Former Dragon Age exec Mark Darrah has revealed what he’d change about BioWare’s beloved fantasy series, after spending more than 20 years at the studio.
Darrah was a director or executive producer on all of the Dragon Age series, though departed the company back in 2021, years before the final version of Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched. He returned as a consultant on the game in 2023, in time for its final stretch of development.
Now, looking back on the franchise’s four main games via a Q&A posted on TikTok, Darrah has reflected on what he would recommend ditching or adding to each title in an ideal world, if he were making the games all over again.
“I would be tempted to cut or dramatically reduce the dream sequence content in the Mage Tower,” Darrah began, discussing Dragon Age: Origins’ rather lengthy sojourn into the Fade that he admitted felt like “filler.” Continuing, he added: “It’s not great content, and it was definitely done pretty fast in the end.”
Conversely, Darrah said he’d like to add in some extra character options, with another human origin, and potentially the Avvar.
For Dragon Age 2, Darrah said he’d address the game’s ending, where players are forced to pick a side between the templars and the mages. Whichever you pick, however, things do not go well for the mage’s Orsino, while the templar’s leader Meredith is proven correct — and the whole thing feels less like a proper choice at all.
“[I’d change it so] if you side with the mages that you don’t fight Orsino,” Darrah decided. “Because essentially it makes Meredith right. My feeling is Dragon Age 2 ends with, no what you choose, Meredith is right because the mages lose control.”
Moving onto Dragon Age: Inquisition, and there’s no surprises here that Darrah would change the game’s “crit path” — its route through the core, critical story missions — to flow faster, with less time spent in the dreaded Hinterlands. Darrah also said he’d likely excise one of the game’s zones entirely, as Inquisition was unnecessarily lengthy.
“I’d probably cut Hissing Wastes maybe, or one of the big levels,” Darrah mused. “It’s too big. And the other thing I would change is to dramatically reduce the amount of power you need to go on crit path missions. That’s there for not super great reasons, and I think you could cut it by 40-60% and the game would just be paced better.
“Also, to make sure you ship with the thing we added later which tells you to leave the first level and actually go into the game.” Here, most players would likely agree.
Finally, Darrah addressed Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and had a succinct answer for what else he would include. “I would add the Keep,” he said, referring to BioWare’s previous cloud-based repository for players’ choices throughout the franchise so far. “I told them to. It wouldn’t take… that much. I mean, it would,” he admitted. As for what he’d remove from Veilguard, Darrah said he did not have an answer.
What’s next for Dragon Age? Very little, it seems. BioWare is now a single-project studio and entirely focused on building the next Mass Effect game, which is still years away.