„EA's historically been against remasters.” That's why we never got a refreshed Dragon Age trilogy

The Dragon Age trilogy is unlikely to get a refresh in the style of the legendary Mass Effect collection, due to the publisher's alleged aversion to "remasters."

Such is the opinion of Mark Darrah, former Creative Director of BioWare studio. The developer split from the Canadian team a while ago, but still keeps in touch with fans through his YouTube channel, where he shares interesting facts and thoughts about the industry.

Darrah didn't hesitate to criticize Electronic Arts, mainly in the context of the fate that befell BioWare. In May, the creator bluntly stated that in 2017, EA "swallowed" his former studio and didn't particularly care about its roots (the developer, famous for single-player RPGs, had to work on a game-as-a-service project at least twice), nor the Dragon Age series.

Champion's Trilogy

In an interview posted on the MrMattyPlays channel, Mark Darrah was asked about the possibility of refreshing the original DA trilogy. The YouTuber pointed out that a similar move was probably the brightest moment in BioWare's recent history when the studio released the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (which says a lot about the developer's condition in the last decade).

In response, Darrah stated that "historically EA was - and I don't know why, but the company stated this publicly - against remasters." The developer clearly considers this a bizarre decision, wondering why the publisher would give up "free money" (which in itself is a slight exaggeration). The dev is clearly in favor of this idea and even suggested a name: Champion's Trilogy.

However, the former Creative Director at EA believes that refreshing Dragon Age would be more challenging than Mass Effect due to the technology used. The entire ME trilogy was created based on the Unreal Engine. Meanwhile, each of the three installments of DA was made using slightly different tools.

The Eclipse Engine was used in both Origins and the sequel, but it was significantly modified for the latter, even though the studio was in a rush (so much so that the engine got a new name: Lycium). In Inquisition, the team switched to a completely different technology: Frostbite, Electronic Arts' proprietary engine (which also caused a lot of problems for BioWare at the time).

In other words, remastering the Dragon Age trilogy would be a bigger challenge, and probably more costly to implement, than refreshing Mass Effect on the same engine. Because this was possible to assign even to people outside of BioWare, which - according to Darrah - wouldn't have happened with DA.

EA: do it (and pay for it) yourselves

This doesn't mean that BioWare didn't consider creating an equivalent of the "legendary trilogy" for this series. On the contrary, according to Darrah, the developer would gladly create a team that would refresh Dragon Age, even if it meant making a remake of Origins. In the end, they would be satisfied with a remastered DA 2.

The creator emphasized that, as we've heard before, the studios under Electronic Arts manage their finances somewhat independently. So when BioWare inquired about the possibility of refreshing DA, Darrah suggests that EA might not so much oppose such an initiative as refuse to fund it. For the studio busy with other projects, it meant basically same thing.

Darrah added that EA doesn't like spending money, but it dislikes hiring new employees even more. On one hand, it's a regular expense instead of a one-time cost, and no one really looks favorably on layoffs. In other words, hiring people to make a refreshed Dragon Age trilogy wouldn't be a particularly tempting proposition for the publisher.

Veilguard and DA 2 and lack of player preparation

Of course, we can point to a less speculative reason why the DA remasters are not particularly interesting to Electronic Arts. The launch of Veilguard, which could have been a triumphant return of the series after almost 10 years, didn't go... well, not completely terrible, but you'd have to be really optimistic to call it a success, especially when the game has "mixed" reviews on Steam (68% positive).

Veilguard is not Concord, but it's also not the return of Dragon Age that was worth waiting 10 years for. Source: BioWare / Electronic Arts.

What's interesting, Darrah doesn't consider Veilguard a stain on the honor of the series. He admits - like other BioWare employees - that it is not a perfect title and has "many issues." Nonetheless, he believes that the reception of the game would have been better if the developers had been "more open" about the changes introduced in their interactions with fans.

The developer refers to the example of another installment of the series: Dragon Age 2. This title also didn't go down well at the release, and even though the sequel still gets some criticism, fans have come to appreciate it more over time. Especially in the context of information about how the work on this title was progressing.

Darrah added that one of the reasons for the poor reception of DA 2 was the "lack of proper preparation of people for the change." It seems like he thinks the same thing happened with Veilguard.

1. Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review: A New Entry That Could Bring More to the Table
2. Dragon Age: The Veilguard - game guide

Dragon Age: Inquisition

November 18, 2014

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• Overview
• Guide
• Review

• EA / Electronic Arts
• remake / remaster
• Dragon Age (franchise)
• RPG games
• Mark Darrah