I had planned on playing through Awakening as smoothly as possible, letting the consequence of my decisions weigh in rather than saving the game every other step. Turns out that this was a bad idea.

Six hours into the game, the amount of bugs I’ve run into thus far has been astonishing. They’re skills that I’ve met the criteria for and can’t use, and quests that certain portions of it won’t trigger, thus breaking the quests unless you have an earlier save point to revert to, which I don’t. So far the ones I’ve encounter are mostly side-quests and have not been story-breaking yet, but it puts a huge damper on the game.

There’s a thread with the intent of compiling all the encounter bugs and oddities on the official forums here. Reading through it, it seems that some of these issues, such as skills from plot-unlocked specializations in Origins not carrying over correctly, are a rather common experience. Given the pervasiveness of the problem, it’s a surprise that it wasn’t caught before the game shipped, leading me to call into question the play testing and quality control on Awakening’s release.