is there, it's the transition into the interactive worlds where it tends to fail. But jade Empire does show the impacts, mentions how things have changed - the conversations about the Lotus Assassins, how the Emperor has changed.

But it does seem to indicate that the Glorious Strategist was always fairly evil as well. And even he goes from cunning to "Well I will just end you now" - although he does try to do it via the medium of sending a whole army at the protagonist, which is pretty damn sensible.

I think designers do it to try to avoid you siding with the people who they have designated as "Clearly Very Bad People." And I do wonder if that's a commentary on writers who are great at world building, but not so good on plot.

Well the Legion was supposed to be fleshed out but it got cut because that's what Obsidian does. They make incomplete games.

There was also Mr. House, I suppose in terms of evil choices.

As for the Geth, plenty of people still want to kill them all, even with the Heretic "retcon." There is actually a huge amount of anti-machine bigotry online I've discovered in arguments with Geth vs .Quarians. People deny it's genocide because they're just machines and not truly alive.

I think, if you want to view the Qunari as evil in Dragon Age, it handles them well. I don't view them as evil at all, which is the point, but many do.

That's an area where they did quite well in terms of fleshing them out. The latest expansion does show their militant side more, but ultimately when they go crazy they have a reason for it. The Arishok's actions in DA ][ are understandable by the terms of his culture.

Evil and good are far too nebulous concepts - and too absolute. Morality does tend to fluctuate with generation and understanding, as well as context. Even our games reflect the moral stance of our time. JE does well in not ascribing evil or good most of the time, but even it does layer on attitudes (Always Chaotic Evil for the cannibals for example) and as you say, the Emperor started with good intent - to save his people. Just his method in trying to control the heavens had a lot of negative impacts.

x5 I can forgive Bioware for not quite having the time to achieve all they wanted in a game, but I think that's down to development times rather than player expectations. After all, they'd just finished KOTOR, and while I don't think KOTOR's areas look as good graphically or that the quests have as much thought put into them as JE, the structure and pacing of the game are working. Bioware had big ambitions in Jade Empire and they mostly achieved them, but where they didn't it seems like they were pretty ruthless about dropping whatever they didn't have time for, and the third act suffers for it.

...Kind of similar to SWTOR's Sith Warrior storyline, come to think of it. Both start strong and promise big things in terms of giving weight to your choices. Through the first two acts, the Warrior arc it actually does a pretty good job of showing how a character can remain dedicated to the Dark Side and still be a force for good, but when it comes to paying off those decisions in Act III, it just feels like they ran out of time.

The Arishok's actions really *aren't* understandable by the terms of his culture Which is to say they can understand why he acted as he did, but he was still considered to have exceeded his authority. He didn't go crazy so much as he elected to go on a kind of kamikaze run, because his honour dictated he and his people could leave no other way— either as conquering heroes, or the honoured dead.

Sun Li is actually one of my favourite Bioware villains, and I just wish we got to see more of him. The twist here, while you certainly could see it coming (and Master Li's voice actor never sounded quite as kindly as you would expect), was still an excellent turnabout and well-played, in that stage-y, retelling-of-a-legend kind of way. The lies of omission, the reliance on others' assumptions, I think those kinds of gotcha! moments are an element of plotting that Bioware has always written pretty well.

...which is why it's odd that you always seem to be on the wrong side of that intrigue in Bioware games. These villains and their shadowy organizations are so lovingly crafted, but all you can ever really do is take a hammer to them from the outside.

Bioware seems to want to tell classically heroic stories, but they're not really very good at it, to my mind. All their best stuff seems to involve struggling from within the heart of darkness, whether as a Sith Lord with a secret yen for justice, a former Spectre forced to work with a terrorist organization, or a child of the dead god of murder.

edited 14th Jul '16 11:17:54 AM by Unsung

And so I have completed my first run of Jade Empire! And my second run, too! Well, more like 1.5 I guess.

See, I love me some Silk Fox originally and I still do. But this second run has made me greatly prefer Dawn Star. But I want both and I heard I could have both. Only...it's fucked up. By refusing to choose, Closed Fist Dawn Star reverts to Open Palm. What the hell. Also, as I discovered on my "second" run where I restarted from an autosave right before the confrontation with Sun Hai, if you pick Dawn Star, Closed Fist Silk Fox will also revert to Open Palm. WHAT. THE. HELL. All my work for nothing! It was especially jarring with Dawn Star. I tried to salvage things - I used a save game editor to modify her alignment when I had control of her briefly at Dirge. That wasn't what the game went by in future cutscenes, though. It's probably some weird number thing somewhere. I had similar problems with KOTOR 1 and Bastila but the KOTOR save editor was much better and more thorough. It had this "Numerics" category or something I could go in and modify something to fix the Bastila romance. I found nothing like that here.

So yes, that was all a big annoyance.

However! Overall, I think Jade Empire really stuck the landing. This run, having paid more attention to my fellows, and having actually beaten the game instead of stopping right before the end, I feel very satisfied. I really do feel like Dawn Star is the...star of the game. She has the most complete arc and the Closed Fist romance with her is a delight. It's not quite up to par with later BW romances but it blows KOTOR's romances out of the water.

I also really came to appreciate Black Whirlwind. He was a pal, sticking with me through everything, even as I was betrayed. Same for Ya Zhen.

I had also forgotten we do see a fair amount of Li after the reveal. Could have definitely used more but overall, I was satisfied with how all that went down. I was questioning his placement on the Complete Monster list, though. True, when confronted on the matter by Dawn Star herself, he's very dismissive. But when you first bring it up, he's clearly outraged and calls you out on meddling with things he had long since buried in his heart. Never forget, he's the Glorious Strategist. If he saw Dawn Star being his daughter as a flaw, no way he'd let on so you could exploit it.

I was very happy with the characterization I chose in the game. (A practitioner of the Closed Fist who asserts this philosophy even over the heavens themselves; someone who cares nothing for spirits or demons or gods and their meaningless titles. Very early on you can say things like "the arrogance of the heavens knows no bounds" and, when commenting on what the Brothers Sun did, "arrogant but audacious.") It really can carry through most of the plot, all the way up to the ultimate choice. And indeed, I think Jade Empire has the best "Final Decision" of any BW game I've played. It sure beats all the Dragon Age ones (is there even rally a climactic choice in Origins? I guess saving yourself or not can count but the Dark Ritual really removes the poignancy of that) and the less said about ME 3 the better. ME 1's was similarly underwhelming and ME 2 was too simple for me. As for KOTOR...it was really bad in this regard. No, only Jade Empire really delivers on a choice that is both full of meaning and also really feels like the culmination of your journey. This choice was loaded with implications, multiple interpretations and explanations both for and against. It is the most perfect of climaxes for a RPG story.

I know it looks terrible but I really didn't want to FRAPS record it at full size and have it be 2GB. Besides, it's the audio that matters. I was thinking of just posting some choice quotes but you need to hear them to get the full power of them. That's how I feel. Take everything Dawn Star says, for instance. Her support is very honestly touching to me. She knows my strength and resolve.

I also really like "I marvel at the mind that came up with this. To cast his gaze so far above his station to his own makers is...admirable."

Overall, actually finishing JE, and getting to know my followers more, has made me like the game even more than I used to. I'd now comfortably rate it as one of the best BW games I've played. My top 3 would be...no, Top 4 would be, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age II and Jade Empire.

edited 14th Jul '16 3:25:59 PM by Nikkolas

The problem with that climax is in the mechanics - I absolutely hate the idea of a Last Second Karma Choice. Also, this ending has no option for an active and nurturing (yes, nurturing) Closed Fist, of the sort you can be in the Forest or the kind who makes slaves fight for their freedom. Killing the Water Dragon is not only Open Palm (which I could live with, though there's a strong argument for doing so from the Closed Fist path - though poisoning her is absolutely Closed Fist) but puts you straight on the Open Palm path regardless of prior actions.

As awesome as it is, Bioware still managed to partially mung it, and in so doing revealed the problem of making the climactic choice the only one that matters. In DA:O, the choice of who gets to die is a lot less important than the choices (particularly at the Landsmeet) that you make on the way, and the game is better for it.

edited 15th Jul '16 7:03:57 AM by Ramidel

Well yeah, I agree with you there. It's rather ridiculous you can side with Ya Zhen, enslave Death's Hand and kill tons of people for little to no reason and then this one choice fucks you over.

It's part of the double standard of good and evil, though. One good act would not redeem a lifetime of wickedness to most people but even if you played the most devout Open Palm guy all game and then seized the Water Dragon's power at the end, you'd be insta-Closed Fist or "evil."

It rather reminds me of setting off the Ray Sphere locking you into Infamous in...inFAMOUS. Do good all game but this one act will taint you forever.

I agree, and don't mind that so much (though it's less fitting in a setting where "evil" and Closed Fist are supposed to be separate). But being forgiven everything because you kill one water dragon...ew.

(Also, I still wanted some kind of choice for "kill the dragon and get the heavens out of our hair" that would fit with the other side of Closed Fist. Maybe an option to leave it dying there and go kick Sun Li's ass, proving that the dragon was wrong about him being "too strong?")

But this game was the prototype for Mass Effect and Torment: Tides of Numenera, which did better at non-binary and non-good-or-evil Karma Meters. Makes sense that they didn't quite get it right the first time.

edited 15th Jul '16 9:42:42 AM by Ramidel

Technically, Planescape Torment already had a non-binary karma meter, in the form of D&D's alignment grid, and you could move around on it very easily, depending on your actions. Which made sense for that game. Being good or evil was less important than other people's perception of you. One could argue that that's usually the case in a roleplaying game, but I can accept that they're pretty much one and the same in a property like Star Wars. Not so much Jade Empire, though.

There's a reason why games like Dragon Age and Alpha Protocol dropped the karma meter entirely— not because it's always bad, per se, but because it doesn't always fit the story being told, where your past actions and individual relationships are more important than a broader measure of your moral character. Or rather than drop the meter altogether, JE could have treated Open Palm and Closed Fist as something more like faction reputations (which is pretty much the Paragon/Renegade system, admittedly), which is a mechanic that existed in Morrowind and Fallout 2 (and probably earlier, but that's before my time). Hell, Bioware themselves had Baldur's Gate's Reputation score, which was separate from your alignment and had benefits to its higher tiers that even an evil party might want to consider. So it's not really like this was Bioware's 'first time' with this kind of system. They were fresh off the success of KOTOR and a little too beholden to it, methinks. Just one of several elements of JE that needed a little more time to cook.

...Really makes we wish we'd gotten a sequel. Ah well.

edited 15th Jul '16 10:29:05 AM by Unsung

Honestly, I still don't really see Closed Fist as viable. Like only game so far where I have seen moral choices with questionable ethical choices making sense so far is Torment: Tides of Numenera.

I mean, like, its unlikely but you can talk things out in some of quest. But the options to take more drastic measures actually make sense in philosophy and pragmatism wise so its not case of "There was easy "Let's talk it out" option and "Kill them because you are a jerk who could have avoided violence easily" all the time.

What the game describes as the Closed Fist and what options the player has available that give you Closed Fist points aren't the same thing.

Not every choice has to be completely ambivalent or a game to be ethically diverse, and Tides is far from the only game to have morally gray choices. I would argue that most of the ethical uncertainty in TToN thus far comes from your choices not really having much weight of consequence thus far. The tides in the game function as a vaguer, more mystical version of Pillars of Eternity— Gold is Benevolent, Blue is Rational, Red is Aggressive, Indigo is probably some combination of Honest and Passionate, Silver is probably closest to Cruel but not quite that simple. Although the Tides aren't necessarily outwardly obvious in the same way as reputations. So they're closer to MagicTheGathering's colours than alignments, perhaps— forces you're in tune with rather than aspects of your nature. Eh. I don't know.

I think the thing about both the Open Palm and Closed Fist is that they're both reactive, somewhat passive philosophies— in keeping with the idea of a natural, cyclical order, neither is really meant to triumph absolutely. They're also closer to Lawful and Chaotic than Good and Evil, but they're being used to serve as both binaries here and it's not really working.

Like I said, I still think the final choice in JE is the best final choice I've seen in a BW game yet. As far as I'm concerned, there is no right answer. I prefer the Closed Fist solution for a variety of reasons but I have been arguing with people on another site for 3 pages on this matter and there are fair points against it and for Open Palm. (and unlike usual, I have allies who share my beliefs on this topic so I know I'm not just crazy)

It's simply the most interesting moral dilemma I've seen in a Bio Ware game outside maybe Project Overlord's ending.

Then again, maybe I should play those Baldur's Gate games. People won' tshut up about how great they are. But these tend to be the same people who decry how Fallout 3 "ruined" their precious dead and obscure franchise.by making it famous and successful.

I need to play Planescape too since I like the D&D Alignment system a lot.

edited 15th Jul '16 7:48:51 PM by Nikkolas

Best final choice in a Bioware game is not a high bar, heh. All the good roleplaying decisions tend to happen around the midgame, in KOTOR and after. I don't want to oversell Baldur's Gate, either. Seinfeld Is Unfunny for a reason, after all, and I was never a big fan of turn-based pause, even though the party interactions in Shadows of Amn were worth it all by themselves for me. Planescape and the first two Fallouts are still pretty great, though. I'll stand by that.

I thought Fallout 3's main story was pretty dumb, but I still had a ton of fun with that game. I do think it really nailed the look and feel of the Wasteland that I wanted.

edited 15th Jul '16 8:11:46 PM by Unsung

I don't remember but wasn't this the shortest bioware game? I remember finishing it pretty quickly. Maybe it took two long play sessions over two days.

It's about 20 hours if you do most of the sidequests. That crappy Sonic game Bioware prefers to pretend doesn't exist might be shorter: I've never played that one.

It's between 20 and 30 hours in my two playthroughs.

edited 15th Jul '16 8:10:41 PM by Nikkolas

@Nikkolas: Considering that good option leads to basically "And everything was fine" while evil option leads to "And you are a horrific tyrant", I'm pretty sure there is a right option

@Unsung: Its not because of consequences. And I didn't say there aren't quests were simply talking is the sensical option, I meant that all options make sense and don't seem to be "cruel for sake of being cruel".