Dragon Age: Origins was the beginning of a long-running and beloved collection at BioWare, but it surely wasn’t all the time meant to be. Former govt producer Mark Darrah, who labored for BioWare from 1998 by 2022, mentioned that the sport was conceived as a standalone story, and that you would be able to nonetheless see that intent in some unresolved story threads.
“Dragon Age: Origins initially was supposed as a standalone recreation,” Darrah instructed MrMattyPlays (through PC Gamer). “You’ll be able to see this, if you happen to play Dragon Age: Origins, realizing that it was supposed to face alone. There’s a whole lot of threads which might be solid out that form of needed to be deserted as a result of there might be werewolves everywhere in the world, there could be a civil warfare occurring underground in Orzammar.” He mentioned these components have been good for world-building however have been troublesome to take care of as an ongoing collection.
Dragon Age grew to become often called BioWare’s fantasy collection alongside the sci-fi Mass Impact. Each had ongoing tales that revered your earlier decisions, together with the flexibility to import your saves from Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 into the third recreation, Dragon Age: Inquisition. Or, you possibly can customise a set of pre-set decisions to construct the world of Thedas to your liking. However accounting for all these decisions within the third recreation meant that they may solely be so impactful whereas nonetheless telling new authentic tales, as a result of the studio hadn’t counted on needing to repay each determination from Origins into later video games. Then Origins was successful, and the corporate was inclined to iterate with sequels.
“It is just about monetary causes greater than something,” says Darrah. “And I feel that the franchise has been far more forward-looking ever since then.”
The newest recreation within the collection, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, had restricted connections to earlier video games within the collection, and did not import saves from earlier video games or in any other case take your decisions into consideration. It was principally a standalone story, moderately than one which accounted for all of your earlier adventures in Thedas. Darrah mentioned that EA has pushed for Dragon Age to grow to be extra of a mainstream collection.
“The drawback that Dragon Age has had, charitably I suppose, is that EA needs mainstream success,” Darrah mentioned, “and it is laborious, or not less than it has traditionally been laborious, for company individuals, individuals who come from the sports activities facet of the group to take a look at a recreation like Dragon Age: Origins, which is tremendous nerdy, not very enticing trying, and say ‘Oh, this can be a mainstream recreation.’ They do not see it.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was typically well-received, with an aggregate score of 82 on Metacritic and our personal GameSpot evaluation calling it a return to type. However the discourse on-line has been divisive, with some followers expressing disappointment with the shortage of narrative decisions and narrowly designed world.