Dragon Age as a series has a strange legacy. While it has an incredibly devoted audience, with both them and critics alike showering the original game, Dragon Age: Origins, with praise, that’s not made for a game series that’s always been so fortunate.
The sequel, Dragon Age 2, has its fans, but was famously affected by its short 16 month development time. While the next sequel, Inquisition, won game of the year in 2014, it didn’t make a lasting impression on the culture like other winners.
Finally, 2024’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard received a more divisive response and lukewarm sales caused the team to be disbanded by EA, seemingly ending the franchise.
Why the original games haven’t been remastered
Still, there are regular calls for the original games to be remastered, especially as Origins and Dragon Age 2 aren’t available on many modern consoles. However, despite Bioware’s other landmark RPG series Mass Effect receiving a remastered collection, EA hasn’t extended this effort to Dragon Age.
Some have pointed to the difficulty of the development tools involved as an issue here, with none of the modern team at Bioware apparently familiar with the tech behind the 2009 original. However, recently Mark Darrah, executive producer on the first three games, revealed that he pitched a Champions Trilogy remaster to EA, but that it was turned down.
Why doesn’t EA remaster the earlier games?
Mark Darrah, in that same conversation, pointed to how The Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed on expectations compared to Mass Effect as a probable reason for EA’s decision. He also pointed out that EA has a general aversion to remasters, which made pitching this collection an uphill battle to begin with. The difficulty surrounding the tools used to make and remaster the games is compounded by the fact that each of the original three Dragon Age games used different engines, making it a potentially costly and difficult project.
The status of modern BioWare
After the disappointing response to Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the dismantling of the team behind it, many people have been curious where that leaves the next Mass Effect game and BioWare in general. Of course, it’s difficult to say for now, but Mark Darrah did suggest that the developers who are now working on Mass Effect should use The Veilguard as a ‘scapegoat’ when justifying their creative decisions to EA – this might come as many believe the final product came to be as it was due to the project being pulled in many different directions throughout its ten year development.
