Confirming recent rumours, the forthcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition will be accompanied by a web portal titled Dragon Age Keep that, in lieu of playing the first two Dragon Age games, players can visit to pre-configure the story of their game's world.

For the uninitiated, the first two Dragon Age games featured some branching endings and varied consequences for choices players made during their stories, but with the third game in the series now coming to platforms that it hasn't been on before, the concept of simply importing one's saved games to continue your personal adventure became untenable.

BioWare Exective Producer Mark Darrah has posted up an extensive blog update on the topic:

Within the Keep, you’ll be able to customize a Dragon Age historical world state to your exact specifications. How did you modify your Warden and Hawke? Who were your companions? Who did you choose to romance? Who rose to power, and who fell in defeat? What legacy did you leave?

Within the Keep, you’ll be able to customize as much or as little about the world of Thedas as you wish. Then you’ll be able to import your saved world state into DAI at the start of a new game. Have you lost or corrupted your save files? No problem — remake your world state on the Keep, and preserve it for the future. For those folks new to the Dragon Age franchise, the Keep will serve as a great way to understand the people, places, and events that shaped the world leading up to DAI.

The tool will be accessed via the website dragonagekeep.com and BioWare has invited prospective Dragon Age: Inquisition players to register for beta testing.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is scheduled for launch on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Xbox 360 on November 21st 2014.