Jade Empire PC E3 Previews

IGN, GameSpot, and FiringSquad are all offering up new previews of Jade Empire, based on what they saw of the PC version during this year’s E3. A snip from IGN’s article:

In addition to the purely visual upgrades, the PC version of Jade Empire also offers up some new content. We’re especially intrigued by the new combat styles. The first game allowed players to master a wide variety of styles — empty hand fighting, weapon styles, tons of magic, and even the ability to transform into powerful demons. The possibility that the team will come up new techniques to supplement and enlarge your options has us very excited.

A snip from GameSpot’s article:

The primary differences between the PC version of Jade Empire and the Xbox version will be in the control scheme, new fighting styles and weapons, and graphical enhancements that will take advantage of new PC hardware, such as enhanced bloom effects and more use of dynamic lighting. We saw a few different environments, such as the village at the beginning of the game, as well as several of the temple areas later on, and noticed a marked improvement in lighting and texture detail over the Xbox version.

And a snip from FiringSquad’s article:

BioWare felt quest or story additions would stick out, so most of the changes have been focused on the technical side of things. One of the major caveats of ports from consoles to PC, especially at this late stage of the Xbox’s lifetime, has been the quality of the artwork. Typically textures are in very low resolution and this affects the graphics across the board. Jade Empire’s art was developed in high resolution and then scaled down for the Xbox, meaning that PC users get all the goodies.