Early 2011, Apparently...

I'm not surprised. They clearly have all the groundwork done and now are looking at getting them out. I was struck while playing it that they had put a massive effort into creating settings/scenarios for later games. The reports above say it'll be set in Orlais, which is the place we've heard most about and was the obvious choice. So we'll be seeing lots of shiny knights and probably a lot more of the Chantry.

Tevinter is the other obvious location for a series. Ancient Rome, lots of magic and more religious intrigue. A conflict between the two chantries in DA2 could set up DA3 nicely. Antiva and the Qunari homeland are also strong campaign settings. The country which the Qunari captured could serve either as the starting point or a bridging point via an expansion to the main game. There were also a few mentions of a German sounding country which hosts the main Grey Warden base. I'd guess we'll learn about it more in later games to set it up properly.

There's a lot of other countries mentioned but some of these seem minor. I'd guess these seem intended as expansion settings rather than as full game settings.

 

Thanks for the links Taluntain!

Antiva would be a great setting which would probably remind us of Amn in BG2. Orlais could be a lot of fun as well. Good news.

 

It shouldn't be a surprise because Bioware has had almost 5+ years not only to develop the toolset but also the time to develop DA history and backstory. I'm looking forward to DA2. If Bioware continues to do what they do best and that is make the 2nd game better than the first than we should see some improvements on a lot of the game aspects compared to DAO.

 

March 8, 2011 is the definite release date for DA2 on all three platforms. I just hope DA2 is released with less bugs than DAO. I'm glad they finally fixed most of the bugs in DAO. The one that still bugs me is the Dex bug for cross bows.