Jade Empire: Labor of Love, Part Two

IGN Xbox’s second Jade Empire: Labor of Love interview is online, in which three members of the development team discuss the creation of the combat system, the implementation of the Dragonfly mini-game, and the game’s quality assurance. Here’s a bit about the Dragonfly mini-game:

Q: What’s your favorite top-down arcade flight shooter and which one would you say influenced you the most in developing the mini-game?

A: One of the best parts about working on this mini-game has been blowing the dust off of some of the old classics. My personal favorite has always been Legendary Wings. I loved the distinctive art style of that game and the great power-up system. Luckily, we have the arcade version here at BioWare so I was able to spend long hours “researching.”

In terms of other influences, I have to mention 1942 and Xevious. It was great to go back and play through each of these 80’s masterpieces. There are elements from both of these games that inspired some of the design we went with for the mini-game.

I also should also mention Ikaruga. While its style and difficulty are quite different than what we wanted to do with our mini-game, it gave use some great ideas for using 3D models and environments in a fundamentally 2D game.

What we want to do with this mini-game is give the player an enjoyable change of pace that continues the deep immersion of the main game. On top of having missions correspond to real in-game situations, we also came up with a weapon and power up system that is a great metaphor for the way the main game combat works. Combine all this with multiple difficulty settings, and I think this mini-game has something that every type of gamer will enjoy.