New Dragon Age Short Stories for DA Day

I think the gray sludge is just normal darkspawn corruption.

The main reason is the avoid the problems we had with carrying over our world states from DAO to DA2, when bugs or oversight led to strange behaviour from former companions like romanced Zevran, who was meant to be devoted to the Warden (or their memory) and yet was hitting on Hawke and/or Isabella. Also, it would be nigh on impossible to carry over flags from one system to another, which became important when they started using Frostbite. Hence the Keep.

However, in terms of how important those choices are is debatable. How many were carried forward from DAO and DA2 that actually made a difference to your experience in DAI? Of these how many just resulted in a different codex, conversation with companions/NPCs or a short cameo appearance? Kieran was actually a notable exception to this but in view of the variables that they had to account for, it is unlikely they would ever do anything like that in the future and, so far as he was concerned, it was pretty clear his story was over so far as any major impact on the world going forward; he either does not exist or is now an ordinary boy, who may or may not be related to the monarch of Ferelden and even if he is, that is unlikely to be relevant to future stories.

The Keep helps maintain the illusion of choice influencing the world but with the majority of those choices only really impacting the south of Thedas, whilst we are heading north, I do wonder whether the Keep will have any impact other than a few codices and conversations. The one that I am going to be interested to see is that final choice in Trespasser when speaking with Solas together with our choice about the Inquisition. However, considering the players on old consoles didn't even have the option of playing Trespasser, I doubt it is going to result in any major plot branches going forward.   Also, I am rather skeptical about the Well of Sorrows decision coming up again but we shall see.

I would rather meet up with and work with Evka and Antoine rather than have her as a companion who has been widowed and then attempt to romance her. I agree that we are likely to see her again considering the amount of focus there has been on her but in a way that makes her less interesting to me. I already know why she became a Warden, the sort of challenges she has encountered up to now and that she is (or was) married so what more is there to discover?

Besides, what about those two characters that were showcased in the "Behind the Scenes" video? They even had VAs already assigned to them. One was definitely a Grey Warden and the other sounded as though she could be a dwarf, owing to knowing something about the "right kind of rumbles". The only thing I can think of, if they are or were all in the game in some way, is that possibly one pair or the other could have been multi-player characters and will now have been lost with the single player focus. Sadly, that may be Davrin and the other one from the video.

One difference with Evka and Antoine compared to Michel: they’ve had two short stories dedicated to them over the past two years. That’s an unusual amount of attention to devote to two NPCs if they are just window dressing.

I suspect if they are companions, they’re a package deal. We’ve never had married party members.

Not in Dragon Age certainly but we did have a married couple as companions back in Baldurs' Gate, then they killed off one of them in BG2 and we were able to romance the survivor. It was surprising how quickly she got over the mourning him to be honest. I seem to recall that in BG1 you couldn't keep one in the party without the other, which was annoying enough when you have 5 party members, as we did then, let alone 3. So, whilst having a married couple might be an interesting innovation for DA, I hope it wouldn't come with those sorts of restrictions. More likely, though, I think would be for them to appear as temporary companions who don't actually take up party slots, like Morrigan or those two dwarves in the Descent.