While Electronic Arts (EA) seems to have hit a home run with the re-release of the Mass Effect trilogy, Dragon Age fans might be wondering why the franchise hasn’t seen the same treatment.
As it turns out, it’s not BioWare’s lack of trying, as one former BioWare developer has divulged.
EA doesn’t want to do it, and it seems it’s partly due to technical reasons.
Dragon Age Trilogy Legendary Edition Not Happening
Former BioWare veteran Mark Darrah, who worked as executive producer on the first three Dragon Age games, talked about the franchise in a new video chat with MrMattyPlays.
Darrah shared that the Mass Effect trilogy remaster was “the first time in a while there was positivity and optimism around BioWareand their games.” With this in mind, Darrah assumed Dragon Age would be next, stating, “I wondered if Dragon Age Legendary Edition would be the next obvious step.”
So why didn’t this happen for the Dragon Age franchise?
Darrah explains it’s because parent company EA isn’t really keen on remasters for some reason (via PCGamesN). “EA’s historically been, and I don’t really know why but they’ve even said this publicly, kind of against remasters,” Darrah shares. Continuing, Darrah notes, “It’s strange for a publicly traded company to basically be against free money, but they seem to be against it. That’s part of it. The other problem is that Dragon Age is harder than Mass Effect to do; to some degree unknowably harder. Maybe only a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder.”
It’s also worth noting that the Mass Effect trilogy was built on Unreal Engine, compared to Dragon Age, which used two separate engines, with Inquisition built using EA’s internal Frostbite game engine. Darrah explains a game running on Unreal meant it was easier to remaster.
“The fact it’s Unreal means that you can remaster Mass Effect essentially for money,” Darrah explains. “If you’re willing to spend money on it, you can go to an external house and they can do most of the work, which is sort of what happened with Legendary Edition. There were a bunch of people at Bioware working on it, I don’t remember how many, but it was not a ton.”
Given the the latest Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, bombed horribly at retail — to the point that it got added as a free PlayStation Plus game not even six months later — paints a grim picture for the franchise’s future.
Perhaps EA will reconsider down the line and release a remaster trilogy? But given how some at EA blame The Veilguard’s poor sales performance is due to it not being a live service game, kind of shows the publisher doesn’t know what to do with the franchise.
While the Dragon Age franchise might be dormant right now, the Mass Effect series is gearing up for a resurrection. Details about it are scarce, but it’s said to feature a mature tone and photorealistic graphics, which is a huge contrast to The Veilguard.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
- Released
-
October 31, 2024
- ESRB
-
M For Mature 17+ // Blood, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence
- Publisher(s)
-
Electronic Arts
- Engine
-
Frostbite
