same beta tester and yeah the keep is great i lost all my saves when my pc fried was sad
I'm not totally sure but I get the feeling unless I'm very wrong that you don't have to use the keep unless you want to. In that case for my first playthrough of the game I will just go straight to the game and play with the default world state since I never finished Dragon Age: Origins anyway. And yes I too lost all my saves for Dragon Age II.
the keep is the only way to set the story for DAO and DA2 but if u want to just play DAI u can use there default world state
Thats the plan for me to use the default world state.