EA Kills Hopes for Dragon Age: Origins Remaster — Former BioWare Developer Reveals Behind-the-Scenes Secrets on the Dragon Age and Mass Effect Series

If you’re a fan of BioWare’s classic Dragon Age franchise, hoping for a remaster or Dragon Age: Origins, then I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.

During a recent interview with MrMattyPlays on YouTube, former BioWare developer Mark Darrah revealed that the studio once had plans to remaster the first three Dragon Age games as part of a new “Champions Trilogy” bundle.

This remastered collection of Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, and Dragon Age: Inquisition would rekindle fans’ interest in the franchise and introduce newcomers who never got to play the original titles.

However, none of these ideas are coming to fruition as Mark Darrah confirms that EA (Electronic Arts) rejected them, stating that the company has “historically been kind of against remasters”.

BioWare BOMBSHELL: Veilguard's Hidden Truth & Lost "Origins" Remaster | Mark Darrah Opens Up - YouTube

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Instead, fans were treated to Dragon Age: Veilguard, a new entry in the series which was met with very mixed reviews (ranging from positive, like our review of Dragon Age: Veilguard, to extremely negative) and financial failure as it failed to meet EA’s sales expectations by half.

Dragon Age wasn’t the only franchise that suffered from having its ideas rejected by EA. Mark Darrah also confirmed that the ill-fated Mass Effect: Andromeda had plans for a DLC expansion involving the Quarian race, but they were cancelled by EA before they could take off.

Darrah also mentioned that "there was strong pressure from forces outside BioWare to release the people in Montreal working on [Mass Effect: Andromeda]."

Dragon Age Remasters would be easy money, yet EA is content with watching money burn

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Personally, I don’t know what EA is thinking, rejecting the idea of remastering the Dragon Age games.

Darrah’s statement about EA rejecting remasters points to how hypocritical EA is, as the publisher is perfectly okay with publishing the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a next-gen remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy.

Remasters of classic games have, more often than not, proven to be huge financial successes as Bethesda Softwork’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered can attest to.

It was the best-selling game of April 2025, garnered a swath of generally positive reviews, and gathered over 4 million players shortly after its shadowdrop launch on April 22, 2025.

It would be easy money for EA and BioWare to remaster the original Dragon Age trilogy with improved graphics and framerates, quality-of-life and controller improvements, and other features to reignite interest in the Dragon Age franchise, much like how the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition did for Mass Effect.

With this behind-the-scenes reveal from Mark Darrah, that’s likely not going to happen now any time soon or ever, considering how Dragon Age: Veilguard failed to meet EA’s sales goals.

Also, EA has a nasty habit of letting its franchises that aren’t Mass Effect, Battlefield, or its multitude of sports games languish in limbo. Just look at Dead Space, or games like Dante’s Inferno or Anthem, that were killed off before they could reach their full potential.

It’s sad to see how far BioWare has fallen these past couple of decades as Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect were some of the best RPGs ever produced for the Xbox 360, and that’s without mentioning its earlier classics like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, or Jade Empire.

Yet, ever since the controversial ending of Mass Effect 3, the studio has slipped, producing mixed titles that strayed further from the studio’s RPG roots and never recovered, especially with EA holding them back.

However, despite my harsh feelings towards EA, the publisher can allow its developers’ creativity to shine and properly fund their ideas when push comes to shove.

Case in point being the upcoming Xbox title/upcoming PC title, Battlefield 6 developed by a coalition of DICE, Ripple Effect Studios, Criterion Games, and Motive Studio; Ridgeline Games developers known as Battlefield Studios.

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This upcoming shooter is shaping up to be one of Battlefield’s best entries with bigger scale battles, combat, and environmental destruction than ever. It’s gaining so much traction that the Battlefield 6 Beta alone beat Call of Duty’s all-time concurrent Steam player record with over 500,000 players.

So, if given the incentive, EA is capable of letting BioWare pull off a Dragon Age remaster collection or even give the developer the funding to make a full-blown remake of Dragon Age: Origins.

Whether or not EA is willing to let BioWare do that is another story, but I would like to be surprised and proven wrong. I have fond memories of playing Dragon Age: Origins when I was younger — battling the Darkspawn to save the land of Ferelden and forging friendships with intriguing characters like Morrigan and Shale the Golem.

I would love to see the Dragon Age games remastered and see BioWare return to its classic CRPG roots.

If that doesn’t happen, then at least we have other, newer, modern studios to carry on BioWare’s spiritual torch, like Owlcat Games with their Warhammer 40,000 RPGs like Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy, and Larian Studios with Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin, to name a few.