Varric Tethras is Dragon Age's wry but poetic dwarf. Making his first appearance in Dragon Age 2, he's not just a resourceful hunter and trap layer but also a famous writer. His novel "Hard in Hightown" is a best seller in the continent of Thedas and it turns out, soon to be published in the real world.

For years since news of its cancellation, rumours have circulated about the supposedly "Awakening-sized" Dragon Age II expansion, Exalted March. The most widely held belief was that it had been cancelled due to Dragon Age II's poor reception, but as it turns out that assumption is false. Mike Laidlaw laid all (or at least, some) secrets bare for curious fans in a series of tweets earlier today.

Good news: Dragon Age: Inquisition is pretty great. Less-good news: Being a story-heavy role-playing game, it relies heavily on a familiarity with the Dragon Age series' dense lore. Newcomers might be a bit lost at times.

It can't be easy to be a BioWare writer. You and your co-workers run yourselves ragged crafting huge, sprawling stories, and afterwards you're subjected to all manner of intense feedback, much of it shouted by the more extreme corners of your fanbase.

When we get mired in arguing over whether or not games are harmful to impressionable young players, it's easy to forget that sometimes, they can be amazingly inspirational, or even helpful.

BioWare's Dragon Age franchise, like its science fiction spiritual sibling Mass Effect, creates a great deal of passion among its fans. And also like its sci-fi sib, the Dragon Age games attract an enormous amount of controversy and dissent among those same fans.

At NYCC last weekend, BioWare was in attendance talking about the upcoming Dragon Age comic series, which will follow Alistair, Isabella, and Varric as they perform some sleuthing into Alistair's past. Well then, that's three of my favourite characters doing stuff that certainly sounds fun. I'd love to see how virginal Alistair and worldly Isabella get on in particular.

This dog is an entrant in a character costume contest being run by the people at BioWare, makers of Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic and other video games that include terrific characters. The dog, however, is cosplaying as a Mabari from the Dragon Age games.

Barbarians. Knights. Tribal warriors. All very manly men with their armour and swords and scowls, all very much a speciality of Finnish concept artist Ville-Valtteri Kinnunen.

Bioware are absolutely killing it with the soundtracks at the moment, Clint Mansell is doing some work on the Mass Effect 3 soundtrack and now EA has just announced that Dragon Age 2 will feature music from Florence and the Machine.

BioWare has confirmed that a demo for Dragon Age II will be hitting the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on February 22.

Dragon Age 2 is the latest story driven RPG from Bioware, and is due for release in March 2011. Earlier this week we managed to spend some time with the game. We took the opportunity to quiz producer Heather Rabatich on the importance of story, and why Bioware is one of the few studios that truly allows writers to drive the development process.

No, Dragon Age 2 won't look this good, but the Dragon Age 2 trailer that just debuted in Germany should give you a sense of the action they're going for. The game will be out on March 8.

One million used to be the bar. Then two. Then three. Mass Effect developer BioWare isn't stopping there.

Dragon Age 2 isn't pulling just one page from Mass Effect's book. It's pulling several, including the ones titled "conversation systems" and "save game continuity".

BioWare's next big role-playing game, Dragon Age II, will be a very different thing. For starters, the sequel sports a "new visual style", readily apparently from concept art and newly released first screen shots of Dragon Age II.

Dragon Age II takes a page from the Mass Effect playbook, limiting player characters to a male or female human version of the game's main character, Hawke.

The first details we saw about Dragon Age 2 were not shocking. New game, new hero. The second batch of details? Consider the eyes of Kotaku raised.

It may have had its cover blown yesterday, but don't let that rain on your parade: Dragon Age 2 is definitely coming.