After Mass Effect: Legendary Edition reminded everyone of how darn good the best BioWare RPGs could be, it seemed almost inevitable that a similar remastered collection would be in the pipeline for the famed studio's other big trilogy: Dragon Age. Folks at the studio apparently had the same idea, but it was publisher EA that wasn't fully on board, according to the franchise's former boss.
Speaking to MrMattyPlays, BioWare veteran and former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah spoke about the possibility of a collection that included and maybe even revamped Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
"EA's historically been, and I don't really know why but they've even said this publicly, kind of against remasters," Darrah explained. "It's strange for a publicly traded company to basically be against free money, but they seem to be against it. That's part of it."
The other part of the reason why the original adventures in Thedas haven't been modernized is because, in Darrah's words, "Dragon Age is harder than Mass Effect to do; to some degree unknowably harder. Maybe only a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder."
The ex-exec doesn't delve into too many of the reasons why, but I imagine some of that difficulty stems from the fact that Mass Effect 1-3 all wrapped up within a few years of each other and ran on the same hardware. On the other hand, Inquisition is a full generation ahead of its older siblings and none of the fantasy epics play very similarly.
"Let's do Frostbite tools, and then let's find a mod house that seems talented and pay them to do a remake of Dragon Age: Origins. There were lots of pitches around," Darrah recalls. "A remaster you kind of get Dragon Age 2 for free, a remake you don't."
"EA's stance was probably, 'Sure, go ahead and do it, but do it with the money you already have.' And it's like, 'Well, we can't do it with the money that we already have because we're doing all these other things.'"
It would've been a good way to energize some interest in Thedas after Dragon Age: The Veilguard kinda bombed, at least.
No remaster? No worries. Here are the best RPGs to fill that Dragon Age-shaped hole in your gaming life.
