After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game was Mass Effect from BioWare. We emailed some questions to BioWare president Greg Zeschuk and chief executive officer Ray Muzyka. Here's what they told us:

What was your reaction to winning both Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game for Mass Effect?

Zeschuk: We are really thrilled and honored that we won both the Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game awards; there were some really stunning games at E3 this year and for Mass Effect to be on the top of the list tells us our team’s hard work is paying off. Going into the show is always a little daunting as the competition is extremely fierce, but Mass Effect being recognized by the key industry press really gives us a lot of confidence that we’re doing things right. We believe that Mass Effect will settle the “are games art?” argument once and for all… :-)

Mass Effect has gotten a lot of praise for its interactive dialogue and performances. What have been the biggest challenges in perfecting the games dialogue system?

Muzyka: Truly capturing deep, emotional engagement with the characters and the story in Mass Effect was the biggest challenge we faced while building the game at BioWare, but it was also one of the areas we focused on from the very beginning of development. We really started building toward this goal in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic where we did full voice over and lip sync combined with a great storyline in the game, and we extended it further with Jade Empire where we started adding emotional states in characters during dialogue. In Mass Effect we are not only giving players our best storyline yet, combined with the option of how they want to respond in real time during a conversation, but we’re also adding in an incredible level of subtlety and craft in how characters respond to your actions. As a result, the conversations look and sound incredibly real, so that no matter what dialogue choice a player makes, it feels entirely authentic, and exploration transitions to conversations and combat entirely seamlessly.

One of the things we heard after the E3 presentations and press playthroughs was that not only was it incredibly fun to play the game, but it was even fun to sit back and simply watch it being played. Mass Effect really feels like an interactive blockbuster movie where you, the player, are both the director and the lead actor in the story--and you also get to explore the galaxy in your own spaceship--need we say more?

How close is the game to completion, and what are the major things left to be finished before it ships?

Zeschuk: We’re getting very close to the end as we are committed to shipping in November; we are focusing on polishing the game to an extremely high standard. BioWare is known for quality, and we believe Mass Effect could be our best game yet. It is certainly the most amazing game we’ve ever made! Something that never seems to shock us is that we’re always discovering new things as we play it. We’d love to spoil it for you, but we want everyone to experience the amazing surprises in the game first-hand!