Former BioWare Executive Producer Says EA Turned Down Remasters of Original Dragon Age Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 August 2025 / 3,863 Views
Mark Darrah, a former BioWare executive producer, in an interview with MrMattyPlays on YouTube revealed Electronic Arts wasn't a fan of remastering the first three Dragon Age games while he worked at BioWare.
"EA’s historically been – and I don’t really know why, but they’ve even said this publicly – they’re kind of against remasters," said Darrah (via VideoGamesChronicle). "It’s strange for a publicly traded company to basically seem to be against free money, but they seem to be against it. But that’s just part of it.
"The other problem is that Dragon Age is just harder than Mass Effect to do, and to some degree unknowably harder. Maybe only a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder."
One suggestion given was "let’s do Frostbite tools and let’s find a mod house that seems talented and just pay them to do a remake of Dragon Age Origins."
"There were lots of pitches around ‘is there a way we can bring Dragon Age: Origins forward?’ And depending on what you do, like, [with] a remaster you kind of get Dragon Age 2 for free. [With] a remake you don’t."
One issue Darrah admits is the use of different engine for the Dragon Age series, while for Mass Effect they all used Unreal Engine.
"One of the advantages that Mass Effect has for a remaster over Dragon Age… it’s all Unreal instead of two different engines," he stated. "But actually, just the fact that it’s Unreal means that you can remaster Mass Effect essentially for money.
"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 [Mass Effect] Legendary Edition. There were a bunch of people at BioWare working on it, but it was – I don’t remember how many, but it was not a ton."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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EA is smegma
I wish this game got a remake, fuck EA
EA sucks donkey balls, so yeah.
Because live service games made them over 5 Billion dollars last year. They look at projections for something like Dragon Age and don't even see why they would bother.
Live service games are a fucking disease.
I guess the only thing we can count on is for PC modding to give us a remaster... Which is sad to see as it's one of my favorite games of all time.
Apparently they engine they used for DA:O is no longer in use by anyone at Bioware, as in they don't know how to use it anymore, so any "remaster" would just be a remake which is obviously a lot more work.
EA must actually stand for Egotistical Assholes.
