Decisions you’ve made in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II will impact the world in Dragon Age: Inquisition, but not by transferring your existing save games. EA today detailed the Dragon Age Keep, the previously announced system through which you’ll be able to “recreate your story.”

As first discussed last year, the Keep will present you with what amounts to a questionnaire covering the many choices in the first two Dragon Age games. You’ll answer questions as part of an “animated journey” through the series that is narrated by Varric Tethras, a character who will be a companion in Inquisition.

The goal of the Keep, according to an EA blog post, is to “let you generate your unique world history, eliminate inconsistencies, and store multiple playthroughs.”

BioWare producer Leah Shinkewski and director of online development Fernando Melo explained how the idea for Keep began forming “many years ago.” Specifically, “when Dragon Age II shipped, the complex nature of our plot flag system and the save import really hit home.”

A save file alone would have made it difficult to carry over players’ decisions, and there was also a concern that players moving across platforms would lose their progress. That led to work being done on something called the World Vault, which in turn became the Dragon Age Keep. “[W]ith the help of the community we’ve worked to ensure that, going forward, the Keep will stand as the record of your impact in the world of Thedas–dutifully preserved and accurately represented in future products, limited only by creative aspiration of the game team,” BioWare said.

EA describes the Keep as a “totally massive world-creation tool.” To demonstrate this, it claims it would take the mind-boggling length of 16,400 times the age of the universe to see each possible world state for one second. Of course, that’s undoubtedly counting worlds that have only minor differences, but it’s still a huge number.

You’ll be able to begin checking out the Keep prior to Inquisition’s release on November 18, when it launches on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. We recently got a look at the game’s character customization system, which you can see in action in the video above as well as here.

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