This panel took place on Friday 4/6 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Panelists were: Jessica Merizan, Mark Darrah, Mike Laidlaw, David Gaider, Shane Hawco

Editor's notes in (Parentheses)

Mike Laidlaw (Senior Director): It's a little humbling, thank you so much for coming. It's a real experience, leave the internet, come to real life, so much better out there. We going to talk a little bit about things. Introductions first. Jessica, of course, you know.  Myself, creative director for EA. Mark Darrah here is the executive producer of the entire franchise. David Gaider, our lead writer, on virtually everything back from Baldur's Gate 2, and Shane Hawco. Shane is our assistant art director. So I want to open with a display. Let's be clear, we are not making promises here, we have some ideas, everything is work in progress. Feedback is something we are taking very seriously. With DA2 we saw awesome positives, some negatives obviously. We are making sure that the game we are creating is the game you want to see, and the game we want to make. 

(Screen shows some feedback such as meaningful loot, keep pause and play, new main character, talk to followers anytime, returning characters (Varric), give us an epilogue, equipment for followers, mage war, beautiful environments, decisions that matter, stop reusing levels)

Mike: The three main recurring themes appeared to be: Stop reusing levels, decisions that matter, equipment for followers. (Applause from audience). Those three came up quite a bit. Lets start with the topic of stopping reusing levels. Apparently you guys have seen enough cheese wheels and caves. (On projector it says "STOP REUSING LEVELS - WILL DO!"). I know what you guys are looking for. You are looking for variety, space, scope, cool, hidden, forgotten, and modest, and if you really need to go somewhere urban, we will make sure it's not Kirkwall, maybe let's go somewhere new (throughout this sentence, we see some cool scenery, probably from Dragon Age 3). Regarding decisions that matter, the answer is yes, we will definitely make sure that that's what we are delivering, including your previous games (Applause). We are aware of some problems and some weirdness but we will make sure that the world you want to play in is what's happening. 

(On the screen now we see a slide "Decisions that Matter". 

Character Agency

"My character has an active effect on his or her world, determined by my choices."

Player Agency

"I have control over my gameplay experience"

Mike: We will make sure your choices will determine the impact on the world. Regarding equipment for followers, yes. If you guys haven't seen the first row people, please stand up, amazing dragon age costumes (lots of cheer and applause from audience). Suppose in your party you had a Gray Qarden, lets say. And suppose ou had a Seeker. And you held this thing, this suit of armor, perhaps a chestpiece. And it had stats and stuff (Screen shows a Grey Warden and a Seeker, and also a  Sterling Chestplate - Plate Armor, Chest, 47 Armor, 15% Magic Resist). If we had these 2 characters in this party, what we want to make sure happens is that you see a visual change. You will be doing the combinations. But we still want to make sure the characters don't lose their identity in the process, the middle ground is what we are after. So that should be very cool.

Continues: Part 2 of Bioware PAX East 2012 Dragon Age III Panel - Q&A