Jade Empire 2 Was in the Pipeline but Got Killed Off by Problems at BioWare
Old Game Dev Advice channel, run by a former BioWare studio employee, posted an interesting material about the sequel to Jade Empire. It told us how the work on the sequel looked like, how it evolved and why the project eventually got canceled.
- Mark Darrah, former BioWare employee, published a video in which he talks about the history of the Jade Empire 2 project;
- According to the original plans it was supposed to be a direct sequel to the first game;
- Later it was decided to make a continuation set closer to modern times;
- In the end, it was decided to completely abandon the Jade Empire brand and create something new. As a consequence of the cuts, however, the project was eventually canceled.
Originally released in 2005 on Xbox (and almost two years later on PC), Jade Empire is hardly the first title that comes to mind when you think of BioWare's RPGs. This game set in a universe inspired by late-medieval China, however, has its own group of supporters, enchanted, for example, by its unique atmosphere and the opportunity to play as an adept of eastern martial arts, which is something unique in fantasy games. It's all the more pity that, despite the rumors of a sequel appearing from time to time, we haven't lived to see it. Why? The latest video posted on the Old Game Dev Advice channel on YouTube, Mark Darrah, who worked in BioWare between 1997 and 2021 (first as a programmer and later as an executive producer), tries to answer this question. We invite you to watch:
Jade Empire 2, or the direct follow up
Darrah's story begins shortly after finishing work on the first Jade Empire. The original plan for the sequel was to do a direct follow up. It was to take place a few decades after the events known from the original, but the shape of the universe would not change drastically. Players would be able to take on the role of a completely new character and get to know unprecedented Western nations. The developers had quite ambitious plans, at least when it came to the technological layer. For example, they wanted to avoid loading screens when moving between areas. In short, ultimately nothing came of it. The Jade Empire 2 team was merged with the team working on Mass Effect and the Unreal Engine to save resources.
Jade Modern, we move to the present day
On the occasion of all this confusion, the basic idea for the sequel to Jade Empire changed quite drastically. The title was still supposed to take place in the same universe, but more reminiscent of the present day, in which magic, practically absent for hundreds of years, slowly begins to return. The story itself would continue the ending, in which the main character allowed the antagonist to carry out his plans. Within the game, we would take on the role of a member of the CRU (Crisis Response Unit) dealing with mysterious issues related to the ever-increasing cases of magic emergence, who over time would gain supernatural abilities himself. The organization trying to silence all the commotion, and with which we would probably have to compete, was to be called the ISA (Imperial Security Agency). Darrah doesn't remember exactly, but at the end most likely the protagonist would have to face Emperor Lee (the main opponent from the first game) in a zombiefied version.
Concept arts prepared for this vision of the project show, among others, Frog Demons in the role of mafia thugs. As the plot progressed, all these supernatural beings were to lose their human forms and return to their own shape.
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Revolver, or what evolved from all this and how it died
Over time, however, the concept changed again. Supervisors decided to completely abandon the idea to set the title in the Jade Empire universe and develop something more "generic", which would be a new brand, based on the concept described above. Why such a decision? Unfortunately, at that time Darrah was not a part of the team working on this particular game, so it's hard to say. Some time later the creator returned to the project, which was now called Revolver ..
As Darrah admits, while working on this game the team had to face several surprising problems. One of them was, as the developer put it, a "pathological need to rationalize" every element of the game. He cited cars as an example. Due to limited resources, preparing a driving model was out of the question, so, unable to logically explain why the main character couldn't get into cars and drive them, they were simply thrown in the trash. There were also all manners of explanations as to why, while having access to firearms, characters also use melee weapons, and the source of the protagonist's abilities.
These difficulties were surmountable, but there was yet another problem. Around the year 2008, when Revolver was to enter a hybrid phase between pre-production and actual production, EA, who already owned BioWare, began to cut costs, which necessitated layoffs in subordinate studios. As a result, the Canadian team had to let go of several smaller projects in favor of bigger ones, which at the time were Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. In this way, the project known as Revolver, which was originally intended to be a continuation of Jade Empire has passed away.
According to Darrah, Revolver could surprise players with some interesting things, bolder than what could be seen in the aforementioned Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. However, it is possible that from today's perspective, he looks at the whole project through rose-tinted glasses. It is therefore difficult to say whether, if the work on it had been completed, we would have received a successful game. And we'll probably never find out.
