GameSpot: How is development of Jade Empire going? Where are you guys in the process now?

Ray Muzyka: Development on Jade Empire is going really well. We have a great team working on the game--smart, creative, passionate, and hardworking--and they're really putting their hearts and souls into making the game great. Our goal at BioWare is to always try our best to make our next game even better than the previous ones, and Jade is shaping up really nicely. Jade Empire is an awesome action-RPG--it should appeal to both RPG and action fans. The combat is very fun and exciting. With dozens of fighting styles (martial arts, weapons, magic, and transformations), it should really appeal to action fans who enjoy real-time combat and martial arts ass-kicking goodness! As well, Jade Empire will definitely appeal to RPG fans. The story and characters in Jade Empire are some of the best yet in any BioWare game. The story is really engrossing. Speaking personally, even though I know the plot twists, I'm still finding that playing through the game again is very compelling. The art, animation, and audio in the game are absolutely stunning. We're pretty sure that fans will see Jade Empire as one of the best-looking and sounding games on any system when it comes out.

At this point in development, we're definitely in the polish phase. Some cutscenes are still being finished up, and we're continually tightening the interface and story design and continuing to fine-tune the combat balance, but most content is now in the game, and you can play through the entire game start to finish. It's a really fun part of the project. There's a lot of work still going on, but the team can see--and play--the fruits of their labors over the past three years now, and the results are really amazing. I'm really proud of the folks who have worked and are working on the game. They've done an awesome job.