Quote Originally Posted by TinCow View Post
So, what I was left with after I finished ME was a game billed as a dark, mature RPG with a huge sandbox world... and what I got was a storyline with meaningless moral dilemmas and a very one-track plot. Top it off with the horrid interface and uninspiring combat, and I was very underwhelmed.
I ignored the pre-release info, the reviews, and actually left the game sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I played it. Why? Because of Jade Empire.

I thought the Jade Empire world was superb, even if the game itself was not as good.
I hated Jade Empire. Everything about it. Completely. Tried to play it twice; the first time I dumped it after several hours, the second I dumped it midway through when someone confirmed my guesses as to what would happen in the rest of the game. It's by far the worst game Bioware have ever made, and one of the worst RPGs I have ever played. This game IMO fits many of your ME criticisms to a T.

I was expecting something in the tradition of KOTOR and I got a Bioware-by-numbers that was so much a rehash of their endlessly recycled trademarks that I was able to successfully predict the entire plot, character arcs and twists within the first 2 hours. Pasted all over this predictable line of rehashed, tired old predictability was paper thin mystic kung fu nonsense. Did I mention it was shallower than a puddle? That the combat was utterly, utterly rubbish, tedious, unbalanced, and bland? That the quest railroaded me from one predictable load of fetching to another? That there were hardly any side quests at all? That most of the party characters were clones of characters from earlier games with new models and names? And if there's any doubt left at all that I found it entirely, completely and fully predictable, let it be banished once and for all.

Jade Empire's better known as 'Bioware By Numbers: The Ultimate Rehash' in the privacy of my froggy little mind. Awful!

Neverwinter Nights combined with Jade Empire convinced me Bioware had lost it. If I hadn’t liked ME I’d have stopped following their work entirely.



One of the things I liked most about ME was the way it handled morality. It didn't really try to. In nearly every RPG which offers some kind of alignment choice you're going to be forced into the hero's role no matter how hard you try to be evil, no matter how illogical it is. ME replaced the usual banal and unrealistic 'Kill puppy and drink its blood/give puppy all of your money' options with choosing your tone. No matter what you do you're a hero, but will you be a polite hero with time for your fans, or one who focuses on getting the job done and never mind the bruised toes? Picking tone worked in a way which picking alignment never did. It's playing good cop/bad cop instead of angelic hero/destroyer of worlds. I was so disappointed when I found dragon age had wound the clock back to choosing a puppy's fate.

I didn't find ME's plot to be any more restrictive than that of most RPGS, past or present. At a push I shall grant that it made less of a pretence at player freedom than most, though pretence is indeed the right word when the destroyer of worlds goes to the same places and does the same overall actions as the angelic hero