HomeLAN Fed has interviewed Ray Muzyka, BioWare's Joint CEO, on the recent acquisition of Unreal Engine licence from Epic. First of all, they discuss the reasons behind buying the license while BioWare itself has created efficient engines. Here's an excerpt:

HomeLAN - Why would BioWare wish to license an engine for a game when they have created their own powerful technology for their current and future titles?

Ray Muzyka - The Unreal Engine 3 technology is very impressive – we’ve carefully assessed all of the available graphics engines out there and this engine is the right one for the specific title that it’s being applied to. It’s important to note that we’re still developing our own engine technology for our other titles present and future (Jade Empire, Dragon Age, etc) – and we have some very impressive next-gen technology of our own in development right now as well – the BioWare Eclipse Engine. We have some very talented people working hard on that engine as well as advanced technology for our other announced titles – Jade Empire (a martial arts RPG for Xbox, to be published by Microsoft) and Dragon Age (a fantasy PC RPG – no publisher has yet been announced on Dragon Age). We have five internal product teams and we’re also working with a number of external developers who have licensed our own engine technology like the BioWare Aurora Engine or the BioWare Odyssey Engine for their own titles.

All of our games are quite different yet they’re very similar in many respects – there is a core RPG layer which permits strong storytelling, character interactions, exploration and character progression. We’re currently building an RPG layer for Unreal Engine 3 to ensure that this title will have all of the great features that BioWare games are known for: a compelling story, entertaining character interactions and exploration, and strong character development aspects, and Epic has actually expressed interest in talking with us about the licensure of that RPG layer, which we own. Licensing the Unreal Engine 3 really allows one of our internal development teams to focus on creating a highly cinematic and immersive RPG in a relatively short amount of time, while our other teams continue work in parallel on future projects and on the next-generation BioWare Eclipse Engine.

Sounds great, more BioWare games in a shorter time. If they keep that special touch of BioWare roleplaying games even on a First Person Shooter kind of engine, it's going to be great. That they intend to create a special RPG layer for it, is even better. Go, BioWare.

Read the whole thing (http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=26165) at HomeLAN Fed.

Can you give us any hints at all about the UnrealEngine3 based game that you are working on?

Greg Zeschuk - While we can’t go into much detail about the title yet, it’s safe to say that it will be a next-generation RPG with all of the elements that fans have come to expect from a BioWare game. Thanks to the great work our artists are putting into the Unreal Engine 3, this new project will be one of the most immersive and cinematic RPG experiences on the market.Everything we expect? By the way, if somebody worries about the potential of this engine, Epic has their own info page (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml) with some screenshots and a whole lot of technical stuff I don't understand anything of.

If someone can explain to me how "full motion capture for all animations, full VO for all dialog, realistic facial animations" are supposed to please core RPG fans, I'd be happy to know. And if the good/evil story progression involves ONE single choice you make just before the end of the game (*cough* KOTOR *cough*), then no, I for one will not be "pleased".

Oh, and noticed how the word "cinematic" keeps popping up? It disturbingly reminds me of some of the worst games I have played, some 8 years ago, when FMV was the Next Big Thing. And how about "next-generation"? I can't quite understand what this is supposed to mean.

Marketing is just nuts, methinks.

Mollusken, if it makes you feel better, I don't understand much of the engine's specs either. :D

And yet with all this progress, we keep seeing ever shallower and more dumbed down CRPGs... thanks, but no thanks for such "advancement of the genre". The only place I see it advancing is in the looks department, but I for one am not playing CRPGs to look at the pretty graphics.

Nice graphics are a nice thing to have, if added bonus. Same for sound. Just let the game not feel like an FPS with a couple of columns of digits pertaining to the hero and it'll be fine.