Dragon Age: Origins is getting pretty old – the RPG will be 16 years old this November – but according to a former BioWare executive producer, "there were lots of pitches" surrounding a potential modern upgrade for the game, including the idea of a remake, that never came to be.
Speaking in an interview with YouTube creator MrMattyPlays (below), Darrah explained that the team once "pretty softly" pitched the idea of turning the first three Dragon Age games into a Mass Effect Legendary Edition-style trilogy, to "probably remaster" and re-release them. After noting that EA has "historically been, and I don't really know why but they've even said this publicly, kind of against remasters," the former executive producer goes on to talk about a potential Dragon Age: Origins remake.
He recalls that "one of the very earliest things for I guess Joplin," an early version of Dragon Age 4 that was later scrapped, was "let's do Frostbite tools, and let's find a mod house that seems talented and just uplift them and pay them to do a remake of Dragon Age: Origins."
Continuing, he adds: "There were lots of pitches around 'is there a way we can bring Dragon Age: Origins forward?' And depending on what you do… A remaster you kind of get Dragon Age 2 for free, a remake you don't."
Talking about remasters again, Darrah goes on to say that Mass Effect has an advantage over Dragon Age since "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 Legendary Edition."
On the other hand, "you can't really remaster Dragon Age externally. You have to probably do it internally." Perhaps this sort of ideology influenced the apparent decision not to pursue the idea of paying a team to remake Origins?
None of this is to say we'll definitely never see an Origins remake, of course, although it's rather disheartening to hear that there was apparently some hesitance around the idea before. Times change, though, and you'd think that as the RPG gets older, the argument for a remake could only get stronger, so we'll have to wait and see.
