XE: Speaking of Jade Empire, the Jade Empire game seems pretty well received by critics and gamers alike. Will Bioware be continuing JE at all? A rumor going around is that the game is that Jade Empire 2 is going to PlayStation 3, but that seems unlikely especially since traditionally Bioware only works on one major project at a time.

Ray: We don’t comment on rumors, but we can definitely say that MS has been a great supporter of BioWare in the past on both Jade Empire and Mass Effect and we definitely look forward to working with them in the future – they’re a very good partner. And, BioWare definitely plans to continue the Jade Empire franchise – the Jade team did a great job with the first game in that series; we have great teams working on all of our games here. We’ve also said in the past that we’re working on not just one, but two Xbox360 titles. Enough said

XE: Visually what we have seen for Mass Effect is quite impressive, in fact on par with other next-generation titles like Gears of War. How long has it been in development using the Unreal Engine 3, and are the visuals just as detailed in one area as the other, or in some of the bigger areas, does Bioware become more “lenient”?

Casey: We’ve been working with this engine since the beginning of the project, and much of our work has focused on adding proprietary extensions that allow us to do some unique things with cinematics, dialog and digital actors. We haven’t yet shown the kinds of things our characters will be able to do, but it will be amazing. Our focus on advanced digital actors is paying off in some unbelievable ways. One interesting side effect of having extremely advanced and realistic characters is the sense of empowerment you get as a player when you create your character’s unique appearance, and that character ends up looking surprisingly real and is capable of very subtle acting and facial expressions etc.

Generally though, what we’ve shown as part of our announcement is just a teaser of things to come. We’re building a whole galaxy of aliens, creatures, and exotic locations – in addition to a sophisticated system for variety in the humans you’ll see in the game, including lots of different clothing and armor types. We also have a very sleek, futuristic architectural style to our environments that’s only hinted at in the released imagery. In short, we expect the final game to exceed the scope and quality of the few teaser scenes we’ve shown so far.

I never heard of the Jade 2 rumor.

and Yes, the Graphics are UnreaL 

$5 say they change the design radically on that thing.......lol