Jade Empire
Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic, thanks to its Star Wars license and the fact it is genuinely great RPG, gets a lot recognition for being one of the best games on the original Xbox. Yet, Knights of the Old Republic wasn’t just an Xbox exclusive, it also saw a release on PC. Microsoft’s Jade Empire which hit a few years after Knights of the Old Republic on the other hand released solely for Xbox and is equally fantastic. Yet despite its first stellar entry nothing has been done with the series on Xbox or any other platform. After Jade Empire, BioWare started developing Mass Effect and Dragon Age and they haven’t really looked back, neither has Xbox.
Similar to Crimson Skies: Road to Revenge, Jade Empire did see a release on the Xbox 360 Marketplace. Also similar to Crimson Skies that is all that has happened since. The series is still dead and that’s a shame. While the original Jade Empire did tell a complete story and didn’t leave much in the way of cliffhangers, it did introduce a beautiful and magical world just begging for a modern facelift. Jade Empire also has one of the best combat systems in a BioWare game having the same pace and flow as a hack-and-slash but with RPG customization. BioWare has been in a bit of a critical slump after Mass Effect: Andromeda. The company should work with Xbox and dig even deeper into its catalog for one of their combined hidden gems. Of course it is not completely up to BioWare since they are now owned by EA which makes the potential of a new Jade Empire even trickier.
