In a recent interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays, former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah revealed that Electronic Arts repeatedly turned down proposals to remake or remaster Dragon Age: Origins – and potentially its sequels, Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Darrah, who worked on the first three games and currently consults on the upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard, said the idea was to polish up all three titles, rebrand them as a cohesive ‘Champions Trilogy,’ and reintroduce them to both long-time fans and new players.
According to Darrah, the pitch envisioned highlighting each protagonist – the Hero of Ferelden, the Champion of Kirkwall, and the Inquisitor – in a unified package that could serve as a fresh starting point before moving forward with new entries. He noted that despite the success of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, EA has historically been reluctant to greenlight remasters. Unlike Mass Effect, which shared a common Unreal Engine foundation, the Dragon Age games each run on different, more complex proprietary engines, making the process more challenging and costly.
Darrah admitted that one early internal idea, codenamed ‘Joplin,’ even involved hiring an experienced modding team to rebuild Origins in Frostbite. Yet, every variation of the proposal met with resistance from EA, a company Darrah described as oddly dismissive of “free money” from remastered releases. While he remains unsure about the franchise’s future direction, Darrah believes a well-crafted remaster could rekindle interest in the series – if EA were willing to take the plunge.