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EA Turned Down Pitch for Dragon Age Trilogy Remaster, Says Former BioWare Producer

EA Turned Down Pitch for Dragon Age Trilogy Remaster, Says Former BioWare Producer

BioWare wanted to rerelease Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition as a remastered trilogy.

Written by Manas Mitul | Updated: 12 August 2025 12:35 IST

EA Turned Down Pitch for Dragon Age Trilogy Remaster, Says Former BioWare Producer

Photo Credit: EA

Dragon Age: Inquisition released in 2014

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Highlights

Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to live up to EA's sales expectations
BioWare was hit with layoffs following Dragon Age: The Veilguard's launch
The studio is currently working on the next Mass Effect game

BioWare reportedly unsuccessfully pitched remastering the first three Dragon Age games to EA. The studio wanted to remaster Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition and release it as a trilogy, much like Mass Effect Legendary Edition, according to a former BioWare executive who worked on the series. EA, however, turned the developer down.

BioWare Pitched Dragon Age Remastered Trilogy

In a recent interview with MrMattyPlays, a YouTube channel known for its RPG coverage, former Dragon Age series producer Mark Darrah said BioWare had soft pitched the idea to remaster the first three Dragon Age games as part of single “Champions Trilogy” to EA.

Darrah shared his thoughts on BioWare's two biggest franchises, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and talked about the possible future of the Dragon Age series following the disappointing release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard last year.

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“I honestly think they should do — I don't think they will —but I think they should do a remaster of the first three (Dragon Age games),” Darrah said in response to a question about the series' future.

“One of the things we pitched at one point — pretty softly, so ‘pitch' is a massive overstatement — was to kind of retroactively rebrand the first three games as if they were a trilogy and call it the ‘Champions Trilogy',” he said.

That remastered trilogy, however, was turned down by EA, according to Darrah. He also said that remastering older Dragon Age games was a much harder task than remastering Mass Effect games.

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“EA's historically been — and I don't really know why, but they've even said this publicly — they're kind of against remasters,” Darrah said. “I don't really know why. It's strange for a publicly traded company to basically seem to be against free money, but they seem to be against it. But that's just part of it.

“The other problem is that Dragon Age is just harder than Mass Effect to do, and to some degree unknowably harder. Maybe only a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder,” Darrah explained.

The same sentiment was echoed by Dragon Age: The Veilguard creative director John Epler around the time of the game's release in 2024. Epler talked about the possibility of remastering the first three Dragon Age games for modern platforms, much like Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and said it would be a challenging task.

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“I think I'm one of about maybe 20 people left at BioWare who's actually used Eclipse,” Epler said last year. “It's something that's not going to be as easy as Mass Effect, but we do love the original games. Never say never, I guess that's what it comes down to.”

The first two Dragon Age games utilised BioWare's custom Eclipse engine, while the Mass Effect trilogy was developed using the more ubiquitous Unreal Engine, which made the remastering process for Mass Effect Legendary Edition a relatively smoother process.

BioWare released Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the first new game in the series in a decade, in October last year, but the RPG failed to live up to EA's sales expectations. Right after the game's release BioWare confirmed it had no plans to release post-launch content for Dragon Age: The Veilguard and was instead shifting its focus on the next Mass Effect title.

Earlier this year, it was reported that BioWare faced widespread cuts following the underwhelming release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. EA reportedly laid off over 20 staffers and permanently moved several others to different in-house teams.

Last month, BioWare announced it was shutting down Anthem years after its underwhelming launch. The game will be taken offline on January 12, 2026, after which it will no longer be playable.

Dragon Age: Origins

KEY SPECS
NEWS

Genre RPG

Platform PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, PC: Windows, PC: macOS

Modes Single-player

Series Dragon Age

PEGI Rating 18+

EA Turned Down Pitch for Dragon Age Trilogy Remaster, Says Former BioWare Producer

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Dragon Age II

KEY SPECS
NEWS

Genre RPG

Platform PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, PC: Windows, PC: macOS

Modes Single-player

Series Dragon Age

PEGI Rating 18+

EA Turned Down Pitch for Dragon Age Trilogy Remaster, Says Former BioWare Producer

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Dragon Age: Inquisition

KEY SPECS
NEWS

Genre RPG

Platform PlayStation 3 (PS3), PlayStation 4 (PS4), Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC: Windows

Modes Single-player, Multiplayer

Series Dragon Age

PEGI Rating 18+

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard

KEY SPECS
NEWS

Genre RPG

Platform PlayStation 5 (PS5), Xbox Series S/X, PC: Windows

Modes Single-player

Series Dragon Age

PEGI Rating 18+

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Further reading: Dragon Age, BioWare, EA, Electronic Arts, Mass Effect

Manas Mitul

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In his time as a journalist, Manas Mitul has written on a wide spectrum of beats including politics, culture and sports. He enjoys reading, walking around in museums and rewatching films. Talk to Manas about football and tennis, but maybe don’t bring up his video game backlog. More