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Jade Empire Special Edition |
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Monday, 11 June 2007 |
 Two years after striking gold with 2003's turn-based RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, developer BioWare struck jade. Picture Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon unfolding in a colorful pseudo-fantasy world where airships zoom through the sky. shadow governments direct the course of history, and kung fu masters tangle with spooky ghosts, and that's Jade Empire (finally available on the PC... with some fancy 'Special Edition" nomenclature to one-up its Xbox counterpart) in a nutshell.
 Jade's story plays the "epic" card pretty quickly. After creating your character (a process as simple as choosing a name, a character skin, and a couple of martial arts styles, and then spreading some points across a trio of abilities), you soon learn from the wise old master of your little out-of-the-way martial arts academy that you're a star pupil with a destiny. It seems that the titular Jade Empire's overrun with ghosts, bandits, and a mysterious cabal of conspiratorial assassins...and you're surprise! Destined to deal with all the trouble and figure out just who's running things back at the Imperial capital. The story's considerably less boilerplate than it sounds from this description...but let's not spoil it here. |