Awakening, the retail expansion to Dragon Age: Origins, was announced a couple of days ago, but with little solid info. IGN sits down with Fernando Melo, the Online Producer of the expansion, who provides a glimpse of what Awakening will offer, including level caps, new party members, storyline setting, and importing your existing characters.

Fernando Melo: Several months have passed since the end of Origins, or more correctly, the end of the Blight, which is the game's focus for Origins. You are sort of thrust forward as the new Grey Warden Commander in the land. You are given an area of the world which we haven't explored previously called Amaranthine in the north of Ferelden. Basically, there are lots of things that have been happening there, lots of rumors; again, the Blight has just ended, so communication is still very poor -- people are still not really travelling the roads that much, etc. They're kind of sending you up there to figure out what's going on and also to give the Grey Wardens their rightful place back into the world based on what they've just done.

So, you basically arrive there, start to hear rumors and discover what's going on. We'll cover more of the back story later, but you discover that the Darkspawn have not gone back underground as has happened in previous Blights. Something else is keeping them out. You also hear about something a little more sinister: smarter, thinking, talking Darkspawn, which had never been seen before. There are some really good, very subtle connections with David Gaider's second book, The Calling, where he references the character of the Architect. That's kind of going to be your nemesis in Awakening. There are no spoilers or anything like that in the book -- you can read a little bit about the background of the character and what makes him tick. You'll be a little bit more familiar about the Architect, but it won't spoil anything for the game.

Existence via ps3.ign.com »