Dragon Age: Origins v1.03 Patch Released

BioWare has released a v1.03 patch for the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Dragon Age: Origins, which prepares the game for the Awakening expansion pack next week while also addressing long loading times, summoned creature portrait issues, and more. The notes:
'¢ Various changes have been made to code and resources to support the Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening expansion pack. Most of these changes do not affect Origins itself.

'¢ Some players were experiencing increasingly long load times. A major cause of this problem has been fixed.

'¢ At higher levels, non-player characters now receive a bonus to armor penetration. This mitigates an unintentional imbalance with well-armored high-level characters, since armor penetration previously did not scale as aggressively as armor itself did.

'¢ Elite-rank enemies (lieutenants) can no longer be shattered. This preserves the intended tactical design of many combat encounters.

'¢ Portraits for summoned creatures (like a ranger's wolf) were displaying improperly while in the party camp. This no longer occurs.