Former BioWare veteran explains why we wont get a Dragon Age: Origins remake

Former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah revealed in a recent interview that BioWare had pitched multiple ideas to Electronic Arts in hopes of remaking or remastering Dragon Age: Origins and its sequels, but EA unfortunately refused to provide the necessary funding to greenlight the project.

Mark Darrah revealed this information while speaking to YouTuber MrMattyPlays in a video posted on August 10, 2025. In the interview, Darrah shared that BioWare was looking forward to updating its classic RPG series, drawing comparisons to the success of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which was released back in 2021.

BioWare adopted multiple strategies, including a soft pitch to rebrand its three games– Dragon Age: Origins, which was released in 2009, 2011’s Dragon Age 2, and 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition, bundled together as “The Champion’s Trilogy.”

Darrah wanted to create a cohesive remastered collection, aiming to “shine them up and re-release them,” as the first step in a multi-step process to revive the franchise, amid mixed reception from 2024’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Darrah mentioned the exact proposals BioWare made to EA, including providing help for developing Frostbite tools and partnering with a talented mod house to handle a remake of Dragon Age: Origins.

In the interview, Darrah shared, “One of the very earliest things for Joplin was, let’s do Frostbite tools, and then let’s find a mod house that seems talented and just uplift them and 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?’”

Darrah wanted to release Dragon Age 2 for a lower price due to the shared assets and lower developmental costs. However,  going for the approach of a full remake would require a hefty amount of resources, which wouldn’t extend that benefit.

BioWare was hopeful to gather a team for the project, but financial hurdles pretty much halted the progress, as the studio manages its finances internally and couldn’t shift funds from already ongoing projects.

Darrah noted that EA has avoided remasters despite the profitability aspect. In the interview, Darrah further added, “EA’s historically been, and I don’t really know why, but they’ve even said this publicly, kind of against remasters. It’s strange for a publicly traded company to basically be against free money, but they seem to be against it. That’s part of it.”

But there’s more to the story than just this. Mass Effect’s Legendary Edition remaster was possible as the franchise was built entirely on Unreal Engine 3, allowing external studios to handle development with relative ease. Dragon Age, on the other hand, used two separate engines for Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2, before BioWare switched to Frostbite for Dragon Age: Inquisition.