Bioware's in an interesting place these days. Having been bought by Elevation Partners earlier this year, they now have the financial stability and the creative freedom to do what they do best - make killer RPG games. If this year's E3 offerings are any indication, it looks like they're gracefully straddling both past and present. Currently the company's working on a PC port of the Xbox game "Jade Empire" and a next gen game for the 360 entitled "Mass Effect".

For those of us who haven't played Jade Empire, it's a gorgeous RPG set in a historical, Chinese-themed context. Most of you have probably already played the game on the Xbox and know how good it is. Although the game is certainly worth playing through again, the PC port looks to be fairly standard stuff and probably not worth picking up if you've already played the game on Xbox. It's more or less the same game spruced up a little with cooler particle and lighting effects, better framerate and a higher difficulty setting (players of the Xbox version complained that all of the difficulty settings were too easy so Bioware made adjustments to them). Jade Empire – great game, but the PC port – not much new to offer.

Mass Effect however, looks to be taking good advantage of the 360’s power at least in terms of creating very realistic dynamic lighting and cinematic quality in-engine cutscenes. The developers seem most excited about the way the characters’ eyes look wet and reflect light. It certainly is a good effect. The problem though seems to persist, that whenever ultra-realism is attempted, little things inevitably betray the CG-ness of the characters making them a little creepy.

Don’t get me wrong – the quality of the art is really high. The main character for instance, is one of the most believable human 3D characters I’ve ever laid eyes on. But it’s the little things; the way the characters’ mouths move a little strangely in dialog close-ups, or the way the eyes look a bit glassy or the way the characters move a little stiffly. The sort of peripherally noticeable things that give you a sense that something’s not quite right, not quite real about them.

The attempt at realism and believability is more successful in terms of the environments, which look to be very cool, if perhaps a bit thematically over-familiar. The setting seems to be Bladerunner urban futuristic and the characters wear armored suits reminiscent of many a Master Chief-ish bio-mech commando outfit. The storyline is also pretty familiar; humanity threatened by aliens/machines/AI.

Taking a couple of cues from Knights of the Old Republic, the gameplay is squad based (you have two alien companions to help out when things get hairy) and has a sophisticated dialog system. There’s an interesting twist to the dialog setup this go-round. Going for more dynamic pacing and in the interest of more immediate and realistic exchanges, Bioware has streamlined the usual clunky dialog tree approach. When you engage in dialog exchanges with NPC’s, rather than having to read through and choose from long lines of complex dialog, you choose from a variety of short phrases that represent emotional gut reactions to whatever’s being said. You choose these without knowing exactly what the hero character then is going to say, knowing only the gist of the emotional tenor of the dialog. This approach adds to the fun by making the dialog more spontaneous and organic-feeling.

You can play through the game as male or female, although it appears there will be little difference in gameplay based on gender differentiation. It’s also uncertain how meaningful the game’s “morality” system will be. There was mention about your actions affecting not only the way the NPC’s in the world react to you, but also how your squad members react to you. Potentially, your squad could even abandon you, leaving you to save the world all by your lonesome if they think you’ve been a horse’s ass one too many times. Bottom line –high-end graphics, great attention to detail, a couple of new innovations, but for the most part, the game’s covering some fairly well-trod ground.

At this point, it seems all developers are feeling their way with the next gen and Bioware’s no exception. Their new IP appears to be more focused on creating impressive graphics effects, and leaves us wishing their ideas were a little fresher. No matter. With their rep for making quality games no doubt it’s only a matter of time before they find a mind-blowing way to use the 360 to full advantage.