Dragon Age's former producer had envisioned a 'Champions Edition' equivalent to Mass Effect's Legendary Edition, but he doesn't think it will happen anymore: 'There are basically no companies that could help you'

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Things haven't looked great for Dragon Age since its latest entry, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was released to a mixed critical and muted commercial response back in 2024. EA subsequently laid off dozens of BioWare's staff, and numerous former developers have recently said they believe the series is probably dead.

Yet, while there's little hope of a new Dragon Age game anytime soon (if ever), might there be a chance EA revisits the old Dragon Age games? The original Mass Effect trilogy got a spruced-up rerelease in its Legendary Edition back in 2021, despite the fact that EA hasn't exactly been desperate to push out new games in that series either (though a new one is apparently in the works, with the devs being too busy making it to talk about it). Hence, could EA test players' appetite for Dragon Age with a similar remaster for Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition?

Sadly, the chances of this happening are slim too, at least according to former Dragon Age producer Mark Darrah. In the same interview where he declared Dragon Age as probably dead, Darrah also pointed out that, while he had once envisioned a "Champion's Edition" equivalent to the Legendary Edition, EA is now unlikely to exhume the old games for a remaster due to the practical difficulties of doing so.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Official Launch Trailer - YouTube

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Basically, it all comes down to technology. Where all three Mass Effect games ran on Unreal Engine, which is a widely used technology, the three Dragon Age games were all built on different engines. Dragon Age used BioWare's Eclipse engine—an upgraded version of the Aurora Engine (which was also used by CD Projekt for The Witcher), Dragon Age 2 used the further enhanced Lycium Engine, while Dragon Age: Inquisition ran on DICE's Frostbite tech.

"There's basically no one at BioWare any more that understands the Aurora Engine," Darrah told FRVR. "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."

On top of this, Darrah reckons that such a remaster effort would require a new team, but claims 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."

That said, Darrah does think that a remaster of the original Dragon Age would sell well, mainly due to how it's a bit crusty around the edges today. "Dragon Age: Origins wasn't the most attractive game. There's a lot you could do there to make it a lot better looking."

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Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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