Dragon Age: Origins was "intended as a standalone game" rather than the first in a series of RPGs, former dev says, meaning BioWare left "a lot of threads" it wasn't expecting to "come back to"

It turns out that Dragon Age: Origins was never intended to evolve into a whole series of RPGs, as former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah reveals it was supposed to be "a standalone game."

In an interview with YouTube creator MrMattyPlays (below), which has been highlighted by PC Gamer, Darrah explains that this initial idea also meant that "a lot of threads" were placed in the 2009 game which ended up being a challenge for the devs to deal with later down the line when the series expanded.

"Dragon Age: Origins originally was intended as a standalone game," Darrah begins. "You can see this, if you play Dragon Age: Origins, knowing that it was intended to stand alone… There's a lot of threads that are cast out that kind of had to be abandoned because there could be werewolves all over the world. There might be a civil war happening underground in Orzammar."

Furthermore, he adds: "There's a bunch of stuff that was great to put out in a game that you never had to come back to, but then when we did come back to it, you had to sort of recover from that."

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But why did the RPG end up spinning out into a whole series? The answer may not surprise you – money. "It's pretty much financial reasons more than anything," explains Darrah, before adding: "And I think that the franchise has been much more forward-looking ever since then."

Well, at least knowing that we weren't robbed of a whole series might offer some consolation to Dragon Age fans, who from the same interview have been given the crushing news that the idea of a remastered Dragon Age trilogy was apparently turned down, along with a Dragon Age: Origins remake. You win some, you lose some.

Even after EA let Dragon Age: The Veilguard out of multiplayer hell, BioWare reportedly still had to rush to target "as wide a market as possible," which feels like the opposite approach of great RPGs.