If you played Dragon Age Origins as well as its extra content you’d agree that, barring the Awakening expansion, the DLC was pretty darned mediocre. Bioware’s not going to let the same happen with the sequel, and are already promising more DLC beyond the “Exiled Prince†and “Black Emporium†already available.
"We’re going to keep it very focused on your character" Mike Laidlaw, the game’s lead designer said to Eurogamer.
"Some feedback we caught out of Origins was that while people liked Leliana’s Song, where you primarily played as her, they wanted their Warden to be a part of that story."
"We don’t have a solid date on [more DLC]; we certainly have some more in the works. But we’ll be announcing more of that as we get closer to locking it down. A big focus for us is to make sure we get it right and we make sure it’s, honestly, a beefier experience than the Origins DLCs and one that introduces something new to the Dragon Age game."
Dragon Age Origins got seven bits of DLC, excluding the downloadable Awakening expansion : The Stone Prisoner, Warden’s Keep, Return to Ostagar, The Darkspawn Chronicles, Leliana’s Song, The Golems of Amgarrak and Witch Hunt – none of which lived up to the critically acclaimed RPG, or indeed the DLC for Mass Effect 2, Bioware’s other RPG du jour.
"For me, the core goal of DLC is to deliver an experience that integrates very smoothly with the game, one that feels like it works no matter when I’m playing so I don’t have to start a brand new game – I want to be able to load a save near the end or almost at the end. And I want to feel like if I’ve done stuff in the DLC then it does matter; be it loot or experience or knowledge or information or something new that I saw – a new creature or something – those are all the kinds of things you want to see in downloadable content, because what they do is enrich the overall tapestry, which again ties to our idea that you are playing as Hawke – your character and your followers have that same consistency all the way through."
"As a general rule," he added, "you can assume that some new characters are always critical to anything that’s going to have story in it, for sure. But I can’t go into any specifics."
Dragon Age 2 launched in SA today, but has been available in certain retail stores since Wednesday.
Source : Eurogamer
Last Updated: March 11, 2011