Jade Empire: A Labour Of Love

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Jade Empire is a large, exciting project and a huge team effort that crosses several game creation disciplines. Below, we interview several members of the Jade Empire team to learn what roles are involved in creating a AAA title and why BioWare's first intellectual property is not merely a job--it's a labour of love.

Design - Kevin Martens, Lead Designer on Jade Empire

What is your role in the creation of Jade Empire, and how does that role change from concept through completion of the game?

Kevin: My name is Kevin Martens, and I am the Lead Designer of Jade Empire. At the beginning of a project, the Lead Designer works with the core team to brainstorm and hammer out the basic ideas of the game. Once the working design for a game is in place, the Lead Designer begins making the detailed level design plan that encompasses everything that the player can actually do in the game, from conversation and story to combat and treasure placement. The Lead Designer is responsible for coordinating communication with all of the other departments and bringing about the completion of design in the game from conception to going gold.

What other games have you worked on previously? Give us your pedigree.

Kevin: I worked briefly on Baldur's Gate and was a Senior Designer on Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast. I was co-Lead Designer on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Lead Designer on Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. I worked as a Senior Designer on Neverwinter Nights and had small credits on MDK2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

How does working on Jade Empire differ from any other games you've worked on?

Kevin: Basically, world building has been a much bigger part of my job on this game. In the past, I've worked as a Lead Designer on medieval European-style fantasy RPGs with the Dungeons and Dragons setting. Not only is Jade Empire a game with a very different setting for us, but it's also BioWare's first new intellectual property. Before we began to actually design and write the levels and plots, we invented the world itself. We spent a lot of time researching and developing the setting in an effort to make the experience as rich as possible. So, as the game progressed, I've had the opportunity to help build and populate our own world rather than working within an existing license, and as a result I think there has been a great deal of passion involved in the making of Jade Empire. We loved working with Dungeons & Dragons and making a Star Wars game, and the only jewel we needed to complete our nerd crown was a martial arts game. Being able to design the setting as well as the general game was a wonderful part of the experience.

What do you like most about Jade Empire?

Kevin: The things I love about Jade Empire are the action-packed combat system, the cool exploration, and the story and character advancement.

Utterly destroying a dozen enemies in a few seconds never gets old. I can always find some new trick or way to use the combat system to deal an ever more impressive beat-down on the wide variety of enemies that we've put in the game. The combat is more fun than I had hoped it would be when we first talked about it.

For exploration, the artists and graphics team have truly outdone themselves in the beauty of the areas. The game is gorgeous, and the sense that you're exploring a world really comes across as you make your way through the wide variety of area art. Incredible vistas, detailed architecture, next-generation graphical features, and a huge amount of character variants give the player a memorable and immersive experience.

The rich and detailed art is filled with an equally rich and detailed story. Deep character interaction and an epic story fill the game with memorable enemies and allies, vile betrayals, and acts of great heroism; it's good and evil on a grand scale. As your character partakes in these world-shaking events, you get to experience a super-cool character advancement system. There are so many different styles, each with their own theme and tactics, from which you can choose. The rich but accessible rules system gives you really simple choices that still offer great replay value.

I'm proud to have worked on this game with all of the incredibly talented people that have made this all possible.

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