Gameplanet: Dragon Age: Origins was voted 2009 Game of the Year by our community - by far the largest in New Zealand - so belated congratulations are in order!

Heather Rabatich: Thank you! I love hearing stuff like that. One of our lead level designers is a Kiwi, you guys probably know each other right? [laughs]

Gameplanet: Obviously Kiwis weren't the only ones who loved Origins, the game was received well across the board as well as picking up a great many awards. Does that make the creation of this sequel a daunting task?

Heather: A little daunting. It’s good because we have established a fan base. You work on something so long and you become so close to it you don’t realise how it’s going to be received. You think or hope that people are going to love it as much as we love it so actually the amount of accolades we received has been awesome but the game [Origins] wasn’t without its small faults so we were able to build off of that success and that is how we were able to make improvements.

We want to stress that we haven’t taken away the things people love even though it may seem like ‘hey, that combat doesn’t look the same’ or ‘those dialogue wheels are different’ it still has the heart of the BioWare game.

Gameplanet: What was the ultimate design decision behind reducing player choice from the original 3 races to the sole human on offer in Dragon Age 2?

Really what we are trying to do here is you are playing as Hawke, right? So Hawke is a human , this is the tail of this one person. We have given you the option to customise your Hawke, like you can change the appearance or make them male or female but what we get by giving you this one clean story is you can really get into this character in a way that you might not be able to if there were so many different options. This is the story of the human champion Hawke and that is what we are telling you in this. You still have the choice to make them who you want with what you say and what you do we have just narrowed it down to this one person.

Gameplanet: What was the biggest design lesson learned from Dragon Age: Origins?

Heather: I would say that would vary from person to person you ask at the studio. I think overall we have come down to two main things specifically: the art style was one. Origins was great in the sense that it had that traditional fantasy look but Dragon Age 2 isn’t a traditional fantasy game.

Of course its fantasy, but it is not that cluttered, mystical very generic looking game which is what we wanted to do for Origins, but for this game we wanted to step outside of that. If you are in a certain area we want you to feel like what you are fighting is from that area. We really wanted to make it seamless visually, improve the graphics and give the characters a stylization.

We also wanted to improve on the combat. We wanted to keep the game tactical, keep the game strategic but we wanted to make it so someone could pick up the game and play it and still feel like they were doing something purposeful. You can’t button mash through the game, you still need to think and I think that the statement “You fight like a Spartan but think like a General” fits.

Gameplanet: What feature are you most excited about introducing?

Heather: I have been working with the game play teams and I think I am excited about the combat, like the boss fights. Watching the people who plan those things, brainstorm how we are going to take down these things, it is kind of ruins it in the sense that now you know how to do it but it is very inspiring to see it all come together and I am very excited about a couple of the battles we have planned.

Gameplanet: And anything keeping you up at night?

Heather: My neighbours [laughs] I guess trying to relay the frame narrative. I hope people are happy with the way we decided to take a lot of our RPG and condense it into these key features like the key moments in history versus the very long drawn out story. So I am really hoping our fans respond well to that because I do think it’s a pretty cool thing we are doing with it. You can see the consequences of your actions more readily than in Origins where you spent 120 hours and forgot a bunch of those early choices.

Gameplanet: The Witcher 2 scriptwriter Jan Bartkowicz believes that DA:O was influenced by The Witcher - especially in the "romance" department - do you agree with him?

Heather: I hadn’t actually heard that so I can’t really comment but we have been doing romance for years. Romance is the key element to any movie or any story, especially within drama.

Gameplanet: On that subject, will Hawke be spending his/her down time cracking on to his allies?

Heather: That is something we have done in Origins and Jade empire; party dynamics are very important to us, rivalries and loves that you can have within the game within your own party that have choice and consequence. It is an interesting thing that we are able to develop that adds to the story. That little bit of something that makes our characters unique and helps shape the world

Gameplanet: Does Dragon Age 2 reprise Origins' Loyalty system? What changes, if any, have been made to that system?

Heather: Yeah, the same sort of thing. It still has the same depth but we have added to it. It is not so black and white, or cut and dry the things that you are doing. There are real impacts to the things you are doing. It is sort of like the system has grown up.

Gameplanet: Finally, what would you say to someone who had never spent time in the dragon age universe to get them interested in Dragon Age 2?

Heather: What I would say about any BioWare game; it’s a great chance for you to be emotionally involved in a game, to get to play something were you have control over a character and can really shape and grow this world. That it is a really satisfying experience. To be able to have that connection, it is very rewarding both emotionally and it makes you think a bit differently. Some games try to dumb it down, try to make it a little too easy and those kinds of games are easy to brush off where as I find people really love BioWare games and they really love the experiences. I think the people who do get the chance to play, who take the time find will find it very worthwhile.

Read Gameplanet's preview of Dragon Age II here.