The mountains of the Wall of Heaven (or Qiang Tian as they are locally known) run along the northern half of the continent. The mainland of Kara-Tur is incredibly large, equaling (and some say surpassing) the size of any other continent on Athas. The west is blocked off by the massive Kaiu Wall and the Twilight Mountains, which stand as barriers against the cursed Shadowlands. The realm is bordered to the north by the icy Wall of Heaven and to the south by the Sea of Endless Troubles and the subcontinent of Vudra. Often referred to as the вЂњDragon EmpiresвЂќ, Kara-Tur is a land of strange magic, political intrigue and endless opportunities for adventure. Similarly, Wu the Lotus Blossom is 'balanced' and walks between the previous examples in both survivability and speed.West of Athas, more than 6,000 miles across the Shining Sea, lies the mysterious realms of the far west, on a continent known as Kara-Tur. Mike Laidlaw: If you jump right into the game and play the characters in there, you'll certainly notice that Radiant Jen Zi, one of our 'fast' characters, is far more capable at using weapons and focus mode, while Tiger Shen, a 'strong' character, can take quite a bit more of a beating than his lithe counterpart. GameSpy: How do the starting characters differ? Tho Fan makes the world a bit more exotic and more fun to explore. We didn't want to use an existing Asian language because the Jade Empire is not really Asia, it is simply a fantasy world that is heavily inspired by Asian Fantasy and myth. Just like Elvish in The Lord of the Rings or Klingon in Star Trek, adding this other dialect to the game made the world seem more realistic and, by extension, more immersive. We developed this language to add personality and a bit more immersion to our world. The language that was developed was called Tho Fan (translates as 'Old Tongue') and spoken fairly widely in Jade Empire though less so now than it once was. It so happened that he was a gamer and specialized in Asian languages. Kevin Martens: We hired a linguist from the University of Albertan named Wolf Wikely to develop a unique language for Jade Empire. what's it called, and why did you decide to use this, as opposed to an existing language? GameSpy: You've invented a new language for some of the characters in Jade Empire. Given that a paperback novel sits at roughly 60,000 words, we're confident Jade Empire will provide not only hours of entertainment, but plenty of replayability. It's a staggering number until you realize that a character like Dawn Star, whom you met in your play through of the first hour, has over 20,000 words alone. That said, Jade Empire's currently sitting over 320,000 words of dialog spoken by the NPC's. Those guys give design and audio a lot of flexibility in how we analyze our dialog and line counts, and I'm rarely more thankful for them than on the dreaded days when I have to deal with the sheer amount of data that goes into our games. Mike Laidlaw: To answer your question I just fired up one of the handy-dandy reports put together by our in-house tools team here at BioWare. GameSpy: How much dialogue is there in the game? Sure, you could simply fight your way through the game, but that wouldn't be much fun, would it? In an effort to learn a bit more about what went into creating the story, characters, and general design of the game, we talked to Designers Mike Laidlaw and Kevin Martens, who were more than happy to take the time to answer some of our burning questions.

The game is still an RPG, one which requires you to converse with many of the Empire's denizens you'll meet in your travels.

Like nearly all of BioWare's games, Jade Empire has a heavy emphasis on story, despite its action-heavy leanings.

Jade empire jen zi