Dragon Age's Creative Director Would Love to Make Collection Similar to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. Problems Are Two: Technology and Changes at Bioware
How about remasters of the first three installments of the Dragon Age series? Unfortunately, the chance of their creation isn't high. The problem is the engine on which Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 runs.
Last week, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was released on the market. The game raised a lot of doubts before its release, but it ended up receiving "mostly positive" reviews on Steam and ranking high on the list of Electronic Arts' most popular paid games on Valve's platform. Time will tell whether the results, combined with console sales, will ultimately be satisfactory for the publisher. As a result, some players started dreaming about remasters of the previous three installments. Unfortunately, the chances of their creation are slim.
John Epler, Creative Director of The Veilguard, revealed this news in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. He stated that he would like the Dragon Age trilogy to be remastered in the style of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, but technological issues stand in the way.
- The problem lies specifically in the first two parts; Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2. They were built on the proprietary Eclipse engine (in the case of DA2 it was an improved version called Lycium Engine). For Dragon Age: Inquisition, the studio switched to Frostbite, and this technology was also used to develop Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
- Dragon Age 2 was released in 2011. This means that for 13 years, no one at BioWare has worked on the Eclipse engine. According to John Epler, most of the veterans familiar with this technology have already left the studio, and currently, there may be only 20 people on the team who have had any experience with the Eclipse Engine in their careers.
This means that developing remasters of Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 would be a significantly more challenging task compared to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. This is because all installments in the ME series were created on the Unreal Engine 3, which was once the most popular technology used to develop games. As a result, many industry professionals are highly knowledgeable about it.
John Epler emphasizes, however, that this doesn't mean that remasters of Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 will never come to fruition. It just doesn't look like it will happen at the moment.
Remastering games on old engines is feasible. For instance, BioWare has successfully remastered games such as Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition, and Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. However, this process is more challenging and in consequence more expensive. Everything will probably depend on the sales results of Dragon Age: The Veilguard - if they turn out to be sufficient, sooner or later Electronic Arts will consider refreshing the older installments of the series.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was released on PC, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5.
