This blog entry contains Jade Empire spoilers
Morality systems are fairly common in computer RPGs, and while some go for the standard good and evil, others are more complex, like Mass Effect's Paragon and Renegade. Jade Empire opts for the Open Palm and Closed Fist philosophies, which in theory are about helping others or believing people should stand on their own, but in practice end up falling into traditional good or evil.
In order to evaluate why this morality system fails to realize its potential, I will examine three case studies throughout the game
Case Study 1: Kia Min
In Chapter 1, Kia Min, a fellow student at the Two Rivers school, gets caught up in a bandit attack and injured. A sidequest allows you to try to break Kia Min's record of defeating opponents in sparring, but you can only attempt this if Kia Min is able to participate, which requires treating her wounds.
The Open Palm solution is obvious- give Kia Min the medicine she needs for her injury- but what about the Closed Fist solution? One would assume that it involves telling Kia Min that it's her fault that she got injured(an opinion that Old Ming, an old man responsible for caring for the Emperor's statue shares) and has to live with the consequences of her actions, but that leaves the quest incomplete. So what is a Closed Fist player to do?
Old Ming, refers the player to Merchant Fen Do, who has two medicines for sale- a red silk grass poultice that will heal her injury and bearded tongue grass that serves as a painkiller. Ming warns you that while the bearded tongue grass is cheaper than red silk grass, which is why Fen Do will try to sell you it, but if you give it to Kia Min, she will be erroneously convinced she's recovered and continue to practice, thus worsening her injury if you challenge her.
If Kia Min is injured, she will die during the attack on the Two Rivers school, but if she has recovered, she will be last seen fighting off a bandit, and will never be seen or heard from again, leaving her fate ambiguous.
In short, this is one situation in which the game fails to give a good Closed Fist option that keeps with the spirit of the philosophy.
Case Study 2: Yifong and Fuyao
In Chapter 2, the player will encounter a young woman named Fuyao and her mother Yifong; the player is entering Tien's Landing as the two women are leaving. When the player attacks Gao the Greater's fortress, they will discover that the two women have been abducted and enslaved. They find Fuyao with a prospective owner and a slaver who is trying to break her. After killing the slaver, the player must decide what to do with Fuyao.
Once again, the Open Palm option is obvious- insist that Fuyao is not a slave- but the Closed Fist option is a bit more complex this time. One option allows you to sell Fuyao and her mother into slavery instead, but another, more in tune with the philosophy, has you ask the young woman if she's strong enough to fight for her freedom, then give her a knife to kill her would-be master. It's nice that there's a "true" Closed Fist option this time, but the fact that the Closed Fist option and the downright evil one both grant Closed Fist points indicates that the game's alignment system makes no distinction between someone who believes people need to survive on their own and a selfish person who does evil things to advance themselves no matter who gets hurt.
Case Study 3: Death's Hand
In Chapter 6, you fight Death's Hand, first as your player character, then as the spirit of Sun Kin, who is bound to Sun Li's old armor. If you manage to defeat Death's Hand as Sun Kin, you have two choices- release Sun Kin's spirit or bind him to yourself to use Death's Hand as a follower. Obviously, the latter choice is evil, and will result in your Open Palm companions speaking out, thus forcing you to bind them if you want to keep Death's Hand.
All this is well and good, but there's a problem. The player can point out that Sun Kin willingly chose to assist with the invasion of Dirge; while he betrayed Sun Hai alongside Sun Li, he was presumably motivated by power, but there is no option to convince Sun Kin to stay bound to his armor and atone for his sins. If you choose to bind Sun Kin and proceed to the Open Palm ending, the narration states that Sun Kin chose to atone for his crimes, which sounds like something you could have convinced him to do.
Speaking of the ending, if you proceed with forcefully binding him to his armor, your companions will forgive you if you choose the Open Palm ending, and you'll still receive the "good" ending, which leads in to my fourth and final case study.
Case Study 4: The Water Dragon's Fate
Near the end of the game, you find the Water Dragon in the Imperial Palace. Sun Li, who has betrayed you after manipulating you for your entire life, is poised to use the Dragon Amulet to drain the Water Dragon of her powers. He has already seized more power in the short time since Chapter 4 than Sun Hai had come in 20 years, so you must cut him off from the Water Dragon's power in order to stand a chance. You have two choices- kill the Water Dragon so she may be reincarnated after Sun Li's defeat, or use blood in order to temporarily weaken the Water Dragon so that you can claim her power as her own after killing Sun Li.
Naturally, there's no prizes for guessing which choice is Open Palm and which is Closed Fist. In fact, your decision here is the only one that matters; choosing to taint the Water Dragon leads to all your non-Closed Fist companions turning on you, although your Closed Fist followers are willing to tolerate you going the Open Palm route. In either case, you get a gem that matches your alignment of choice and can only be used by followers of said alignment.
One way this could have been done better is to give variations on each ending based on the player's current alignment. For example, an Open Palm-aligned Spirit Monk in control of the Water Dragon's power could become a benevolent dictator who uses their powers to provide for the people, while a Closed Fist Spirit Monk could use their power to create a Darwinist empire. There's some precedent for this in Fallout: New Vegas' endings, which have Karma-based variants for each of the four main faction endings.
The Root of the Problem
Perhaps the main problem is that the developers tried to include standard good and evil choices on top of Open Palm and Closed Fist choices, without distinguishing between the two. Consider Case Study 2, in which the more traditionally evil choice of selling Fuyao and her mother into slavery and the Closed Fist choice of having Fuyao kill her would-be owner are both counted as Closed Fist.
One possibility could be to have a two-axis alignment system, similar to Dungeons & Dragons' alignments. Just as how Good-aligned D&D characters may range from paladins who are stalwartly Lawful to Robin Hood-like Chaotic thieves who break the law for the greater good, it may be possible to be a good Open Palm or Closed Fist Spirit Monk. In this case, letting Fuyao kill her master might be an arguably Good choice, whereas selling her and her mother into slavery would be undeniably Evil.
In fact, there's some basis for evil Open Palm characters in the game proper. Inquisitor Lim, the main antagonist of Chapter 2 is a ruthless Lotus Assassin, but he uses the Stone Immortal magic style(which is tied to the way of the Open Palm), and justifies his actions by saying that stealing the Water Dragon's power ended a drought in which thousands died every day.
Fire Emblem Gaiden: A Better Take on the Ideological Divide
Incidentally, Fire Emblem Gaiden(rereleased as Shadows of Valentia) does a better job with this sort of moral conflict, in which the Open Palm and Closed Fist ideologies are represented by the dragons Mila and Duma, patron deities of the kingdom of Zofia and the Rigelian empire, respectively.
Mila believes that people should live their lives in comfort, and uses her powers to bless the southern nation of Zofia with fertile land. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of making the Zofian aristocracy slothful and decadent, indifferent toward how many of their peasants, not to mention their northern neighbors in Rigel, are starving. King Lima, the ruler of Zofia, is a debauched womanizer who ends up being overthrown by the even worse Chancellor Desaix, a secondary antagonist who is perhaps the most despicable character in the game.
As for Rigel, Duma believes that misery builds character, and that the harsh northern lands of Rigel will make his people strong. Unfortunately, it also leads to his people becoming harsh and warlike, and eventually invading Zofia. Duma himself goes mad and becomes the main antagonist and final boss of the game, while Emperor Rudolf carries out a well-intentioned but extreme plan to free humanity from the gods' control.
Alm and Celica, the co-protagonists of the game, are said to embody Duma and Mila's respective natures(although one Alternative Character Interpretation entry for the game on TV Tropes posits that they actually may be akin to Mila and Duma, respectively), since Alm is prepared to go to war with Rigel, while Celica disagrees with him. The two of them quarrel about whether war with Rigel is necessary, but ultimately join forces to defeat Duma.
I could go on for longer about this game, but I don't want to spoil too much or get distracted from what is mainly an entry about Jade Empire, but suffice to say, this is a more nuanced approach to the "gentle touch vs. firm hand" conflict that Jade Empire attempted to portray. While most of the protagonists are Zofians and most of the antagonists are Rigelian, there are heroes and villains from both nations, and the story ends with both nations united under monarchs who have no intention of repeating Mila and Duma's mistakes, showing that neither ideology is completely right or wrong,
Conclusion
Jade Empire's alignment system is a wasted opportunity, since while in theory, it proposes a new way of considering morality, in practice, it usually ends up being standard good and evil. The latter isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it allows for a great deal of player choice and roleplaying potential, but it's rather disappointing that the game failed to deliver the advertised non-traditional alignment system.
Comments
Post a Comment