Let's Play Jade Empire!

I believe this is true. On the other hand, bureaucracy is involved, so I think it's also contractually obligated to use as many words as possible to say as little as possible.

I also love Zin Bu because he is super-helpful and because the entire concept of the celestial bureaucracy never fails to crack me up. It's one of my favorite myth cycle things. Of COURSE the higher powers are all a huge bureaucracy. It explains so much!

I need to replay this game and take Chai Ka everywhere.

Does it even count as cannibalism when the ones doing the eating aren't human anymore?

I mean, not that it's less awful. That just popped into my head.

I'm going to go with it's still cannibalism if you started out human.

Not that all of these dudes did, so maybe "man-eaters" would be a better term. Having more than one sentient humanoid species running around muddies the waters a bunch.

I would also like to direct everyone's attention to the FLAYED HUMAN BODIES STRUNG UP ALL OVER THE CAVE BACKGROUND WHAT THE HELL BIOWARE?

So glad I didn't bring Wild Flower, no matter what kind of dialogue Chai Ka might have had when we get to the Mother.

Yeah, it's one of the creepiest, most horrible levels in the game. Brood mothers and demon infestation in DAO get close, but I remember being very, very grossed out doing this level the first time.

And yes, do not encourage Whirlwind. Never encourage the Whirlwind.

Gah. Those spirit dudes were the point where i found out just flailing about won't get me through everything in the game, and i had to actually l2play.

edit: and hell yes, finally it's Black Whirlwind <3 my favourite BW companion ever.

I bet it's the other way around. They level up by telling riddles, so the little munchkins can't resist any opportunity to get some XP.

It's alright, if it meant that much to you, I'm sure she'd tell you straight out, right?

Black Whirlwind is made of awesome.

Also, I nearly forgot about the corpse everywhere like a demon butchery. I wasn't too disturbed by this however. Probably because I spent a lot of time focusing on killing those creatures, so I didn't think too much about that.

Black Whirlwind is my favorite kind of character. :D

I'm very sorry this is not an update!

However, I am happy to report that after nearly a solid month of inactivity, I finally managed to string enough free time together to sit down and play through the remainder of the current quest. Due to the holiday it will probably be at least a few more days before I get an update put together, but it will be forthcoming relatively soon, and now that we're through the worst crunch of my job's busy season I should be able to maintain a regular update schedule again.

Thank you all for your patience, and I wish everyone a very happy holiday!

As an apology for not having an update ready yet, please accept instead this video from the Muppet Christmas Carol, featuring Robin the frog as Tiny Tim making Michael Caine cry.

Offering accepted.

Happy Christmas ^^

Joking aside, it's usually worth the wait, and RL must take priority.

Happy holidays! I'm glad to hear that things are calming down for you and I look forward to your next update. :)

Happy New Year, everyone! With the holiday insanity finally more or less out of the way, I'm once again able to resume updates. Sorry for the wait!

Borrowing an excellent idea from Davian Korran, beginning with this one I'll be putting my updates behind spoiler tags in the hopes of not choking people's browsers to death with masses of huge images. Since I'm doing this, I'm also going to experiment with not sizing down the images as I have been up to now - please let me know if the larger images cause any problems for you.

Happy New Year to you too! :D

Happy New Year, albeit I think the original idea can be credited to Ingmar, who put out the advice in the LP general discussion thread. I just implented it for testing. That said, I think it's excellent and should be put into wide use in image heavy LPs, because it also helps the page actually load to the right post.

And yay, it's starting again!

MOTHER OF CANNIBALS, I'd forgotten how ugly that thing is. And I never got that dialogue from Hou, hilariously, because if you bring any companion but Whirlwind with you, he will help him get there with different dialogue involving more "Whirlwind, you so craaaazy."

Also yay, so glad to see this back.

Hurrah, an update! And yeah, that is one ugly mother.

Well, it's eminently clear why she wanted you to do her dirty work, at least?

New deal; NEVER LEAVE WHIRLWIND ALONE WITH WILD FLOWER. Especially if we're not certain she'll ask him questions.

NO KIDDING. The last thing we need is Whirlwind teaching her things.

As a side note, even though the Forest Shadow speaks Tho Fan (also known as the game's excuse for recycling the same three or four lines of gibberish over and over), at least some of her lines are unique recordings, and that remark about how resourceful humans are and she'd never have thought to drop a mountain on the Mother is one of them. She sounds positively gleeful when she says it.

She's a fascinating creature, too. They really bring across the whole Spirit Logic vs. Real World logic you only scratch with Chai Ka. She is definitely a force of good, but not entirely, and she's quite willing to toss you under the bus sooner than risk her own place.

I said it before, but I REALLY like Yun. He's such a decent chap and it's absolutely not a given in this game, tripple when he's a noble. I always try to save the forest when I play - far more to play fair with him than out of affection for the Shadow.

Agreed, Yun is awesome from start to finish. The Forest Shadow is kind of ambiguous, as you said; she doesn't hesitate to point the PC at the Mother in the hopes of being able to avoid having that fight herself, without really giving anywhere near enough warning about what you're up against or how to fight her. For a spirit, especially a trickster spirit like foxes traditionally are, I'm willing to buy that she's reasonably benevolent, but it's still kind of galling to know you're being yanked around.

But Yun is polite, reasonable in his requests, honest and willing to hold up his end of the deal, and basically all-around a stand-up guy, especially in comparison to the few nobles and other upper-class types we've dealt with up to now.

It's actually kinda cute (or maybe that's just me). Look at that silly grin!

Considering the things I have called cute over the course of this LP, I can't criticize!

It does kind of remind me of the derpface the wyvern gets when you kill them in MotA, I guess...

Yeah, it is rather ugly-cute, innit?

Also, I would just like to reiterate that Black Whirlwind is my favorite kind of character.

Starting with this update, I'm going to try using a larger font size to see if that helps make the text more readable, since spoiler-tagging everything has the unfortunate side effect of putting it all in italics. Let me know if it helps or makes things worse!

Dawn Star is the best. She's really just the best and sweetest and I wish she didn't have to have suffered morons shunning her at all.

I'm fine with the text size increase.

It's why even my CF characters kill mother.

Also awww Dawn Star and I'm fine with the text size.

Black Whirlwind is, as always, BEST CHARACTER.

Also, Dawn Star d'aaaaaw...

And the text size seems fine to me.