Former BioWare producer Mark Darrah has said a remaster of the original Dragon Age trilogy — Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisition — is unlikely to happen, despite believing such a project would sell well. Speaking to FRVR, Darrah said he once pushed for a 'Champion's Edition' or 'Champion's Trilogy' that would package the three games together, similar to how Mass Effect Legendary Edition bundled BioWare's sci-fi trilogy in 2021.
The core problem, according to Darrah, is technology. Mass Effect's three games were all built on Unreal Engine, a widely licensed and understood engine across the industry, which made remastering them comparatively straightforward. Dragon Age, by contrast, used different proprietary engines for each game: Origins ran on the Eclipse Engine (an upgraded version of the Aurora Engine originally built for Neverwinter Nights), Dragon Age 2 used another Aurora variant called the Lycium Engine, and Inquisition was built on EA's Frostbite Engine, originally designed for Battlefield shooters and reportedly lacking features BioWare needed for role-playing game development.
Darrah said this fragmented technical history makes a unified remaster far harder than it was for Mass Effect. 'There is basically no one at BioWare anymore that understands the Aurora Engine,' he said, adding that no outside companies understand it either, unlike with Unreal Engine, where outside support could be found. Aurora also underpinned other notable RPGs, including the original Witcher and the Knights of the Old Republic games.
Even setting aside the engine issue, Darrah said reviving the games would require assembling a brand-new team within BioWare to rebuild expertise in the old tech, since EA does not favor maintaining extra staff outside a project's main focus. He noted that in-progress upload systems already exist to carry character choices from Origins into Dragon Age 2, and from there into Inquisition via an external app, but described the whole process as cumbersome.
The idea comes at a difficult time for the franchise. Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the most recent entry, underperformed commercially after a long and troubled development, and BioWare has since undergone layoffs, with remaining staff reportedly focused on the next Mass Effect game instead. Despite the hurdles, Darrah maintains that a trilogy remaster could sell 'super well,' noting that Dragon Age: Origins in particular could look far better with modern updates, arguing it wasn't the most visually appealing game even at the time of its original release.