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Dragon Age 2 Save-Importing Explained

One of the coolest aspects of Mass Effect 2 is how many of the decisions you made as Shepard in the first game could be imported into the sequel. But with Dragon Age 2 introducing Hawke as the new playable character (as opposed to whatever generic "Warden" players created for themselves in the first game), it raised the question of whether save-importing would even be an option, and if so, how it would work. Well it is, and here’s how.
"We look at it as importing the world really," said lead designer Mike Laidlaw in an interview with NowGamer. "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. So that was our approach and 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 2."

So what kind of decisions will matter? "Who’s in charge of Ferelden, what happened with the Dwarves, who’s running Orzammar?" Laidlaw explains as examples. "All of these things are reflected and accounted for in Dragon Age 2."

Laidlaw also revealed that despite the Witch Hunt DLC for the first Dragon Age that was intended to provide closure to Morrigan’s story, she’ll still have a part to play in Dragon Age 2, as "she’s not done with this world by any stretch of the imagination." And speaking of companions, Laidlaw also gave a few details of how building relationships with party members will differ this time with the addition of a "rivalry" system.

"[In] addition to being friends, its now an open choice for you to build up a consistent rivalry with someone and to tell them that no, it’s their moral compass that is not correct and that you can actually have a real interaction around that rather than just them getting angry and storming off," he explained. "They will still do that, but it’s not like a lose condition like it was in Origins."

Dragon Age 2 is set for release on March 8.