Another work-related post – three in a row! In a break from the norm, I’m not involved at all in the in-game animations for the sequel – so it’s cool to see several shots from one of my romance scenes ahead of the game’s realease.  Not long to go now until this project is done and out the door!

Today marks my first year back at BioWare, and therefore (in my head anyway) the 1st anniversary of BioWare Montreal. No longer the youngest kid on the block, we had our very first ever studio photo earlier this month to commemorate the occasion, courtesy of Bartek.

Note the cool Mass Effect 2 N7 shirts I and a few others are sporting – just a shame it looks like such a sausage party…

This week is all about E3, and this time it’s going back to the way it should be – all loud noises, special announcements and awesome presentations on a world stage. We released a preview video some weeks ago which will forever be known internally as “the one with Parrish’s moustache”, but I wanted to wait until the real deal to throw it up here.

Virtually all of the cutscenes in both videos were done by our team here in Montreal, so a special shout out to the hard work of the guys both here and in Edmonton, and Parrish’s moustache.

A week on Wednesday two of Edmonton’s finest, Dusty and Corey, will be flying into town to give an updated version of their GDC talk on our production process, part of which uses one of the cutscenes we did here in Montreal last year to help illustrate the various stages of iteration in our levels’ development.

Above is the poster I drew up for the event using the IGDA template, (click for the hi-res), exclusively featuring the first actual screenshot of the game released to the public. If you’re in Montreal on the 20th why not drop by and make a night of it – details in the poster.

In a follow-up to the recent post on the AIAS Awards relating to animation, I must congratulate Dave (and his team) on winning the Outstanding Achievement in Animation category.

If any of you out there would like to work with “The Academy Award Winning Animation Director”, sign up here as he recently rejoined our team, being one of the former BioWare alumnus ;-)

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed the description on the left has been somewhat cryptic for some time now, referring to my secret location… The fact is I’ve been working on a new and exciting project and team inception for the last 6 months, and with both being officially announced I can finally reveal them respectively as Mass Effect 2 and BioWare Montreal.

Housed within the downtown EA Montreal studio, a slowly growing team of highly talented animators and I are creating animations and cinematic cutscenes for the sequel to our 2007 project. This is a new kind of game development where we are working remotely while connected directly to the Edmonton servers and are in daily contact with the team there. This is all made possible with the help of the fantastic folks at EA Montreal with whom we share a studio space, and a dedicated support team on the Edmonton side.

Additionally, over half of the Montreal outfit is made up of other former Mass Effect team members having worked in the Edmonton head studio before – helping to ensure that rather than just a random selection of folks under the BioWare banner, we are maintaining BioWare’s culture as well as the same high standards to which we are held. This percentage is only set to increase as more and more make the transition from the main studio to this new team.

Now to the important part – we are currently looking for one final exceptional animator to join the team, as well as environment artists and level designers. If you believe you are up to the challenge of helping create one of the most focussed and ambitious RPG sequels of all time and are looking for a new and interesting take on game development, please contact me at alsoran@gameanimDELETE.com or visit the BioWare website at careers@bioware.com – as luck would have it, comments below are currently broken so don’t write via there.

It was a nice treat today to find another of my previous projects, Jade Empire, has been deemed by Microsoft to be worthy of another go – this one being added to the list of games available for download on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Originals service – pick it up now for just around $10 without having to leave the comfort of your sofa.

Most people who haven’t played it wrongly assume it sports the same basic good/evil choices found in KOTOR, but one of my favourite elements of the project was that decisions made in the game surrounded the altogether more mature philosophies of ruling with compassion or force – an altogether less black and white affair.

Oh, and kung fu…

Mass Effect PC is released today in North America – go pick it up! I wish I had a PC that could run it. In fact, I wish I had a PC that could at least run Battlefield 1942 :-(