Jade Empire E3 Preview

Xbox Advanced has put together a two-page preview of Jade Empire, based upon what they saw of the Xbox RPG on the show floor of E3. A snippet:

The epic story, full of twists and turn with which lead you to define your persona, is what will keep you playing for 40+ hours. It’s the nature of the game, however, that will be initially captivating. Bioware has managed to make Jade Empire even more approachable game than KOTOR. This level of accessibility is largely the result of the refined combat system. Providing a plethora of actions and tactical decisions for the player to make while maintaining the fast-paced action that we all loved in KOTOR is the foundation for the game’s combat system. The game allows you to alternate between fighting styles on the fly, including more than 30 different martial arts, weapons, and magic styles. The weapons style allow you to use a wide variety of swords and axes as well as weapons specific to the einvronment, such as a broken chair’s legs. The magic system allows you to launch fireballs or throw lightning bolts, but more exciting is the ability to morph into mythical creatures such a Golem or a demonic lion/goat hybrid (to name just a couple option). These combat options will be accessible in the same way as they were in KOTOR, meaning that you can pause the combat and alternate between fighting styles, then unpause and go right back to real-time combat. The combat itself is fast-paced and intense as each press of the button will illicit an action from your character, delivering what is an even more responsive combat system than was seen in KOTOR.