Blast from the Past: Jade Empire Tutorial
Ok, another example of an a tutorial that works, I bring you Master Li’s dojo from Jade Empire, a Tutorial that, while not as incredible as the Planescape Torment example, does everything you want from a tutorial. In fact, I think Jade Empire’s tutorial is in some ways as good as Baldur’s Gate, just using a totally different style. Specifically narrative style. BG has a fantastic mechanical tutorial, and it is fairly free form fitting with the play style of Baldur’s Gate. Jade Empire’s tutorial does a fantastic job with tone, aesthetic, and story, in fact I think it kinda does too good of a job, because it implies the game is a lot more deep than it actually is.
Someday I am going to write about Jade Empire in more depth (or you can listen to our podcast on the subject here), its sort of an odd duck in the Bioware canon, and really in the larger RPG world. Jade Empire came about in that odd little transitional RPG period where we don’t have modern RPG conventions (Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, Witcher 3) but still had moved past isometric. This is KOTOR, Vampire BLoodlines, Withcer 1, and Jade Empire. So it has a very RPG basis but feels really clunky, the bastard child of two worlds. Of those Jade Empire I think suffers the most, because in many ways it is the least adventurous, it is among the most Bioware cliche of the Bioware games. The companions are fairly simplistic, the moral choice system is at an all time frustrating, there isn’t that much choice, and the plot really isn’t that much to write home about.
And yet, a lot of people, including myself, absolutely love Jade Empire, love it to pieces, think it is an unforgotten classic, I love this game in much the same way I love Bloodlines, a game which actually is inventive in its mechanics (though far more sexist). And part of why that is...well it has great style. Jade Empire is actually a pretty standard RPG in terms of its skeleton, but the flesh is totally different, it is the only western RPG that is set in a non white setting in fact of all the RPGs out there, there are exactly 2 not set in some sort of European place, or SPACEEEEE. The recent Obsidian game Tyranny (The Near East) and Jade Empire. honestly I’m surprised there hasn’t been a Samurai RPG game yet by this point. And Jade Empire is not just set in fantasy discount China, it really embraces that aesthetic, the monsters are Chinese inspired, the combat system is very Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, it has a Taoist inspired cosmology and an art style that is totally different from any other RPG. What the Witcher is for Polish RPG, Jade Empire is for China. And this is not just great for a Sinophile like myself (btw Free Hong Kong), it also makes Jade Empire feel really distinct, exciting and different compared to any other RPG.
(The Celestial heaven was vastly under explored)
Sadly, the game itself is kinda generic, a fact made worse because I am convinced the game was supposed to have 3-4 more chapters before being cut down rapidly, cause the whole game kinda falls apart in the end.
(this area was supposed to be a whole hub area I know it)
The reason why I bring this up is important, because the job of the tutorial is to use the aesthetic to mask how kinda basic the game as a whole is. ANd it works great, in a some ways the tutorial is kind of the best part of the game, largely because it is full of possibilities and you don’t yet realize how disappointing the rest of the game is, so the tutorial offers this mess of possibilities that the rest of the game does not.
Ok so what works about this tutorial? Well unlike BG, the Dojo is a place you are actually grounded it. You have an established relationship to everybody in the place, and in talking with them it really does set up a whole Empire with loads of possibilities and grounds you in the framework of the Empire. From the fantasy stand in Cantonese, to the at first glance more complicated than light/dark side morality system, this cool new combat martial arts system, this implied “Dark Chi magic”, a cool dualism based cosmology with seemingly a different take on Demons and Spirits, and a totally different world which is very Journey to the West. It grounds you in a specific location and gets you attached to all the details, even though most of it are lies. All of the world building is basically all the world building you get, the fantasy Cantonese has everybody repeating the same lines, your companions have nothing to say, the morality system is just bioware morality all over again rather than something unique or interesting, the fight system is broken and simplistic, the plot is linear and player choice is limited.
When I first played this game in high school, I pulled an all nighter and ruined my test the next day, all because of the tutorial. Even as I write this now, I have that good old fashioned sense of nostalgia where I am like “man I really want to play that game again” nevermind the fact that I always end disappointed.
Now I might in the future go through the tutorial in detail in terms of the specifics of what makes this tutorial great, let me know if you’d be interested in that, by my larger point is that the tutorial of this game hides most of its flaws for the unaware, and when people want a Jade Empire 2, I think they want what this tutorial offered but never delivered on.
Also its nice that there is one Western RPG with an all Asian Cast.
