Dragon Age creator Mark Darrah doesn’t believe a remaster trilogy will happen for the iconic fantasy RPG series. While Mass Effect received a brilliant Legendary Edition remaster trilogy for modern platforms, it seems unlikely the same treatment will even be possible for BioWare’s other franchise.
After explaining why Dragon Age probably won’t return as a franchise under the current EA management, Darrah explained why the series like won’t get a remaster trilogy either. While Mass Effect received an extensive Legendary Edition remaster trilogy, that would likely be hard or expensive for BioWare’s fantasy series.
Darrah explained that, when they were still at BioWare, they wanted to do a “Champion’s Edition” of the first three games: Origins, 2, and Inquisition. However, there are a number of issues: one, they’re all very different games; two, they’re not as easy to work with as Mass Effect is.
“I think what you want is a Champion’s Edition. That was always my plan was like, we’re going to do a champion’s trilogy. We’re going to kind of retroactively kind of like turn this into like, these are three games with three different important figures. And we’re going to group them in, collect them together into, we’re going to retroactively turn it into a trilogy,” they said on an upcoming episode of our FRVR Podcast.
Unlike Mass Effect, in which the entire trilogy ran on versions of Unreal Engine, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 ran on an expanded version of the Aurora Engine. While Unreal Engine is an industry standard that’s easy to work with, no studio outside of BioWare has ever used the Aurora Engine or its evolved counterparts.
“There is basically no one at BioWare anymore that understands the Aurora Engine,” Darrah told us. “There’s basically no one outside of BioWare anymore that understands the Aurora engine. So unlike Mass Effect, which is Unreal… there are basically no companies that could help you.”
Unfortunately, bringing Dragon Age: Origins and its successor back to modern platforms with any kind of new rendering tech would be a massive undertaking. Origins runs on the Eclipse Engine, an upgraded form of Aurora, which was then replaced with the Lycium Engine for Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age: Inquisition runs on a form of Frostbite, which is easier to work with, but that game already looks quite fetching as it is.
Darrah posits that a remaster trilogy would require building “a brand new team” but adds that “EA doesn’t like having employees so, if you’re going to do that, you’re going to do that within the umbrella of BioWare, which means those people are not working on something else”. Nevertheless, especially after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, Darrah believes a remaster of Dragon Age: Origins would sell really well.
“Could a Dragon Age remaster sell really well? Yeah. I think it sells super well because even at the time, Dragon Age Origins wasn’t the most attractive game. There’s a lot you could do there to make it, make it a lot better looking.”
Unfortunately, EA does have a long-standing issue with Dragon Age. Inquisition, for example, is BioWare’s best-selling game of all time, but pushing the series as a brand has been harder for the gaming giant than something like Mass Effect, which has clearly identifiable, casual-friendly branding.
