Ah, Dragon Age: Origins, hailed as one of the best RPGs of the decade by a few sources out there. The Awakening expansion is promising to be as epic as the original content, so BioWare is quite eager to chat about that.

Executive Producer Mark Darrah and Online Producer Fernando Melo are happy to chat about anything but the sequel, so we've got some nice insights into what to expect from Awakening, like the import process for using your old Warden, what it'll be like playing an Orlesian character, and new companions.

On a related note, how is development coming along for the sequel? Is the team working on this expansion and the sequel simultaneously? Any word on what we can expect out of it?

MD: Didn’t I just say that we weren’t talking about it? [smiles] The Dragon Age team has been focused on Awakening. At the same time, however, we are always focused on future opportunities. This lets us lay the groundwork for the future today.

Approximately how many hours of content does the expansion offer? Is it proportional to the value gamers got with the original game? Why or why not?

FM: One of the things we learned with Origins is that you can’t really measure this kind of game by hours. We saw players blazing through in 30 hours or so, while others took 200 or more. There was so much to do depending on what party members you took, whether you pursued side quests, what choices you made – any way you looked at it, it wasn’t a great way to describe the scale of the game.

RabidChinaGirl via neoseeker.com »