We'll have you in proper pantaloons by the morrow (ruiner spoilers for Jade Empire)

[Pronounceable]

JE is a very good game. I like it. Pure wuxia is awesome when not mixed with western fantasy (which then sucks).

So who else expected to be betrayed? It was obvious the moment he said: "This could prove useful." And all Bioware games contain a plot twist somewhere in. Though I didn't expect to actually get killed. Which was quite refreshing. Li is truly a glorious bastard.

Nitpick: How did Li fill that endgame armor? He was a skinny old guy at the start, how come he wears armor more muscular than Kin's? Or is it mostly empty inside and he's wearing it just for show? Wait, that was Li's armor in the first place. I guess the conservation of mass doesn't apply in wuxia.


And the obligatory nod to Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificient Bastard is in the title.

[Blayze]

It couldn't have been more obvious if the endless stream of characters who mention a "looking for a weakness they couldn't find" in your technique had just held up neon signs that said "LOL UR BETRAYED". Not to mention the Water Dragon's pseudo-cryptic ramblings.

I've not yet tried the game on Jade Master mode, but it would seem that after the first playthrough on JM, the game just gets easier (Levels reset each time you play through the game, but stat and style points not reset). Technically, you could go through it enough times for the game to be a complete cakewalk.

Also, the game was flawed. Smiling Mountain's speech at the start about how Open Palm wasn't good and Closed Fist wasn't evil was a breath of fresh air - especially from Bioware, whose alignment choices in games basically come down to "Pacifist Icon of Virtue" versus "******* McChildkiller" - but the rest of the game couldn't follow suit.

Hell, you couldn't even finish the game as Closed Fist without being a god-killing *******, as the final choice in the game shunted you completely one way or the other. You could be evil the entire game and perform that one good act and suddenly WHAM! Paragon of Virtue.

It's Bioware Morality.

[Brother Oni]

JE is a very good game. I like it. Pure wuxia is awesome when not mixed with western fantasy (which then sucks).

And all Bioware games contain a plot twist somewhere in.

I liked the game as well, although there could have been more refinement to the combat system.

I did like the references to actual chinese culture (the Emperor referring to the Mandate of Heaven is the best example off the top of my head).

I especially liked the way your character changed depending on how far along the closed fist/open palm paths you were (the shadow tentacles were awesome).

I didn't like the typical Bioware end of story choice which invalidated all the moral choices you made earlier in the game though:


For my second game, I played a complete advocate of the Closed Fist - survival of the fittest. I left Ya Zhen in charge of Wild Flower, ate Silk Fox's and Sky's soul to control them, bound Death's Hand to my service and generally lived to the maxim of 'that which does not kill you, only makes you stronger'.

I did however remember to respect my place in the Celestial Order and freed the Water Dragon, resulting in a massive shift in alignment to the Open Palm path. :smallmad:
On the plus side it didn't affect any of the equipment I had on, so I was 3/4 Open Palm with several 100% Closed Fist items on. :smallbiggrin:

[Closet_Skeleton]

But the Closed Fist route is the "seize power at all costs" route so it wouldn't make sense to free the water dragon.

[Faithdreamer]

I thought the meaning behind the madness was the seizure of power to a point. You can still respect your place and seize power at all costs as long as that power is your own personal power to influence your world.

Celestial affairs would not concern you. You recognize that you are a part of the celestial order and you have a place in it. You don't need to steal the places of others.

But as an advocate of Closed Fist it is your responsibility to ensure that the natural strength rules. If that means being a pawn of fate and crushing the weaker creature celestial or not between your toes, too bad for her scaly skin. You're just adhering to your place.

How do those philosophers in that garden ever get anything to work?

[Pronounceable]

It's Bioware Morality.

Actually that's George Lucas Morality. "I've killed and oppressed and destroyed for years. But that's MY son you bastard, get off of him! ... What's this? I'm redeemed?! LOL im goin 2 heaven!!!1!!"

Seeing how well that crap worked, eveyone and their uncles are copying it.


And there's a distinct lack of good looking male avatars (and sensibly dressed female ones) to replay the game. Mr Ridiculous Tattoo was alright for the first run but I won't be JMing with him and other guys are crap. Not even mods can help it seems. Think I'll have to play with Ms Guyfaced, she's at least dressed somehwhat sensibly.

[Faithdreamer]

First I'd like you to close your eyes and breathe. It sounds like you are trivializing the 'morality' part. Vader and others like him had deep thoughts and heartfelt feelings for whatever they were doing.

The message is that their past is irrelevant - everything that matters is in their present intentions no matter how they fall in the end for better of all or even terrible failure.

George Lucas is a wonderful writer.

On the Closed Fist versus Open Palm they reflect only what people in the Jade Empire are willing to find acceptable when they consider moral values.

Many choices in Closed Fist are outright evil and careless and when grown lead to evil because the Protagonist is allowing sins of omission to happen (should they exist, by existing as a way of forcing responsibility on people).

The awful truth is that Jade Empire is a video game and would be ill equipped for a comprehensive demonstration of what true Closed Fist philosophy represents. Characters even say people use that philosophy for rotten things and they are not pure adherents to it's tenets.

Bioware tried to do the best they could to represent a universe in short form notes but enlightened thought is up to person who views the media.

[Murska]

The best Closed Fist choice IMO was the one where you could Give the slave-girl a knife and let her fight herself out.

Really made me feel like "If you're strong enough to survive, you shall."

Also annoyed me that I couldn't get the Viper without being a total ass, although it's the coolest style IMO. But the last choice changing your whole alignment to one way or another was kind of lame. There was no way to be neutral, either. And hey, why would someone who wants power want to stop the dead from going to the afterworld, resulting in ghosts attacking and killing everything? Wanting power doesn't mean wanting to destroy the whole world, right?

[Brother Oni]

But the Closed Fist route is the "seize power at all costs" route so it wouldn't make sense to

That's one interpretation of the Closed Fist path, but a very narrow one.

The purpose of the Closed Fist path is to promote disorder and conflict, so that things have a chance to change and adapt. Too much of this leads to anarchy, where nothing will grow as it's destroyed constantly.

Conversely, the Open Palm philosophy is stability and order, so that things have a chance to develop and grow. Too much of this leads to stagnation and rigidity, where things won't have a chance to change.

Obviously to have harmony, you need a balance of both, which is a very oriental philosophy. It's a pity Bioware got a little too western in their interpretation of this and made the two paths a little too fixed in 'good' and 'evil'.



Celestial affairs would not concern you. You recognize that you are a part of the celestial order and you have a place in it. You don't need to steal the places of others.

But as an advocate of Closed Fist it is your responsibility to ensure that the natural strength rules. If that means being a pawn of fate and crushing the weaker creature celestial or not between your toes, too bad for her scaly skin. You're just adhering to your place.


The Heavenly Bureacracy does concern you as the Heavens rule the Earth (remember the Mandate of Heaven required to rule?). As you're a Spirit Monk it concerns you even more as you're fundamental to maintaining this balance.

As an follower of the Closed Fist, it is your duty to ensure that there is enough destruction and conflict to stimulate growth and development. However it is important to know your place and not to overstep the boundaries, which is what caused the entire imbalance in the first place.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should it.

I don't think eating the Water Dragon and become a god in her stead somehow fits your job description. :smallbiggrin:

Imagine a fire. Controlled, it provides warmth, light, the ability to cook food and is generally very useful to civilisation. Uncontrolled, it destroys cities.
Balance and moderation is the key.


How do those philosophers in that garden ever get anything to work?

They didn't, if you remember. :smallbiggrin:

[Pronounceable]

Hey, here's someone who got the concept! Nice.

I'd like to add that the best course of action should've been balance. Portraiting alignment extremes (mastery of a path) as the best course of action is something RPGs can do without. Mastery of one way shouldn't have been rewarded most. Surely the game can keep track of how much you've moved toward either path during all game and maintaining a balanced alignment throughout the game should've given most rewards and best ending.

Sadly, we won't be seeing a RPG like that ever.

[Attilargh]

I really like the game. However, I have a few issues with it:

The gameplay became boring and repetitive and also kinda boring and repetitive about, oh, halfway through. Three different attacks per a style is really little, especially when most enemies don't really require switching styles. And if you decide to go Open Palm and get Paralyzing Palm from that one guy in the school, it's game over for anything that isn't dead, a demon or Master Li. Just alternate between that and your main unarmed style, occasionally switching to Spirit Thief when your Ki runs low and voila, one dead enemy. And for the final battles, there's Jade Golem. Man, I was really wishing I'd actually spent points on that when I finally discovered how awesome and win it was.

Also, goddamn Toad Demons. I hated the boops, with their huge reach and insanely fast belly tackle and poison and ARGH! Attilargh is angry. I missed out on a lot of good stuff just because I couldn't be arsed to deal with the blobs of fat and poison. Whose idea was it to make them immune to both magic and support styles, anyway? Booping boop.

Oh, and repetitive gameplay.

[Blayze]

And if you decide to go Open Palm and get Paralyzing Palm from that one guy in the school, it's game over for anything that isn't dead, a demon or Master Li. Just alternate between that and your main unarmed style, occasionally switching to Spirit Thief when your Ki runs low and voila, one dead enemy. And for the final battles, there's Jade Golem.

You forgot Mirabelle. ;)

I played through the game as much as I could without spending any Style points whatsoever. I couldn't get through the Arena like that, so I maxed out Mirabelle and breezed through the rest of the game.

[Faithdreamer]

Scholars
They built flying machines, proved the superiority of their culture, conducted a concise debate as a panel of judges, crafted the Scholar's Garden and the floating rock display inside of it; they taught others about all sorts of subjects and penned several useful scrolls of knowledge. That's not true.

Philosophy
What if these philosophies aren't strictly concerning absolutes?

Are they aware of themselves?

Is there so much left unsaid?

That's a debate for the scholar's garden. For evolution with an R, but if there's one thing I learned from life it's that pointless conversations are necessary.

Continuation
With my questions I meant that the reasons for CF/OP being the way they happened to be included that the Palm was that harmony you were speaking for. The Fist ended up being an extreme of power the Protagonist and many others were unable to handle (except for that Master playing Yi with his old Student in Tien's Landing).

The concern with murdering the Water Dragon lies in Closed Fist Karma. She is murdered justly because she was unable to retain her place in the cosmic order and was consumed by adversity. You're simply the better choice as Guardian and Guide of the dead.

Girl Power
Don't slice the worldly pie into two halves!

You're smelly bad news when you do that. I just want to caution you for the future.

Another Question
What does being Closed Fist have to do with ruling the Jade Empire?

Thoughtfulness
Discord on the throne of an Empire would brook instability the subjects of the Jade Empire would not welcome...

...To set the Empire up so it could topple and more interesting times ushered in...

Is the Spirit Monk trying to make the land realize Closed Fist..?

CF/OP Consideration
Closed Fist has harshness that's soon reflected on the body of the person who believes in feeling that way. If the Fist were what it should be there would be no snarl outside or within.

The Open Palm promotes peace without and within and appeals to innate feelings of serenity. If the Palm were what it should be there would be less tranquility and more sadness on their faces.

Each philosophy is not itself.

[Dairun Cates]

Bit off topic, but I think if you want a REAL WTF plot twist, you need to give Soul Nomad a try sometime. Giving comparisons would give it away, but telling you there is one won't help you prepare for it. All I can say is that you'd know it when you see it. It manages to come completely out of left field and yet explain questions you weren't even asking the whole time. It's just that insanely well-done.

As for Jade Empire, I haven't played it, but I do know some of the other Bioware twists and this one actually seems mildly tame in comparison. Still, it takes some guts to kill off the player in the last moments of the game. Not a lot of games go there.

[Brother Oni]

The concern with murdering the Water Dragon lies in Closed Fist Karma. She is murdered justly because she was unable to retain her place in the cosmic order and was consumed by adversity. You're simply the better choice as Guardian and Guide of the dead.


Who says you're the better choice? Yourself? That's pure arrogance and hubris to assume so.

By doing so, you're now part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

The point I'm trying to make here is that a person should know their place. That is a distinct cultural point, common in both Chinese and Japanese history.

Thinking that you can take somebody's place in the hierarchy because a) you think you're better than them and b)somebody else crippled them first, leaving you to scoop the reward is a foreign mindset in my opinion.


As for toppling the empire - it's perfectly legitimate for a Closed Fist advocate to do so. The old Empire is corrupt and decadent and must be cleansed to made anew. The Open Palm then remakes what the Closed Fist has destroyed.

In real history, the government was referred to as having lost the Mandate of Heaven and hence the legal, spiritual and divine right to rule, not to mention the physical strength to do so.

[Faithdreamer]

Please don’t assume that the Protagonist of the story is taking so much responsibility on their Fist oriented shoulders. The morality in this example has nothing to do with personal thought – the reason lies in a wholehearted belief that fate exists. It was the choice of the Heavenly Bureaucracy to use the Spirit Monk as its instrument.What did you intend to communicate with the word Foreign? Being able to scoop up rewards can be veiled behind so many philosophies it’s irrelevant what the original motivation. All people could have been responsible for a convenient reason and lie in one when all they wanted was the power to change things and the right to rule. Aside from being able to void my first statement with that point it’s a rebuttal about the absolute nature of thought.

The Old Empire is only corrupt and decadent in the belief of the mind that considers it. Who believes the Closed Fist is only limited to the physical manifestation of strength?

The Empire under the rule of the Emperor could have been a different kind of Closed Fist. Chaos can be caused without completely destroying an old regime. It may even be easier with a subtle Closed Fist approach. Not a crushing blow, a light tap on the knuckles in comparison.

Don’t miss the point of refusing to split the worldly pie in two halves. There are philosophical benefits aside from promoting peace.

While the Open Palm is stability and the Closed Fist discord what if you rearrange the two perspectives?

The Palm regains stability by realizing the place of its adherents in the order of the natural world. Then the Fist causes discord by crafting a civilization that causes an epidemic of oppression.

[Savageman]

"George Lucas is a wonderful writer."
What.

[Innis Cabal]

Who says you're the better choice? Yourself? That's pure arrogance and hubris to assume so.

By doing so, you're now part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

The point I'm trying to make here is that a person should know their place. That is a distinct cultural point, common in both Chinese and Japanese history.

Thinking that you can take somebody's place in the hierarchy because a) you think you're better than them and b)somebody else crippled them first, leaving you to scoop the reward is a foreign mindset in my opinion.


As for toppling the empire - it's perfectly legitimate for a Closed Fist advocate to do so. The old Empire is corrupt and decadent and must be cleansed to made anew. The Open Palm then remakes what the Closed Fist has destroyed.

In real history, the government was referred to as having lost the Mandate of Heaven and hence the legal, spiritual and divine right to rule, not to mention the physical strength to do so.

Tell that to Sun Wukong

[Brother Oni]

It was the choice of the Heavenly Bureaucracy to use the Spirit Monk as its instrument.


Yes, but they certainly didn't expect the monk to further disrupt the balance. Due to the severity of the situation, they were however not too concerned with how the goal was achieved, just that it was achieved.



What did you intend to communicate with the word Foreign?

Non-eastern. There are some fundamental differences in cultural mindsets that while a person raised in that culture would take for granted, someone from a different cultural would find absolutely incomprehensible.
One example of a Chinese concept that I have a hard time explaining is 'face'. The best I can come up with is a combination of respectability and 'keeping up appearances'.



Being able to scoop up rewards can be veiled behind so many philosophies it’s irrelevant what the original motivation.


Unless you're of the Closed Fist path which has an emphasis on overcoming obstacles and strife personally, so that you can learn and grow from the experience.



The Palm regains stability by realizing the place of its adherents in the order of the natural world. Then the Fist causes discord by crafting a civilization that causes an epidemic of oppression.

Except that due to its fundamental nature of discord, Closed Fist advocates would never be able to organise sufficiently to be able to systematically enforce that oppression. :smallbiggrin:
On the other hand, some Open Palm followers would be more than happy to have oppression to enforce the status quo and have constant unchanging stability.

Bear in mind that not everybody follows these paths. I certainly don't think Master Li did as he'd refuse to be tied down to one particular path.



Tell that to Sun Wukong

Defeating Heaven and making them accept you as the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven is one thing. Totally trashing Heaven and sending the Celestial Emperor running away, screaming like a little girl is something else.

He overstepped his position and was punished accordingly, unless being trapped under a mountain for 500 years then spending years walking to India when he could have somersaulted there and back in five minutes doesn't count as suitable punishment.

[EvilElitest]

Guys, Bioware has one of the best morality system generally. because it actually makes being evil a smart option. Unlike say Fable, where if your evil, you are pretty much satan, in Jade Empire it makes sense to be evil


Closed fist is forging your own destiny, making your self alter the world around you, taking power for your self, while open palm is about embracing the world around you and understanding harmany

Master Li is pretty much Open Palm, as he wants to bring about the natural order of things (in his mind at least)

Close Fist is logical option at times, because he can get what you want.

Also the netural ending is amazing


Greatest flaws
1) Really repatative game play. I mean they had a cool system, but i could pretty much kill everything with my normal attack, and tiger claw
2) not enough exporation and side quest. We have like five areas, three of them are quest areas. Jade Empire is way to short, it seems like it would take up a chapter of say, baldur's gate. We needed more places to go, more side quests, more NPCS, and more story line. Way way way too short

In short, Biowere again proves it is one of the most reilable quality game companies in the market
from
EE

[Faithdreamer]

On Foreigners
Please try to be level headed while I say these next things. Be very choosy with your words. ‘Foreigner’ evokes in my mind the concept of ‘us and them’. Thought like that can flower into very naughty things. Cultural barriers seem awfully silly when so many values appear universal. People who act silly that come from all the different cultures usually aren’t intentionally promoting evil.

Heavenly… Tool…
I believe my intention was to communicate the Closed Fist believer thought their path was superior. Thinking this way the Closed Fist follower’s thought would be they are the tool of Heaven. As Heaven’s Tool they achieve balance by using their philosophy to overcome the Water Dragon and claim her place. They are not destabilizing the Bureaucracy by becoming who the Water Dragon was – through their use of disharmony they have restored harmony (as odd as that seems).

If killing the Water Dragon IS discord, they might be showing the Bureaucracy its place by forcing the Fist down heaven’s throat because it is so stable. How could it expect to be stable again after it’s been obviously proven the Fist’s way of thinking is ‘better’?

Through it mere humans were able to challenge Heaven and succeed at it. Why aren’t the humans gods, and the gods humans?

Face
Be careful about assuming things for everyone else. I know none of us can really help it so don’t worry about that as much. You may even add some amount of personal responsibility. With respectability and keeping up appearances apply politeness, compassion and public opinion, societal harmony.

Be wary of how you communicate Face to some people who may be wary of deceivers and con artists. They will appreciate honesty because it is equated with a truthful and trustworthy individual. Tact may or may not be absent. The person may not be thinking clearly or wisely, step back and remind them very compassionately so you can explain more concisely.

The Fist Lies!
Personal strength could be spiritual, mental or physical. The means by which you attain the acquisition of your goals and strengths can vary even if you use someone else. You were clearly their superior in the fields of intellect or spirit (or at least their equal). When you consider just the problem, you’ve beaten it with the strength of your mind and heart and grown in the process. Don’t forget that the Fist must also teach.

Serving Discord
Being a Fist fellow doesn’t only mean that you eat pizza. You can have a sumptuously organized banquet with everything particular to your tastes perfectly set. The followers of discord are not discord incarnate, merely indications of its presence and servants of its whims. Discord would resent being categorized – organizing implies organization and is the antithesis of it. It makes perfect sense why chaos would organize something.

Is the third time the charm?
You’re on track with Master Li but you haven’t worded his genius. Be wary of the absolute nature of thought, Brother.

Oh - I have a sense of humor too! :smallcool: