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Will Never Be Another
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Miami, Florida
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Jade Empire(Ray Muzyka) interview
courtesy of teamxbox
For fans of your previous games (Baldur´s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: KotOR), how would you define Jade Empire? What aspects would fans of BioWare RPGs find familiar?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: Many aspects of BioWare's past RPGs will be familiar to fans of our past games. One of the core elements of our games is a strong central storyline, and another is immersive character interaction and dialog. Part of a BioWare storyline is the ability to role play as a good or evil character and be able to experience different story outcomes as a result. Jade Empire will feature all of these great aspects of roleplaying; many of the same writers who worked on past BioWare RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic are also working on Jade Empire now. Jim Bishop, our producer here at BioWare on Jade Empire, summed up the storyline well when he said it was about 'power' - that is, how you use absolute power, either for good or evil. Jade Empire will also feature a strong cinematic presentation, a huge world to explore, a great user interface, a really interesting character progression system and fantastic graphics - so we're confident it will be one of the best games BioWare has ever made!
In terms of gameplay, what will set Jade Empire apart from your previous games?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: Probably the most unique feature in Jade Empire compared with past BioWare games is that all of the combat in Jade is entirely in real time, to allow you to role play as a martial arts master - Jade Empire is an action-RPG. The action is fast-paced and in real time, but you can pause the game at any time, as in past BioWare RPGs, to reflect on your actions, change your targeted opponent and your current fighting style. We've motion captured over thirty fighting styles, ranging from martial arts, to weapons, to magic, to allow our fans to roleplay as a martial arts master!
What can you tell us about the rules set being use for Jade Empire?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: We've built a new rules system from scratch which is ideal for the Xbox and for a real time action-RPG like Jade Empire. The core, or primary, attributes are Body, Mind and Spirit, and these lead in turn to the secondary attributes of Health, Focus, and Chi. Health provides your characters hit points (allowing them to take more damage); Focus allows you to slow down time and get more attacks in against your opponents, and Chi is your magical energy, allowing you to launch magical attacks, transform in your transformation styles, heal yourself, and charge up super-powerful Chi strikes on your fighting style moves to deliver extra damage. The rules system in Jade Empire is really fun, easy to understand, and yet quite deep to allow great character progression.
How did you balance the action elements with those more akin to a traditional RPG?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: Jade Empire is an action-RPG and so it includes a blend of real time martial arts combat plus a deep, yet accessible, rules system and immersive character interaction and a compelling storyline. You can pause the action at any time so fans of more traditional, turn-based RPGs will be able to stop and reflect on their next action - changing targeted opponents or their character's currently selected fighting style. As a result, Jade Empire should appeal to action fans, RPG fans, and action-RPG fans as well.
Why did you decide to have a single character instead of a party-based RPG?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: For an action RPG like Jade Empire, it seemed to make the most sense to have a single character at the focus of the player controls. This seemed particularly important for a game in which you were roleplaying as a martial arts master. Since the action in the combat in Jade Empire is fairly fast-paced, there are a lot of tactical options to consider in the combat in Jade Empire - for example, setting up a 'harmonic combo' (combination of one style followed immediately by another) is really fun. The game will play very differently depending on which styles you know and which ones you have loaded into your quick bar (which can be changed at any time of course).
How big is the game world, let's say compared to KotOR? Can you tell us about the size?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: Jade Empire is a large game - it should take about 30-40 hours to complete. Moreover, there will be tremendous replayability with Jade - depending on whether you're playing as a good or evil character the game will have very different paths and endings, and the game will play differently in terms of storyline depending on which followers you attract to your cause. The combat in the game will be quite different depending on whether you focus on the martial arts, weapon systems, or magical arts with your character; of course, you can learn all of them if you so choose! The world of Jade Empire is quite expansive and fans of exploration in RPGs will definitely enjoying reaching new parts of the world and opening up new subquests to solve.
How many hours of gameplay (approx.) will Jade Empire offer?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: With Jade Empire we're aiming for an amazing action role-playing experience that will satisfy practically any player. One of our goals is to provide a greater number of paths through the games than anything we've done in the past, thus giving players more freedom and opportunities for replayability. We also have some interesting plans for areas that can be played indefinitely, but we'll have more on this later. The single-pass experience in the Jade Empire will be between thirty and forty hours, but with the awesome replayability in the game we imagine people will be playing for a very long time.
What were you reasons to have this new game set in a mythical ancient China?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: When we set out to create a game in which you roleplay as a martial arts master we tried to visualize the most satisfying setting possible and we came up with a mythical version of ancient China. The richness of the setting and the coolness of the characters made it a slam-dunk, especially when you consider how the player character will rise to become the most powerful individual in the world. There's no better place to be a martial arts master than the world of Jade Empire!
Do you plan on developing Jade Empire into a series?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: We enjoyed building the world of Jade Empire and have created significantly more content than what you'll see the game, so there is ample material for future Jade Empire games. However, at this point we're focusing on making a great game and will consider future products at a later date.
A little off topic…Since MMOGs are so popular at this point, what are your opinions on this genre? Will BioWare ever step into the MMOG arena?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: A number of people at BioWare are huge MMOG fans, so it is certainly a genre that we're very familiar with. At the current time we don't have any MMOG games in development, but it is something we might consider in the future.
Back to Jade Empire. Since your last game for Xbox, KOTOR, what has been upgraded or improved in regards to the technology you're utilizing?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: The Jade Empire engine is completely new and features a number of fresh technologies that make the game look amazing. In particular we've got a new physics-based cloth system, a new material system for greater texture detail and quality, and a brand-new animation system custom designed to accept large amounts of highly-detailed motion-captured animation. We're very happy with the graphics in Jade Empire as the game is looking amazing!
George Lucas says sound is 50% of the movie experience. What can you tell us about the audio that accompanies Jade Empire?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: At BioWare we put a lot of effort into the overall sound design and music for our games and try to create a unique aural landscape for players to enjoy. We've got a custom composed music track for Jade Empire, as well as a ton of awesome sound effected created by our in-house team here at BioWare. Jade Empire not only looks great, but it sounds great!
From a technology standpoint, how does the engine handle the multitude of fighting styles (30 confirmed so far)?
Jim Bishop: Handling the more than 30 fighting styles in the game was a major focus of early engine development, and of the technical art team. Our lead technical animator Kees Rijnen built a new animation skeleton from scratch, and the programming team spent countless hours optimizing the transfer of animation data into and out of this skeleton, allowing us to swap in new styles in a very, very short period of time. All of this preparation has put us in a great position now, and you can rapidly switch between any of the styles in the game, at any time. It's a lot of fun, and very slick.
So, what are your plans, if any, regarding Xbox Live?
Jim Bishop: We're not ready to divulge our plans for Live yet.
What were your reasons to use motion capture technology in Jade Empire?
Jim Bishop: I think Greg Z. answered this best, when we were first talking about realtime combat: "If I'm supposed to be a martial arts master, I have to feel like one." The whole idea of Jade Empire is to put you in the role of a master of martial arts, and motion capturing real martial artists is just one way to bring that experience to the player.
Of course, it's one thing to decide you want to have 30+ martial arts in your game. It's a very different thing to actually find experts to perform them, and a facility to handle the entire scope of production. We were very lucky to have partners like Giant Studios and the Smashcut Action Team to help us bring our vision to life, and a team of animators in house who could turn that motion capture data into living, breathing styles.
How do your animators feel about mo-cap? Is there any kind of animation that is still being done "by hand"?
Jim Bishop: One of the biggest misconceptions people have about motion capture is that it somehow replaces conventional animators. This just isn't true. Motion capture is a tool to make an animator's work easier. It's like giving a character modeler a body blank as a starting point. Nobody calls a body blank a "crutch", or a replacement for a modeler; it's a starting point so that the modeler is not continually reinventing the wheel.
So by giving our talented animation staff these starting point animations, they're able to completely skip the boring parts (getting weight distribution perfectly right as the knee moves over the ankle, for instance…), and concentrate on adding drama and artistry to fulfill the overall animation vision. They add things like motion of the hands and fingers, facial expressions and head movement, and little shifts in posture and attitude that help sell the "idea" of each style. Jade animators have touched every animation that came out of the motion capture sessions, some of them quite extensively, and without them there's no way we could consider these styles complete.
In addition, all the game's nonhuman enemies are animated entirely by hand. This sounds like business as usual, but because the game's monsters are fighting against humans using motion-captured animation, the animators had their work cut out for them. Any difference in quality between the monster animations and human animations would be obvious, even jarring. The fact that they aren't-that in fact combat against monsters is smooth and natural-is a testament to the skill and talent of our guys.
What about cinematic sequences? Are you using FMV, in-game real time, or a combination of both?
Jim Bishop: BioWare games are about telling stories, and we use many different tools to tell them. Most Jade Empire cinematics are done in the game engine, but we do use full-motion cinematics to show story elements that are difficult if not impossible to show in engine.
Although it is a mythical world, Jade Empire takes place in ancient China. What kind of research was done before you started building the world of Jade Empire?
Jim Bishop: Jade Empire takes place in a mythical world inspired by the myths and legends of ancient China-not in historical ancient China. It's a vision of ancient China as it might have been, if all the stories were true.
With that said, we spent months researching primary source material: novels like Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West, collected stories like Tales from a Chinese Studio, as well as original art: painting, architecture, sculpture, and more esoteric arts like penjing and gongshi. And of course we watched a lot of martial arts movies over the months. Martial arts cinema owes a huge debt to their primary source, but there are also plenty of innovations in the genre that make it worth studying.
In which phase of development are you now and when will Jade Empire be completed?
Jim Bishop: Jade Empire will ship in the first quarter of 2005. We're currently in full production, which means the team has answered all the major questions about how systems work and are now just finishing the huge amount of content that's going into the game. All the beautiful game areas, models, cinematics, music, voice acting, and everything else that goes into a BioWare roleplaying game are in progress, and every day the game gets a little closer to completion.
Being that Jade Empire has been in development (even in your minds) for some time, is it safe to say this project is the one you're most proud of?
Dr. Ray Muzyka: At BioWare we're always trying to make each game we release better than the last and that's definitely our goal with Jade Empire! We're proud of all of our games and our teams - the people working at BioWare are a hard-working, creative bunch of people who strive very hard to maintain the quality of our projects. We're going to do our very best as a company to craft Jade Empire into the best game that BioWare's yet released - one that will feature a very cool blend of real time combat and epic storyline, and which will allow you to roleplay as a martial arts master!
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