firehawk12 said:
[Ramble mode]
It's weird, because I understand why people think the combat is shallow and whatnot because it can be... but I think it probably had the most decent story of the modern BioWare lineup, even though the fact that the endings weren't animated was a complete copout.
My biggest complaint was that they used fake Chinese. I understand that they wanted to be as "fantasy" as possible and not tie it to the real world so they went out and invented a new language with a Sinologist... but why? Don't use Mandarin or Cantonese then... use like Hakka or Taiwanese or some equally obscure Chinese dialect. Instead, what we got is the KoTOR alien language loops.
Another oddity was that the game hacked in gay relationships. It was sort of clear that they didn't plan to have gay relationships, because the game took out the "kiss" scene for gay characters due to the fact that they couldn't go back and animate two dudes or two girls kissing (which was a problem since they only had a hetero kiss scene and the men in the game were much taller than the women)... so I just wonder why they put it in. Maybe they got a lot of heat because the Juhani thing was buried in the deep recesses of subtlety and they felt some pressure to show that they weren't trying to hide gay characters? I don't know.
It's just weird that they went from everyone is bisexual to Mass Effect, where everyone is straight with the cop out that Liara is "monogendered" even though she looks like a woman.
I don't know. I imagine that Jade Empire has been buried and forgotten over at BioWare now that they have Generic Fantasy Vehicle aka Dragon Age and Generic Science Fiction Vehicles, aka Mass Effect and TOR, but I kind of appreciated that there was a WRPG in a typically JRPG/CRPG setting. At least it was different from bald space marines and elves with bows.
[/Ramble mode]
Bah! Dude, maybe you should study East Asian History along with that CS degree and English PhD you got.
Mandarin and Taiwanese are the same thing despite what some Taiwanese may think (nevermind, I suck. I thought you were referring to Taiwan Mandarin, which is the same as mainland Mandarin, not the diaclect)...And how many people and/or voice actors do you know that can speak bloody Hakka?
And the impression I got from that wasn't necessarily that it was a fake 'China,' but more a fake East Asia. Certainly, there is more Chinese influence in the theme and setting, but if you went to the other Asian countries, you'd see a lot of the same thing.
Personally, I would've gone with something like this:
- Three 'countries' influenced by China, Japan, Korea or whatever. Each would have their own style of fighting, politics, architecture, food, culture etc.
- Each just use their own goddamn language for Christ's sake with subtitles. To the average western gamer, Asian languages probably sound like alien speech anyways. This would give it an authentic flair and it would probably get a kick out of Asian gamers. I'd be confused if anybody complained about subtitled alien language in Kotor and then bitch about this...
- Fighting should've focused entirely on hand to hand combat and removed the 'magic' garbage and horrendous weapon-based fighting. Perhaps the main character visits various schools in each country to pick up different techniques. Of course, each style could be further broken down and changing styles had to be done to face different foes.
- Bosses would be intense one-on-one duels similar to the martial arts movies of old. Random encounters, I guess you could do it River City Ransom style mixed in with set pieces and other crap not to make the game too stale.
- Quests, well...you'd have your generic fetch quests, beat-the-shit-out-of quests, defensive quests, offensive quests, etc etc. However, your choices wouldn't necessarily be 'evil' or 'good' but would have a visible effect on other countries, which in turn would affect your ending.
- NPCs' encounters with enemies would be more cinematic, again like you're watching a movie. Your character would be fighting one dude, and your NPC would be attacking, blocking, running. When you double-team, animation would reflect this instead of enemy turning to face you, then turning to face NPC.
Bioware if you're reading...I'm looking for a job and I've lived in Edmonton before
That being said, I do hope Bioware gives it another shot. Personally, I still preferred ME over JE, but ME definitely falls flat on its face in terms of missions...same shitty planets, same shitty enemies all the time doing the same shit.