Former Dragon Age lead Mark Darrah says the beloved fantasy RPG series could have ended up with a game like Baldur's Gate 3, but BioWare instead chose to be simpler in the hopes of reaching a wider audience.
So it goes, following EA's decision to shut down BioWare before it could ship Mass Effect 5, Dragon Age: The Veilguard stands as the studio's last game. While some reviewers found plenty to like about it, the RPG didn't deliver the commercial performance needed to keep BioWare going after EA was acquired by a group that includes the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.
As such, we're left with a kind of what-if situation with the series. The likes of Baldur's Gate 3 have made enough money and won enough awards to show that a fantasy RPG can certainly achieve the level of success that Dragon Age craved. As such, why couldn't the developer behind the first two Baldur's Gate games hit the same heights with something like Dragon Age, another fantasy-themed series with a solid fanbase?
For longtime Dragon Age lead Mark Darrah, BioWare fell flat because it tried to create an RPG that meant something to everyone and, as a result, ended up creating something for no one.
Speaking to Eldorado, Darrah is asked why BioWare couldn't follow Larian's path in creating a deep fantasy RPG that achieved the sort of success that Baldur's Gate 3 managed.
"You can absolutely see that with Dragon Age," he says. "You can imagine a world where BioWare follows a line that leads from Dragon Age: Origins to something that looks a lot like Baldur’s Gate 3.
"But instead, it is pushed onto this road that is about trying to be simpler, to be more accessible, to be more appealing to a wider audience, and you end up, instead of going from Dragon Age: Origins towards Baldur's Gate 3, you end up on a track to Dragon Age 2 and to Inquisition. You see that path, with Dragon Age specifically, not BioWare, of trying to live in a world that a publisher doesn't really get."
The rest, as they say, is history. BioWare's closure means IPs like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have been tossed into EA's great vault for the time being. We might see them again with a different studio, though, as Darrah himself says, they could just as easily be left to rot. As we say, what could have been?
