Over the years, BioWare has created a canon world state across all games in the Dragon Age franchise, but simply falling in line and sticking just to that world state defeats the purpose of making the game one's own. With the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition, EA introduced an online site called The Keep where players could catalogue all their game choices across the franchise, creating colorful tapestries that could then be imported into a new save file inInquisition.

With an abundance of choices throughout the games that dramatically impact Thedas, being able to mold and shape the world state to one's customized preferences alters the canon default and allows the player to pick up in a world they've already influenced and continue shaping that world in future games.

WithDragon Age 2, players could import their Origins save on to influence world choice decisions. However, if a player switched between consoles or to PC, those saved choices were lost and the canon world state implemented. The Keep makes it possible for players across multiple consoles to import a world state no matter where those original games were played.

Getting Started

The first step to using The Keep is creating an account on the official site and launching the sign-in tool. Set up an EA account (formerly Origin) and log in to arrive at the main screen for The Keep.

Once logged into The Keep, take a moment to link your Xbox gamertag or PlayStation ID so it appears in the login screen. After these accounts are linked, launching the game on console or PC will prompt an in-game login that connects the accounts to import world saves but before launching the game those world states will need to be set up.

Setting Up World States

PC players can import save data to The Keep, but console players will need to create their world states from scratch. While this seems like a difficult process, it gives players a chance to relive their choices or even alter them to achieve a different outcome than they originally managed.

In the left hand toolbar, clicking on World States will launch all imported saves and tapestries that have been created. If there are no imported saves, players can create their own tapestries. To create a new world state, simply click on one of the empty slots and drag it into the central slot at the top. Choosing "Edit In Tapestry" from the right hand side allows users to modify choices from the default world state spanningOrigins and Dragon Age 2, allowing players to create their own story.

Launching the Tapestry brings up all previous games, and players can edit each of the choices presented. These include companion choices and romances, prologue decisions and all actions taken throughout gameplay. Once all choices have been decided, the world state can be exported to be tracked in Inquisition.

Importing World Saves to Inquisition

When launching Inquisition on PC or console, a prompt will appear asking the player to log into their EA account. Connecting to EA is essential for the game to access world states. Starting a new game walks players through the process of character creation, choosing their race, class and difficulty settings. Once those choices have been made, the game will ask to import a world state from The Keep. An Internet connection is required to do this, so be sure the system is connected.

Once the world state has been imported, double-check to make sure the timestamp on your state in The Keep matches the one on the imported save in-game. If the timestamps match, continue into the game and watch as the world state created unfolds in various scenes throughout the game.

Inquisition Choices

As the player makes choices duringInquisition, those choices will update in the game's tapestry in The Keep. Each time the game saves through the EA server, important decisions that alter the world state for future Dragon Age games are logged, and the tapestry reflects those choices. Players can then go into The Keep and edit the tapestry if they wish, updating or altering choices to their preference.

One of the great things about The Keep is that it not only logs player choices and keeps everything tidy for future games in the franchise, but it displays information about all heroes the player has created, achievements logged during gameplay and explorable world lore. Though BioWare has only released limited information about Dragon Age 4, it is definitely coming. Getting The Keep primed with previous data ensures a world state that reflects a player's personal game canon as they start a new adventure.

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