Those of us who've completed Dragon Age: Origins, Awakening and II... we've crafted together a story unique to ourselves, in how we've played, how we've interacted with characters etc, all to get a save import file for Dragon Age Inquisition how we want. Well... guess what. All for nothing really as the save import feature does NOT exist with Dragon Age Inquisition. Please read:


BioWare has revealed Dragon Age Keep (https://dragonagekeep.com/), an application that lets players recreate the choices made in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, and apply their consequences to Dragon Age: Inquisition (http://au.ign.com/games/dragon-age-iii/pc-104073).

"It will initially be accessed through the web and there are more platforms planned," executive producer Mark Darrah tells IGN. Through the online application, you'll craft your own version of Dragon Age's past, including which companions your Grey Warden conquered the Blight with, who Hawke romanced, and how you last left Thedas.

"The consequences of your choices in the previous games will affect the state of your world in Inquisition," Darrah says. "It could be something huge, something like what happened with Morrigan and the Dark ritual at the end of [Origins]: Did she have a child? Additionally, the game will also know and react to things like who is in charge of Ferelden."

So does this mean Hawke and your Warden play an important role in Inquisition? Darrah says yes -- but BioWare won't elaborate on that just yet.

"Within the Keep, fans will be able to customize as much or as little about the world of Thedas as they wish," says Darrah. You don't have to commit to your first run through each of Dragon Age's weighty decisions, either. "You can change your choices to see all of the different opportunities in previous games. Once you start a new game, it will use the choices from the previous games from that moment."

So if you want to tweak the outcome of the Landsmeet or whose side you took in an important debate, you can do so ahead of starting Inquisition. It's not necessarily as elegant as moving your saves straight into a next-gen game, but BioWare wants to ensure you join the world as you last left it -- or build one that's better suited to the sort of story you want to have in Inquisition. Living out what-if stories means discovering what might have been if you'd failed to succeed somewhere, and seeing that through in the next-gen RPG.

"For players new to Dragon Age, the Keep will serve as an engaging way to understand the people, places, and events that shaped the world leading up to Dragon Age Inquisition," says Darrah. In tailoring the history of the world, they'll learn about the Mage/Chantry feud that's erupting into war, the Orlesian conflict with Ferelden, and what a qunari is.

You can join the beta for the Keep now, and it'll launch for everyone in 2014.

Source : Dragon Age Keep: Inquisition's Alternative to Save Transfers (http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/08/28/dragon-age-keep-inquisitions-alternative-to-save-transfers)

Ok... so this is the new way to make your backstory in Dragon Age Inquisition.... a glorified Mass Effect Genesis in laymen's terms. Kinda makes playing the first few games rather superfluous, and you just know that they'll do the same for the next Mass Effect game. Thoughts?

I kinda think they're going too far with the save import feature.It's getting too time consuming and complex to keep it going and it has become counterproductive, as fast jimmy,a BSN poster pointed out.
Letting players start from scratch for their major decisions or just pick stuff without having to replay the game makes sense to me.

I think it's likely there will be some major stuff aka Alistair is or isn't king of Ferelden that you can choose and they need that for players who are new or who have new machines or their old machine died/lost their game saves.

My PS3 died recently and yes I am trying the heat gun/goop stuff to try to save it.But if I can't I assume I will be able to just pick the major choices if I have lost my old game saves.

I doubt it'll make much difference. For all the song and dance over imported games (both in DA and Mass Effect), the effect your choices make on the world and characters have always been very small, hand wave mentions for the most part. The problem is and always has been that no game can hope to account for even a small number of drastic game choices. So Bioware game 'choices' usually boil down to pretty cosmetic stuff that doesn't really matter at all. Its nice to see and all, but its always been very slight - more akin to Easter Eggs than actual substantial, meaningful content. And let's face it - Dragon Age already completely blew it when it came to continuity. Leliana, Zevran, Anders all alive, even though they could have been dead on your save. The people you left behind in the Vigil still counting as dead, even though the fully upgraded keep means they survive, simply because Bioware apparently forgot to put in a post game save etc. The fact that despite your choices of Monarch and any reforms you may have made in DA:O, none of that really matters because your meeting with Alistair suggests that mages are still oppressed even if you freed the circle, tensions are high with the Dalish, even if they were granted their own lands etc etc etc.

This decision to change the save importer is likely the DA crew starting from scratch. They know what choices are actually going to make any difference at all in DA3, and they know what choices have been forced on people due to their own incompetence over the Zevran, Leliana stuff. So this list of theirs will be carefully edited and sculpted to try and make some sense of the chaos they've created for themselves. I'm okay with it quite frankly, because they had to do something like this. Certain choices in your old saves are flat out not supported, so the whole validity of past saves was already on shaky ground. This is just an attempt by Bioware to lay out all the options they feel able to cover in the game. Importing saves has always sounded better than it actually is. Your choices hardly ever matter, because each new game's priority if to itself, its own story and appealing to new customers. It is most certainly not about giving huge reams of extra content and new avenues of exploration and quests etc to gamers who went through the older games. That would require the kind of money and time that no game will ever get. Thus your choices no matter how big they seem at the time, are only ever cosmetic when it really comes down to it. They just tweak and pull until all the choices have the same outcome, and hand wave the rest with cameo appearances and off hand comments.

At some point reality has to kick in. These little cosmetic continuity touches are nice, but the amount of time, effort and money they cost to make it work is hardly worth it. The elephant in the room has always been that your choices don't really matter in any lasting way. ME2 taught me that lesson in an extremely painful way, but its a lesson I had to learn. Since then I've been more realistic about this stuff. Bioware do what they can to account for player choice, but in most cases, it just isn't possible to account for it in any substantial way. Not without billions of dollars, ten year development cycles and sophisticated AI programs to keep track of it all.

Basically what I'm saying is 'I couldn't care less if my choices matter that much, so long as Dragon Age: Inquisition is a good game'. That matters to me a hell of a lot more than worrying if my suggestions to a Dwarven grocer actually led to him becoming a international rock star like the game suggested he would, (or whatever). The only thing that actually matters is the quality of the new game. End of.

I really do recommend people have a look at this. Even if the concept doesn't interest you, the amount of effort that has clearly been put into this is really cool.

It does seem like a lot of work for not much reward though. Did it need to be this flashy and colourful, and take this much time and money? Its just a questionnaire!

I guess I'm just concerned when I see such attention lavished on something like this, when it could have been spent on the game itself. This whole Keep business is a needless hurdle IMO. I just don't accept their excuse that previous save import problems couldn't have been patched. The one in Awakening would have been simplicity itself - put a save after the final boss and restore the relevant flags at that time.

Plus, having to mess about with this Keep nonsense just puts an extra layer of hassle between me and playing the game. If I decide I want to play DA:I, I don't want to have to go to the Keep first and fiddle about making and loading in world states that I should just be able to import. Why didn't they at least give people the option to use an importer? If you're still using PS3 and Xbox 360, then there should be no issue. Then if there were to be any problems with the saves and continuity, then Bioware could just say 'Hey, you chose not to use the Keep, we warned you...'

I can't help but see Mass Effect Genesis and how unsatisfactory that was, whenever I look at the Keep. It won't affect my decision to play the game, but rather than build excitement, so far its just built frustration and disappointment (seeing all the absent choices that obviously meant nothing etc etc).