Former BioWare exec producer says EA was pitched multiple times to remaster the first three Dragon Age games

EA have one of the worst records for re-releases of any of the major publishers/IP Holders. Whether that is a pro or a con depends on you and I really don't care.

That said... Look, I still think DA Origins is one of the greatest CRPGs ever made... gameplay wise (I could do without "What if Game of Thrones but even MORE rapey!!") and wish basically anything else had continued on that mix of isometric-ish strategy and simple conditional based AI. DA2... DA2 had a REALLY good story and atrocious gameplay and level design. And I hated Inquisition so much that I never even did the DLC about the most boring fascist ever who then became a hero in the decade or so between games.

And considering all three (?) of those are different engines? It would have been a LOT of money for a re-release. And... most of these discussions would have been happening around the time Larian/Obsidian/inXile/Owlcat were fighting for kickstarter scraps against frigging Spiders.

In a post BG3 world... it would still be a stretch. But at the time when "We should re-release thse games to build hype for DAVe"? Frigging nobody would expect anything close to a CRPG to be worth that kind of investment. Hence why the DAs have been ARPGs in the vein of Divinity 2 for the past 15 or however many years since DA2.

And I say all of this as someone who loves CRPGs and who actually backed most of the Larian/Obsidian/inXile/Owlcat kickstarters.

And just as an aside because I have seen it come up a lot.

No, Wizards of the Coast were not genius visionaries for thinking BG3 could work. By all accounts, they were looking to shop around one of their old IPs (Baldurs Gate) and lucked out in that Larian got involved. And Larian largely forced what would have been the same mobile slop WotC had been funding for years into being one of the all time great CRPGs. And that is why Swen et al want absolutely nothing to do with WotC for a sequel.

Paizo (Pathfinder) have been a bit better but it is similarly telling that Pathfinder Kingmaker cannot be updated because of how shitty the publisher to that game is and that Owlcat, after Wrath of the Righteous (arguably THE greatest CRPG ever made), mostly are focusing on one off contract work with IPs that care less about the actual RPG side of things.

It’s not even a “remaster” conversation anymore, a simple port to modern consoles to rejuvenate the game’s soul should be more than enough. Too bad we’ll probably never see that happen neither :/ .

ITT: Origins purists. Doing their purity thing. 🙏