Jade Empire

1001 Video Games

Jade Empire appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Language

Jade Empire, a Chinese-themed game with Chinese characters set in a mystical Chinese world, has no Chinese language in it whatsoever. All the signs and titles in the game have characters that look Chinese but in fact say nothing (both in modern cursive script and old disused ones). The old tongue "Tho Fan" used by certain characters (like the first weapon maker) is not Chinese but a constructed language developed by Wolf Wikeley, a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University of Alberta.

References

• In the town Tien's Landing, one of the commoners will tell you he doesn't foresee any trouble for the town (despite the opening of the dam which seriously threaten's the town's existence). One of the dialogue options you receive then is "I find your optimism... disturbing". This is a reference to Darth Vader's famous phrase "I find your lack of faith... disturbing" in the movie Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and a hint at Bioware's own Star Wars games, Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel.
• During the credits of the game, the characters are talking as if they were actors. One quote is from Dawn Star, who says "There are four lights!". This is what Jean-Luc Picard yells at his captors in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command" from season 6.
• Some of the stories mentioned in Jade Empire are indeed myths from ancient China. One of the game characters is associated with the myth of Wan Hu. In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Wan apparently constructed a chair with rockets attached to it that enabled him to fly to outer space. Other accounts treat this story as historical true but with a different outcome: Wan blew up into a thousand pieces that may or may not have made it to outer space. This story was a segment entitled "Ming Dynasty Astronaut" on the Discovery Channel show Mythbusters (Dec 5, 2004).

Soundtrack

On June 13, 2005, Jack Wall's in-game music was released as a Audio CD of 75 minutes, divided over 31 tracks. The CD is available in select retail outlets in cooperation with Sumthing Else Music Works, Inc.

Voice acting

Even though many high-profile actors lent their voices to the game, the majority of the actors used in the game were actually actors from the Edmonton theatre community, the Canadian city where Bioware is located. It should be noted that there exists a certain amount of overlap in the case of such actors as Nathan Fillion, a well-known television star who happens to have been born in Edmonton.

Awards

• GamePro (Germany)
  • February 23, 2006 - Best Console RPG in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
• GameSpy
  • 2005 – #9 Xbox Game of the Year
  • 2005 – Xbox RPG of the Year

Information also contributed by lasttoblame, Nathan Taylor and NxCmp