Jade Empire Interview

ComputerAndVideoGames.com talks with BioWare’s joint-CEOs Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, as well as Jade Empire producer Jim Bishop, about the upcoming Xbox RPG. Here’s a bit of what they talked about:

Q: Obviously part of the appeal of KOTOR is that it’s Star Wars – the first Star Wars RPG in fact. You’re taking that away and replacing it with a mythical China setting – are you confident that Jade Empire will be as popular?

A: This game is set in the Jade Empire, a mythical version of ancient China; we’ve drawn on the literature, mythology, and legends of ancient China to create a sort of alternate world, a China that might have been, if all the legends were true.

The landscapes are lush and gorgeous, full of colourful characters and dangerous enemies, and rendered with a brand-new second-generation graphics engine. The world and storyline are built around a very cool concept and we’ve been waiting a long time to build it, until we had the experience as a company to do it right.

At BioWare we’ve been thinking about the idea behind Jade Empire for many years now. We’ve always found the concept behind Jade Empire extremely compelling, and we wanted to wait until the right point in BioWare’s history to develop this title.