14 DAY TRIAL // A BioWare developer has confirmed that saves from the first Dragon Age title, called Origins, will be very important to how the world looks in the sequel, if gamers have them and choose to import them.
Talking to NowGamer, Mike Laidlaw, who is the lead designer working on Dragon Age 2, has said, “We look at it as importing the world really. I’ve always seen Dragon Age as a franchise as about more than any one character. It’s about an entire span of history and the whole world that’s affected by what happens.”
He went on to add, “I think the importing stays true to that in the sense that the decisions your Warden made and the person they were all affects Dragon Age II. You know, who’s in charge of Ferelden, what happened with the Dwarves, who’s running Orzammar? All of these things are reflected and accounted for in Dragon Age II.”
The system seems pretty similar to that which BioWare has pioneered with Mass Effect 2, allowing gamers to get games from the first game in the series that would determine the personal history of the main character and the state of important players in the world, like the Council and the Rachni.
It's not clear exactly how big the impact will be in Dragon Age 2, considering that the story of the new game seems to be focused on unrealiable narrators and on the rise of one character that has little connection to the power players we have seen in Origins.
BioWare also needs to make sure that it creates a simple and intuitive way for players that are new comers to the series to set the same elements that a save game would affect, so that they can experience the same variety of game worlds as veterans.
Dragon Age 2 is planned to arrive for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC on March 8, 2011.