247 replies to this topic

[Archmage Silver]

News Thread for Origins & Awakening

BioWare has confirmed the expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, called "The Awakening". Here are the details, full EA press release and of course, the official trailer:

Dragon Age™: Origins – Awakening

From the Makers of the Best RPG of 2009, Dragon Age: Origins, comes the first official expansion pack.

For centuries, the Grey Wardens—the ancient order of guardians, sworn to unite and defend the lands—have been battling the darkspawn forces. Legend spoke that slaying the Archdemon would have put an end to the darkspawn threat for centuries to come, but somehow they remain.

You are the Grey Warden Commander and have been entrusted with the duty of rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens and uncovering the secrets of the darkspawn and how they managed to remain.

How you choose to rebuild your order, how you resolve the conflict with "The Architect", and how you determine the fate of the darkspawn will be but some of the many complex choices that await and shape your journey as you venture to the new land of Amaranthine.

A Stunning World Expanded: BioWare's deepest universe to date just got bigger with an all new area of the world to explore, Amaranthine

• Unlock the secrets of the Darkspawn and their true motivations
  
• Rebuild the Grey Warden order and establish their base of operations at Vigil's Keep

All-new Complex Moral Choices: Embark on an epic story that is completely defined and reactive to your play style

• Shape your entire experience based on the choices you make and how your handle complex situations

New Ways to Customize your Hero: Experience additional spells, abilities, specializations, and items to further personalize and customize your hero and party

• Import your character from Dragon Age: Origins or start anew as a Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais
  
• Encounter five all-new party members and an old favorite from Dragon Age: Origins

Even more Bone-Crushing, Visceral Combat: Battle against a new range of horrific and terrifying creatures

Put your skills to the test against an evolved, intelligent breed of Darkspawn and other menacing creatures including the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon!

BioWare Announces First Official Expansion Pack to the Critically Acclaimed Dragon Age: Origins

"Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening" to Take Fans to the Land of Amaranthine With New Party Members, Spells, Abilities and More in March 2010

EDMONTON, Alberta, Jan 05, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Leading video game developer BioWare™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), announced today Dragon Age™: Origins - Awakening, the first official expansion pack to Dragon Age: Origins, the recent recipient of Spike TV's Best RPG and PC Game of 2009, IGN's Best RPG of 2009 and CNN.com's Best RPG of 2009. Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening will be available for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC on March 16, 2010.

Designed and written by the same team that brought you Dragon Age: Origins, the Awakening expansion pack offers a brand new area of the world to explore known as Amaranthine, featuring an epic story that will allow players to unravel the secrets of the darkspawn - and their true motivations! Players will face a range of horrific and terrifying creatures including an evolved, intelligent breed of darkspawn and other menacing creatures such as the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon. Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening provides exciting new ways for players to customize their heroes and party, including the ability to re-spec their character attributes, allowing even greater customization and replayability. Featuring an increased level cap, new spells, abilities, specializations and items, plus five all-new party members, players can continue their adventures from Dragon Age: Origins, or begin with a brand new character.

"Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening shows BioWare's commitment to our fans by delivering new story-driven experiences which enrich the dark heroic fantasy universe our fans have come to know and love," said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group, EA, and Co-Founder, BioWare. "The vibrant worldwide community of Dragon Age fans will relish uncovering the secret motivations of the darkspawn, revealing how the darkspawn continue to infest the world despite the defeat of the Archdemon."

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, BioWare's next thread in the Dragon Age: Origins tapestry, occurs following the events of Dragon Age: Origins and puts players into the role of a Grey Warden Commander entrusted with rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens. In addition to rebuilding the ranks of the Grey Wardens, you will be tasked with uncovering the mystery of how the darkspawn survive after the slaying of the Archdemon. How players choose to rebuild their order, resolve the conflict with the mysterious "Architect," and determine the fate of the darkspawn are just some of the many intriguing moral choices that will shape each player's heroic journey. Players will be able to import their character from Dragon Age: Origins or start out as a new Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening will be released March 16, 2010 worldwide on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 console and PC. Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening will be available for $39.99 on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles in North America and will require Dragon Age: Origins to play. Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening is rated M by the ESRB and 18+ by PEGI.

For more information on Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, please visit www.dragonage.com/awakening.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 22 May 2010 - 12:34 PM.

[Kaeloree]

I would say expansion, rather than DLC. 15 hours of content is a whole lot; I can't imagine BioWare would make people download that?

This'll be interesting if it's true!

[Archmage Silver]

It could well be downloadable if you consider the possibility of re-using some of the base game content. They would only need references to said assets in DLC form and then it would load those references once installed, keeping the download size smaller.

Perhaps I'm just being pessimistic here, but since games started having downloadable content, there's been less and less chances of a real expansion. I'd certainly prefer one though.

Yep, I was definitely being pessimistic here. I'm glad to see real expansions aren't dead yet.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 05 January 2010 - 07:47 PM.

[Bluenose]

Here's the page on the website, describing it.

[theacefes]

Seems like a small sequel if anything. Makes me wonder if that will be the end of Dragon Age (save DLCs or future expansions like this) or if any sequels or other games will not involve our original Grey Warden.

[Eleima]

Actually, it seems you can import your old saved game and continue with your own original Grey Warden. I believe this is an extra campaign (you know, that greyed button in the main menu). Looks pretty neat, I'll be checking it out, although I've got quite enough to keep me busy til then (first ME2 comes out end of January, and then Assassin's Creed 2 for PC). But it looks pretty neat. I wonder if the romances'll carry over...

[Kaeloree]

And it is officially announced! Check the news out on BioWare forums here, or check out the page on the Dragon Age website here.

Will definitely be buying this--greatly looking forward to it! It's been said there's about 30 hours of DLC for Dragon Age... I wonder if this counts towards that, seeing as its a "separate" expansion? I assume it is. Apparently it's $40 US... interesting.

Edited topic title, hope you don't mind, AMS.

Edited by K'aeloree, 05 January 2010 - 02:29 PM.
Update

[Archmage Silver]

SNIP

Edited topic title, hope you don't mind, AMS.

No problem, I've just updated the first post with the expansion details, EA press release and official Awakening trailer (made use of the insert media function now, it's cool ).

By the way Liam, since your username is form 'K'aeloree' in quote tags, the only letter that is actually shown is K (see above).

[Kaeloree]

Yeah, unfortunately that happens on a lot of forums. Ah well--people can always click the backlink to verify who I am!

Excited to see the upcoming companions in DA: Awakening!

[Archmage Silver]

What do you make out of:

Encounter five all-new party members and an old favorite from Dragon Age: Origins

I'm thinking we'll only get Shale/Dog back from the OC - sounds a bit dull, right? I don't know how else to intepret that line though. If I had to logically justify my theory, I'd say they don't want to pay the original voice actors for this expansion.

I wish I'm wrong about this one though...

[Kaeloree]

I'd be tempted to agree with you. Though I adored Shale.

However... given Alistair's presence in the trailer, I suspect it's him.

[Archmage Silver]

I'd be tempted to agree with you. Though I adored Shale.

However... given Alistair's presence in the trailer, I suspect it's him.

Yeah, I guess it's sort of a dead giveaway, but that made me suspicious of it as well - why give it up in the trailer and not state it clearly the press release? It makes no sense to me.

ME1 characters will play important parts in ME2 even though they're non-joinable, so why couldn't Alistair do the same? I mean, someone has to coordinate the Grey Warden operations when you're out killing darkspawn - make Alistair do that and let us have Shale back is what I had in mind.

Alistair is fine 50% of the time, but then just annoying half the time IMO.

[berelinde]

Actually, I don't know if it will be Alistair. I watched the trailer, and he sounds more like a quest-giver than a companion. It seems like the expansion is going to assume that you 1) performed the Dark Ritual and 2) made Alistair king.

But I won't lie. I'd really prefer Alistair as the "DA:O favorite". I just don't think it will be. As long as it isn't Leliana, I'll be happy.

Whatever, I'll probably buy it.

[Archmage Silver]

The price tag of 40$ should entail some more content than the unofficial 15 hours estimate though, unless I'm completely off the chart.

[Eleima]

Yeah, unfortunately that happens on a lot
of forums. Ah well--people can always click the backlink to verify who I am!

Or we could just call you "The K" from now on? (just kidding)

I hope they won't compel us to play assuming that we completed Morrigan's Dark Ritual. "My" canon ending includes my PC calling Morrigan all sorts of different names and kicking her out of Redcliffe castle, and then going on to leave her future king and fiancé Alistair at the gates of Denerim while she goes on to make the ultimate sacrifice. I'd rather make myself a new PC, I guess.
I, too, am hoping that we'll get Shale back in the expansion. Shale was loads of fun, and a pretty decent companion to have around (I liked the Slam and Quake abilities).
That "talking darkspawn" from the trailer really has me intrigued too... I mean, a *talking* darkspawn, what the...? They have the potential to do something interesting with that, something that'll catch us off guard and make us rethink our view of the darkspawn. But of course, that's just me musing!

[Archmage Silver]

Dragon Age: Origins -- Awakening Q&A @ IGN

[princesspurpleblob]

I actually don't think Alistair will join the party in the awakening, although, I wish I am wrong! (I really like Alistair!) I think they planned out story that Alistair decided to marry Anora and became a king. In the trailer, he (if indeed it is Alistair) reminds me a lot of his half-brother Cailan for some reason. Also, the person who were waving at the crowd at the very beginning of the trailer look a lot like Alistair, which gives me an idea as well. Almost to the end of trailer he also says something about "I'd rather miss whole killing darkspawn thing". I really wish this means hes just being himself and acutally meant "well since I'm grey warden, I would enjoy killing darkspawn" rather than "well since now I am a king, I cbf doing dirty works like grey warden". But I really am not keeping my hopes up, especially after reading articles in Archmage Silver's last post. It quotes "there is one party member that returns that can join your party and continue on" and for some reason Morrigan came into mind =.=;

Edited by princesspurpleblob, 07 January 2010 - 10:02 PM.

[Kaeloree]

I suspect DA: Awakening will be reactive to the choices you've made in DA:O. I highly doubt BioWare would forego an opportunity to demonstrate the choice + consequences model they keep talking about.

@Eleima: Go for it.

[WeeRLegion]

Mmmm. Looks very interesting. Definitely goes on the stuff-to-buy list. @_@

[Archmage Silver]

Look at the trailer at 0:37 and 1:19 - it would appear that Oghren is the old friend from Origins joining you.