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“Dragon Age: Origins wasn’t the most attractive game”: BioWare’s old series producer still thinks a DA remaster trilogy is worth it, but the knowhow isn’t there
Former Dragon Age series producer Mark Darrah says he believes a remastered trilogy of the original Dragon Age games would sell well, but doubts BioWare or EA will ever make one because almost nobody still understands the proprietary engines the older titles were built on. Speaking on a podcast, he explained that Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 used variants of BioWare's ageing Aurora/Eclipse and Lycium engines, while Dragon Age: Inquisition switched to EA's Frostbite engine, making it far harder to unify the three games than it was for the Unreal Engine-based Mass Effect trilogy remaster.
Darrah, who left BioWare in 2020 and briefly returned as a consultant in 2023, previously floated a "Champion's Trilogy" concept involving new Frostbite tools and an external studio remaking Origins. He told FRVR that virtually no one inside or outside BioWare now understands the Aurora Engine, meaning a new team would need to be built from scratch to attempt it. The prospects look slim regardless, given EA's ongoing cost-cutting, recent BioWare layoffs following Dragon Age: The Veilguard's underwhelming reception, and its pending acquisition by a Saudi-led investment consortium, which will leave the company burdened with significant debt.
In short
- Ex-BioWare producer Mark Darrah doubts a Dragon Age remaster trilogy will happen
- Old games use obscure, poorly understood proprietary engines, unlike Mass Effect's Unreal
- EA's cost-cutting and pending Saudi-led acquisition make it even less likely
Explained simply
Dragon Age is a popular series of fantasy role-playing video games made by BioWare, a studio owned by EA Games. The series has three main instalments released between 2009 and 2014, and there has been discussion about modernising them.
A remaster is an updated version of an older title, rebuilt for modern gaming systems with improved graphics and performance. Game studios release remasters to attract longtime fans and introduce popular titles to new audiences.
The obstacle to creating such remasters lies in the underlying software used to build the games, known as game engines. The first two games were built using outdated technology that few developers still understand, whilst the third used something entirely different, making consistent updating extremely difficult.