Amid the sense-shattering tumult of this year's E3, with every stand showcasing dozens of visually astonishing console blockbusters, one single demo stood out. It was for Mass Effect 3, the latest title in Bioware's gigantic space opera. The game begins with series hero Commander Shepard stranded on Earth just as the Reapers – a pitiless machine army – invades, turning futuristic cities to high-tech rubble. In a lengthy escape sequence Shepard and his mentor Captain Anderson are fleeing through the collapsing buildings, attempting to reach a rendezvous with the Normandy starship.

En route, they discover a boy trembling in an air con duct. They pluck him from his hiding place, assure him they can help, and after battling through dozens of reaper soldiers, put him aboard an escape craft. But as the symphonic soundtrack reaches its emotional height, a gigantic reaper monster, striding between collapsed skyscrapers, aims a laser gun at the boy's ship and blows it to pieces. Shepard – and the small group of journalists watching in the demo room – can only look on, shocked and silent.

Over the past 10 years, Bioware has perfected the art of emotional story telling in games. Starting out in 1995, the company became known for earnest fantasy role-playing titles like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. But a decade later it released Jade Empire, a complex, highly original action RPG, set in an intricately developed universe of contrasting martial arts philosophies and conspiring characters. Importantly, it introduced romance into a previously asexual genre, allowing the player to form relationships with lead characters that had an impact on the plot. The concept was perfected in 2007 with the release of Mass Effect, a defining narrative adventure of the current console era. And through the subsequent sequel, as well as fantasy series Dragon Agem Bioware developed its concept of combining epic action with truly rounded characters and intimate interpersonal stories.

"Looking at a game and thinking 'how does it make you feel' is a thoughtful way to approach design," says Bioware co-founder, Ray Muzyka on his company's design philosophy. "You need to consider what you're building in terms of the impact on player emotion. We're all human, we're all driven by emotion – that's what entertainment is for – it allows us to pursue aspirations, dreams, to experience the thrill of combat, of victory. Hate, love, every combination of those… that's what we try to put in our games. Genuine emotion."

Fellow founder, Greg Zeschuk, is keen to stress how Bioware has evolved its approach to characterisation with each new platform. "What's happened over time is that we've refined the technology that presents the characters. For ten years we've been attempting to improve the acting quality in our games. It's a combination of technology and desire – historically, games were very much about the gameplay, now they're about the experience – and sometimes the narrative experience is an important part of that."

Mass Effect 3, which brings the action to Earth for the very first time, is a continuation – and a culmination – of these themes and techniques. "The reapers have invaded, Earth has fallen," explains Muzyka. "All the people you know and love are in jeopardy. It's up to you to carry out the actions and make the choices to take it back. It's personal, it's your home and if you don't win, the survival of the galaxy is in question. It's a pretty epic conclusion to the trilogy, but it's also a beginning of a new adventure – the whole galaxy's at war.

"It's a good entry point to the series if you're only going to play one Mass Effect title. It's going to be the most intense, action-filled and emotionally driven; this is also the most tactical in terms of combat choice and progression options. It's got everything…"

The big message since E3 has been the way in which the game has evolved into a much more action-orientated proposition. "We got good feedback on the intensity of Mass Effect 2," says Zeschuk. "People really liked the fact that we refined the action, made it punchier, added stealth elements… it's about continually refining the formula." Here Shepard is able to leap and duck between and over scenic objects, as well as employing much more robust stealth tactics to creep up on enemies. He has a new deadly melee weapon, the omni-blade, which acts like a sort of futuristic switch blade, taking down enemies with one vicious thrust. But there's also an increased armoury of ranged weapons, all of which can be customised and upgraded via mod tables placed throughout each environment.

Reflecting this greater emphasis on tactical combat, enemy AI has also been improved. Reaper soldiers will attempt to dominate and control each battle space, using differing tactics to flank you, or employing shields to protect themselves from your firepower. In the background however, there are still squad command options for RPG-orientated players, and characters can be upgraded through various ability and equipment trees. Mass Effect 3 may be drawing toward some of the action excesses of Gears of War, but it is still a game about strategy and role-playing.

Another galaxy far, far away

And this is not Bioware's only attempt to filter familiar genre traits through its own design prism. The company's Austin studio is also putting the finishing touches to the staggeringly ambitious Star Wars: The Old Republic, a massively-multiplayer online RPG set 3000 years before the rise of Darth Vader. Although the game is set to be structured similarly to well-established big-hitters like World of Warcraft, with quests, player vs player battle zones, guilds and crafting, the aim is to instil the title with the gameplay elements that have defined Bioware's output so far.

"We've been making RPGs for a number of years and we believe that every truly great RPG has four basic components: exploration, progression, combat and story," says director of production, Dallas Dickinson. "We think that if you have all four of those at a very high level of quality, that's what creates the world's great RPGs – the ones you come back to again and again. In the massively multiplayer space – we believe that so far one of those elements has been missing, and that's story. Well, that's what Bioware does - we create the world's greatest story-driven games."

Hence, The Old Republic has a vast roster of player and non-player characters each of which will be entirely voice acted throughout the game – a first for the genre. Players can choose from two factions – the Sith Empire and the Republic – and from eight different classes of character, including Jedi Knights, bounty hunters, smugglers and Imperial agent – and each has their own selectable specialisms and complex levelling routes.

Furthermore, choices that players make as they progress have far-reaching ramifications. At E3, Bioware shows one section where the player's Jedi knight defeats a Sith agent Lord Praven and has the option to execute him or let him free. Opt for the latter and he goes on to convert to the light side and become a valuable ally.

Vitally, every class also gets different missions and very different over-arching plotlines. As Dickinson, explains, "If you start as a Jedi Knight and play through the entire thing – that's is several hundred hours of gameplay – then you start again and play as a bounty hunter, you will not see one single piece of duplicate content. The entire experience will be epic and unique; every player gets their own personal Star Wars trilogy, something like Luke experiences in Star Wars IV-VI." And this being an MMORPG, players can take on quests with groups of friends, all taking on different roles, from sneaky smugglers to tank-like Sith warriors with gigantic melee attacks.

The sense of environmental scale also seems to be there. Players are able to take their spaceships and visit Hoth, Tatooine, Coruscant, and Alderaan (which going by the level I saw during E3 was a rather austere and beautiful place before Peter Cushing had it blown up). There are blasters and lightsabers, there are Emperor-style lighting attacks and force powers, there are complex multi-stage quests – all of it taking place on the cusp of galactic war between the Sith and Jedi forces. It is not a light undertaking.

And this is all new territory for the Star Wars canon. Bioware has been trusted to extend the carefully guarded backstory, to invent new characters and sub-plots that link the company's previous Star Wars title Knights of the Old Republic, with the events of the Star Wars movie prequels. It's now part of the enormous Star Wars mythology.

Elsewhere, Bioware is looking into new technologies and platforms. It has dabbled in smartphone and even social games, and it is supporting Kinect with Mass Effect 3, allowing players to speak Shepard's lines in the conversation sections, rather than selecting onscreen text. The company founders also seem intrigued by the possibilities of Wii U.

"I like the idea that you can use the television screen and the controller screen as separate interfaces," says Muzyka. "If you want to enjoy a purely cinematic experience on the big screen, you can do that while viewing information on the small screen. We hear stories about people playing our games as a family, with one person using the controller, the rest observing – so perhaps it's more engaging if they can watch the cinematic experience on screen, while the player is controlling and selection options via the handheld tablet; they get to experiences the choices as a movie – it's valid way to enjoy the types of games we make."

Sitting with Greg and Ray at this year's E3, I asked them what Bioware was doing right; how has it come to dominate the action RPG genre through Mass Effect and Dragon Age? "It's two decades of focusing on our core values," says Ray Muzyka quickly. "And we're unrelenting and uncompromising in how we deliver against those. We need quality in our products for the consumers, quality in our workplace for the employees and entrepreneurship for our investors – those are the three guiding principles which we run on.

"There's also humility – being able to listen to feedback, quite harsh feedback at times and react to it, adjust and make things better. And you've got to have integrity – being honest with your customers, your shareholders, yourselves, about what's going on so you keep them all aligned. The vision is consistent too - creating and evolving the most emotionally engaging games in the world – that's what we're aiming it. But you've got to focus on all the key stakeholders equally – the consumers, the investors, the employees – none of them can ever take priority. For us it's about creating a sustainable business that will last long after we're gone. We want this thing to be running in a 100 years time. That's the vision."



Mass Effect 3 is released in March 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to launch on PC in November