BioWare Talks Up Dragon Age II’s Save Import Features

Dragon Age 2

Written Wednesday, February 09, 2011 By Dan Webb

Speaking to save-game import kings, BioWare, at EA’s UK HQ recently, Dragon Age II Senior Producer, Fernando Melo, told X360A that not only is Dragon Age II a perfect starting point for new players, but it’ll also include “3 premade world states” for Dragon Age fans to tinker with and much more.

“So you’ll definitely be able to bring in your Dragon Age: Origins saves, so definitely hang onto those,” Melo told X360A. “The one nice thing about it is, for new players, this is a fantastic time to jump into the game. It’s a brand new story and you won’t necessarily miss out. The way that we introduce events from Origins are done in a way that will explain what’s going on in Origins, and then the story pretty much diverges out from that.”

“The time frame advances up to 10 years away, so there’s less and less connectivity to those events,” he continued, “but for Origins players, the really nice part is, not only can you import that save game and see all that reactivity, but we also have 3 premade world states that you can choose.”

“So even if you had a game save that had all of your previous decisions, if you wanted to see some of the different choices and how they behave, you can actually choose from one of these other save states as well and then be able to see how those pan out.”

Furthermore, Melo told us the extent to which we can see Origins’ decisions carry over and what sort of things we can expect to see in the future.

“The nice thing is, we’re going to have downloadable content, etc, that will also take into account other decisions, so even though there’s a lot of things that won’t necessarily be apparent, there’s a lot of subtle stuff and things in the future as well that will start to come out of those save games.”

Do we need to hang on to our Dragon Age II save though for the inevitable sequel? Tune in to our full interview later on with Melo to find out. It’s answer and response that can’t be given justice via the wonderful medium of text. True story.

Dragon Age II is scheduled for a March 8th and March 11th release in North America and Europe respectively. Check out our recent meaty hands-on preview here.

User Comments

Forum Posts: 242	Comment #1 by JustAFriend Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:34:32 AM	(5)
	who needs to delete saves with the massive hard drives of today?

Forum Posts: 368	Comment #2 by The Elite Elite Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:35:32 AM	(0)
	Darn, I was hoping when I clicked this article that we'd finally get told what decisions are going to have an impact in DA2. Oh well, at least we now know about having three pre-set worlds to pick from if we don't import a save. (Though I suspect that, like starting a new game in ME2, I'll only be doing imports, not picking one of BioWare's pre-set choices)

Forum Posts: 368	Comment #3 by The Elite Elite Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:37:12 AM	(0)
	@1, well in DA:O you can only keep about 8 different profiles before you have to delete one to start a new character. (Don't know who decided on that, but it does suck) So, unlike Mass Effect, you will have a limited number of saves to import at one time.

Forum Posts: 14708	Comment #4 by Webb [STAFF] Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:37:51 AM	(0)
	@#2 - Well, BioWare have never disclosed what decisions get carried over in any of their games to be fair, so I'm not sure they'll start now.

Forum Posts: 13	Comment #5 by LeeJ2512 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:37:54 AM	(0)
	never got the first one hopefully it wont be bad lol

Forum Posts: 589	Comment #6 by HorsemanOfWar16 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:39:25 AM	(0)
	“The one nice thing about it is, for new players, this is a fantastic time to jump into the game. - Great to hear that!! -

Forum Posts: 263	Comment #7 by Saracin Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:40:05 AM	(0)
	That's nice of them. Was waiting for you to tell us that we get free items with our save states too. Have such and such DLC, get a rock. WOOT!

Forum Posts: 368	Comment #8 by The Elite Elite Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:43:50 AM	(0)
	@4, yeah but they don't really have to for Mass Effect. For most of the big decisions there, you can have a pretty good guess at which big decisions are going to import to the next game. But since DA2 isn't a direct sequel to Origins, it isn't so clear what will have an impact. You can guess a few (like who's the king/queen, your choice on the Architect in Awakening) but not near the amount you can pretty accurately guess for ME.

Forum Posts: 589	Comment #9 by HorsemanOfWar16 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:45:10 AM	(0)
	Nothing to do with Dragon Age -sorry - Batman: Arkham City Comics!! - go to the forums!! - Apologise about post in different news story.

Forum Posts: 14708	Comment #10 by Webb [STAFF] Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:45:40 AM	(0)
	@#8 - Fair points. I concur.

Forum Posts: 11	Comment #11 by Duken13 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:59:05 AM	(0)
	I hope it scans your saves and reminds you what you did in each, I got all the different endings with the same character, I don't remember which save contained what...

Forum Posts: 242	Comment #12 by JustAFriend Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:59:51 AM	(0)
	@10 shallow and pedantic, i agree

Forum Posts: 1385	Comment #13 by Elit3 m0nkey Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 11:06:16 AM	(0)
	"The one nice thing about it is, for new players, this is a fantastic time to jump into the game" ya you guys said that about ME2 as well, but you really needed to play the first to get the most out of the game. Hopefully it will be different considering this a "direct" sequel to what happened in DA:O

Forum Posts: 30	Comment #14 by Killerj Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 11:15:08 AM	(2)
	@1 i agreed with you.

Forum Posts: 242	Comment #15 by JustAFriend Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 11:29:18 AM	(0)
	@14 i agreed with you

Forum Posts: 0	Comment #16 by mes77 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 12:26:07 PM	(1)
	i just wonder how does this effect the Awakenings material. Saves from Origins could be somewhat tweaked based on the endings you chose, One Example: My noble warrior made Alistair King and sacrificed himself(teary eyes on that one), but then after importing into awakenings he's alive, Alistair is dead,(he was the Grey Warden Sacrifice), and Enora is Queen. I love the way Bioware left the canon Malleable,But it seems like it could make for some really stilted story points later. either way I'm buying.

Forum Posts: 11	Comment #17 by Grijpwijk Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 12:42:03 PM	(0)
	This is an improvement from Mass Effect 2 in which a non-import Shepard gets a single downbeat ME1 background (council dead, Wrex dead, bug queen dead, etc).

Forum Posts: 20	Comment #18 by SHIMA 41 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 01:01:46 PM	(0)
	Hmmm can't wait to see how the game changes depending on what I did. And then bea able to play again and see what else went on :)

Forum Posts: 19	Comment #19 by wickedclowns95 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 01:02:22 PM	(0)
	@1 Not everyone has a large hard drive. One of my cousins only has the 4GB that come with the small 360 slim and another is running low on space on the 20GB hard drive. I have the 250GB so you're right though, no problem for me. On topic: Will we start out at level 5 or something like Mass Effect?

Forum Posts: 1204	Comment #20 by tripleb2k Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 01:16:17 PM	(0)
	So it's just the Origins gamesave and NOT Awakening as well?

Forum Posts: 359	Comment #21 by MasterKingz Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 01:52:45 PM	(0)
	@1 what about if you upgrade your hard drive or got the new Xbox you cant exactly keep your saves.

Forum Posts: 368	Comment #22 by The Elite Elite Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 02:06:14 PM	(0)
	@20, I believe one of the devs in the BioWare forum said that you can import either an Origins save, or an Awakening save, or a Golems of Amgarrak save, or a Witch Hunt save. Basically, whichever was the latest DLC add-on to come out that you have for Origins will be the one you'll want to import from.

Forum Posts: 0	Comment #23 by RagnarokMessiah Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 02:33:43 PM	(0)
	@21 there is a link cable that comes with new harddrives and the new xbox that allows you to transport all your data to your new hdd or xbox

Forum Posts: 736	Comment #24 by H2O Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 02:37:00 PM	(0)
	@21. You really can. Either buy the transfer cable or use USB drives to Copy the data across.

Forum Posts: 338	Comment #25 by MEMANIAsama Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 03:25:52 PM	(0)
	@16, I'm guessing it takes whatever story you have from Awakenings and moves on from there. That being said, the ideal way to carry all plot points over is to do the following: DA: Origins > Awakening > Golems > Witch Hunt The other 2 DLCs don't import or effect anything as far as I know. What I'm curious about though is if your Warden does die in DA: Origins, can you import data from Origins and also create a new Warden in Awakening while keeping the background story from Origins intact? I haven't played Awakening yet, so I don't know all the possibilities. It just seems like an interesting situation for me personally. Also, what about those who don't play the 3 DLC, does the plot just sort of diverge and make it's own decisions then?

Forum Posts: 19	Comment #26 by wickedclowns95 Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 05:50:50 PM	(0)
	@23 and 24 I'm aware of this. Like I said I already have the 250GB drive and transferred all my stuff so I'm not hurting for space. My cousins however are ages 13 and 17 and neither of them can afford to just go out and buy a new hard drive is the problem. They are frequently forced to delete all demoes, videos, and dlc from their drive for space. Game saves aren't usually very large though so it's not a huge issue but I'm just saying not everyone's drive is "massive".

Forum Posts: 199	Comment #27 by ViNyLek Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 06:13:49 PM	(0)
	Who would delete their saves anyway?? I've had switched console 4 times now and always carried over all of my saves. Hell, I even have saves for original Xbox somewhere. OT: Awesome. Seems like I preordered ages ago and with all the extra stuff they added it will take a while to beat!! Shame on those that didn't preorder and now lost their chance at that extra stuf:-P

Forum Posts: 104	Comment #28 by Gilganomics Wednesday, February 09, 2011 @ 10:04:45 PM	(0)
	"reactivity"...sigh, only in the electronics world. OT: Looking forward to this game, regardless of save imports, but don't know if I'll be willing to wait on Deus Ex to pick this up around release (I've been wanting a another D.E. for years).

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Game Info

Developer:
Bioware

Publisher:
Electronic Arts

Genre / Subgenre:
RPG / Action

Release:
US: March 08, 2011
Europe: March 11, 2011

Collection:	2626
Wishlist:	440

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