Jade Empire Preview

Jolt Online Gaming has put together a preview of Jade Empire, based upon what we know of BioWare's Xbox RPG to date. A snippet:
The game features many side quests, all of which seem to be handled in much the same way as Knights of the Old Republic. In spite of the lessons learned from that game, however, BioWare has been keen to do as much new as possible, which includes an all-new engine. The engine reportedly has twice the rendering passes as Knights of the Old Republic, and we can certainly attest to the fact that it looks more detailed. The characters themselves have a much higher polygon count, which is boosted by the fact that all of the combat animations have been motion captured from martial arts champions.