Dragon Age II Save Import To Be Like 'Importing The World'

You can't regain access to your Dragon Age: OriginsGrey Warden when you transfer your old save file to Dragon Age II, but your heroic or nefarious exploits will still have a meaningful impact in the forthcoming sequel. 
 
In a recent interview with Now Gamer, lead designer Mike Laidlaw described save importation as more of a world import. The overarching political and geological stuff you've had a hand in, such as what happened with the Dwarves, Laidlaw cites as an example, will be carried over, instead of the specific stats, weapons, and relationship junk we'd expect with something like Mass Effect 2.

I'm actually having difficulty telling whether I like this more than the more linear Mass Effect approach. Well done, Bioware. Quite subtle of you.

yay!

Sounds crazy

I just want Cristof (my grey warden) to show up.

I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O.

I'm still not confident in this fixed main character approach. I know, it's Bioware and they'll probably come up with something great, but I'd prefer creating my own character or continuing with the old one.

You will get letters given to you by horseback saying THX FOR KILLING ALL THOSE ZOMBIES LOL - Redcliffe

Wow that actually sounds interesting. For once I'm somewhat interested in DA2 now.

" I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O. "

as awesome as this sounds...I confess I haven't beaten Dragon Age 1 yet so better get my ass in gear I suppose

I'd take this with a grain of salt. Bioware has a history of not coming through on big statements like this.

I'm still leery about the changes, but am warming up to DAII.

This may be asking too much, but has anybody read if you can import a "world" across platforms? I played Dragon Age: Origins on my PC and enjoyed it even though it was grossly underpowered for the game (played it at the lowest settings), and I'm hoping to play this new one on the Xbox.

The ogre in that picture... what?

All i can say is i hope this turns out better than the last one! Good gameplay, terrible graphics and look!

It's no Mass Effect import system, but I guess seeing your decisions through another character's eyes is pretty cool.

But... Is the story in the same kingdom? That would not be fun.

" I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O. "

But what if I start a new character in Origins with the name "Hawke"? Aha! Now I can totally import my character!

"The overarching political and geological stuff you've had a hand in..." 
 
Uhhh, I think you mean geographical, not geological..

" I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O. "

so this will mean 10 additional lines of dialogue that will probably differ?
neat

God i hate dwarfs

I'm hopefully cautious...

Cool I was worried my activities in DA:O wouldn't effect the DA2 world.  Now i really need a 120/250 HDD.

This has been known about for quite sometime.

Weird. I'd take the werewolves over the elves anyday.

I'll import your world
 
...Baby.

I am very curious about Dragon Age 2 and where it will go. The first Dragon Age was a project which started back in 2004 or so - way before the first Mass Effect.
 
Seeing how Bioware improved on Mass Effect 1, I can't begin to imagine how awesome Dragon Age 2 will be. That said, I'm not one of those adamant 'classic' WRPG forumla defenders. I very much like to see the genre move forward into a more realtime-mechanics modern experience.
 
Like Bioware's Dragon Age meets Mass Effect meets God of War or something. Catch my drift?

I'm glad the Protagonist is voiced this time round, not hearing him say the dialogue choice I had picked bummed me out for a while.

" You will get letters given to you by horseback saying THX FOR KILLING ALL THOSE ZOMBIES LOL - Redcliffe "

" "The overarching political and geological stuff you've had a hand in..."  Uhhh, I think you mean geographical, not geological.. "

" I'm glad the Protagonist is voiced this time round, not hearing him say the dialogue choice I had picked bummed me out for a while. "

Dragon Age 2 isn't placed years and years after Origins, it starts off during origins when lothering is destroyed. That happens after you leave the town so maybe an hour or two into the game. From there it goes for a decade into the life of hawk. So it starts during Origins and ends ten years later.

The interview was very interesting in some places. The PC version will still have an action bar. The game play will still be pause-and-play enabled. Laidlaw also mentioned that the Fade will be back.  
 
Good read.

How do you maintain some kind of balance between dynamism influenced by the player, and a development cycle that doesn't take years and years to account for all of that?  Even if you don't approach true choice at all, at what point do you say you're done?  Interesting challenge.
 
That being said, I think that Bioware failed miserably with how they implemented saves between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.  The choices made by the player mostly amounted to, "YO, CHECK IT.  REMEMBER WHEN YOU DID THIS?"  On the other hand, for the bigger stuff like what you chose to do with the council, I'm not sure how Bioware could have written the game any other way they did.  It's just such a huge bummer to find that huge, massive choices you made in the first game were near inconsequential in the next.

@RsistncE said:

" "The overarching political and geological stuff you've had a hand in..."  Uhhh, I think you mean geographical, not geological.. "

Didn't you do the Harry Potter tie in mission?  You know the one with the Philosopher's Stone?

" I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O. "

" @SeriouslyNow

@RsistncE said:

" "The overarching political and geological stuff you've had a hand in..."  Uhhh, I think you mean geographical, not geological.. "

Didn't you do the Harry Potter tie in mission?  You know the one with the Philosopher's Stone?

FYI, The Philosopher's Stone is not a Harry Potter thing. "

" @SeriouslyNow: Actually, geological and geographical are two entirely different things and using geological in that sentence makes no sense...unless you were doing some "scorch the earth" type stuff in the first game haha "

Cant wait to see the differences my two playthroughs will cause in DA2, I mean crap in my 2nd I recruited the bad guy and then had him die so my guys lived.

" @sixghost said:

" I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O. "

I couldn't agree more. I was supremely disappointed to realize that the decisions that I thought would shape the entire galaxy could be summed up in one conversation and not change anything about how the second game progressed. "

I assume it's referring to Origins save files only? I hope so because of the mess I've got with all multiple saves with characters for Origins, Awakening, Omgarrak, Witch Hunt...

" @sixghost said:

" I'm calling bullshit on this after the huge letdown that was importing your save into ME2. It'll change 6-7 meaningless things and be largely the same exact game regardless of what you did in DA:O. "

Huge Letdown? I couldn't believe how much influence my ME1 save had on the game. I was expecting some of the big choices to carry over, but there are literally hundreds of things that changed because of your actions in ME1. From minor conversations I had with side characters to how I chose to deal with the counsel it was all reflected it some way, you at least got an email from someone you interacted with in the first game.   No other series has even come close to having those connections between games. No it didn't result in an entirely different gameplay experience but you have to be realistic with your expectations, at some point they actually have to ship a game and creating a large amount of content that maybe only 5% of your audience is going to see is not worth it. For me they went above and beyond my expectations for the import feature. "

I was great with how ME2 used my save. Yeah, it wasn't a completely game changing experience because they didn't have time to make six entire games based on your choices. I mean every time they change something, they have to do new programming, new voice work, new EVERYthing. So...I was thrilled with ME2. 
I can't wait for DA2 either, though I hope they integrate stuff from the DLC.

I like to see that game developers are learning from their past work and improving on their future games. Congrats Bioware :)

Ugh, I'm really not ready to start thinking about a Dragon Age 2 yet.  Still not totally finished with DA1.

They are just binary switches. Sorry, I think killing/saving Wrex should make a bigger difference in the world than 1 conversation tree, same with Kaiden/Ashley. Same with wiping out/saving the Rachnii, the only difference is an email. I had much much bigger expectations from that feature. The way that Bioware guy on the Bombcast was talking about it made it seem like it was this huge integral part of the game, when it was really just a throw away that never effected the 2nd game more than one conversation or email. "