Don’t hold out hope for an original Dragon Age remaster, says former BioWare head

Earlier this week, former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah suggested that the IP may now be dead under EA, following a series of blunders with Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Darrah has also now touched on the idea of a Dragon Age remaster, but unfortunately, the outlook there isn't promising either. 

In an interview with FRVR, Darrah explained that a Mass Effect‑style remaster trilogy for Dragon Age would be extremely difficult for EA to produce. While Mass Effect’s Legendary Edition was made possible thanks to the entire trilogy running on Unreal Engine, Dragon Age’s early titles were built on BioWare’s own in-house engine, and EA no longer employs anyone with expertise using those tools. For Dragon Age Inquisition, BioWare moved over to the Frostbite engine, a change that also presented a ton of technical challenges for the studio, which were well documented back in 2014.

Darrah went on to explain that BioWare once explored the idea of a “Champion’s Edition” collection for Origins, Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, but the technical hurdles quickly became apparent. Origins runs on the Eclipse Engine and Dragon Age 2 uses the Lycium Engine, which both evolved from BioWare’s old Aurora technology. To give you an idea of just how old the Aurora engine is, it is the engine that powered Knights of the Old Republic, which came out all the way back in 2003.

According to Darrah, producing a Dragon Age remaster trilogy would require building “a brand new team” dedicated solely to the project. He added that EA is unlikely to expand BioWare’s headcount for such an undertaking, meaning any remaster team would pull developers away from other work. Despite the challenges, Darrah still believes a modernised version of Dragon Age: Origins would sell “super well”, particularly given how much room there is to improve the game’s graphics, which weren't great even back in 2009.

KitGuru Says: While a remaster may not be possible at this stage, a remake of Dragon Age Origins could happen on another engine, such as Unreal Engine 5. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like EA is all that interested in investing in BioWare at this stage. That could change if Mass Effect 5 turns out to be a hit but for now, the studio isn't exactly in EA's good books after misses like Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. 

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