BioWare, the developer of many highly acclaimed RPGs, is looking at their upcoming title, Dragon Age: Origins, as a platform. The Canadian-based RPG company (although they do have their MMO studio down here in Austin) is hoping to infuse some of the magic that made NeverWinter Nights work so well in the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series. That magic, namely, is the modding tools that will allow players to create their own modules – basically gameplay campaigns – and allow others to play them.

I’ll be up front on this one: I’m a BioWare fan. I’ve played everything they’ve released – heck, I even had a copy of Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 within the week it came out, and I don’t even own a 360 (I just lived with someone who did). NeverWinter Nights has long been one of my favorite games as well, largely because of the Auroura Toolset modding tools that it came with. I was also hoping to get that same magic with the release of NeverWinter Nights 2 from Obsidian, only to find one major problem: few people really made any modules. The tools were too complex for many of the people who turned out modules in the original game.

I actually have that fear with Dragon Age as well. While I expect to pick up a solid, polished game that’ll give me many hours of entertainment, I also am worried about the amount of modules people will actually make with it. I do know that BioWare is spending time with users of the original Aurora Toolset, so hopefully these fears will be unfounded. There is even a Beta Application up right now for people to help test out, quite specifically, the modding tools.

If nothing else, BioWare has stated that they plan on releasing a full scale title, and will be releasing further downloadable content to expand on the Dragon Age Universe.