I recommend going back to Witch Hunt and the other later DLCs for DAO. They have numerous references... to DAI, not DA2. I CBA to put the sources together, but basically DA2 was supposed to be a smaller game, more like a standalone expansion, to prevent the Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams from having identical dev cycles. Then somebody* had the idea of labeling it "2" and driving the dev team to make it a full-price game... resulting in what I view as the sole critical failure of the game, the artificial stretch from reusing the same areas over and over. So, in a lot of ways, this is the DAO sequel that was originally supposed to be, with DA2 a slight excursion in the middle.
*Most will say that this was evil overlord EA, I will assume it was the docs.