Summary
- Mark Darrah says that EA wanted Dragon Age to be a billion-dollar franchise.
- To make this happen, he drafted a plan to launch three Dragon Age games in quick succession.
- This fell apart when Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem got in the way, and Dragon Age 4 was reimagined as a live service.
Former executive producer at BioWare, Mark Darrah, has uploaded a lengthy video, detailing his more than two decades at the studio. Here, he explains that EA wanted Dragon Age to be a “billion-dollar” franchise, and he was tasked with drafting a plan to make that happen.
Darrah admits that even in theory, he was not able to imagine the series pulling in that much revenue. However, he does say that his plans bought the franchise “closer than you would think”, and involved getting new Dragon Age games out of the door quickly.
We Could Have Gotten Three New Dragon Age Games Back To Back
Mark Darrah planned three Dragon Age games to expand the franchise
In the video, Darrah explains that this all happened around 2016. At this time, BioWare was working on a version of Dragon Age 4, codenamed Joplin.
“Periodically, EA pushes for franchises to be bigger. They want billion-dollar franchises, or they only want to make the six best games, or the twelve best games,” he says. “So, in 2016, I built a plan to ship Dragon Ages. The idea was to make Joplin on a relatively regular timeline. At this point in time, I believe Anthem is still supposed to ship in 2018, so probably, Joplin was supposed to ship in 2019, maybe it was 2020. But the idea was: ship Joplin, and then we would do two fast followed sequels, each taking 18 months.
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“Did it get Dragon Age to be a billion-dollar franchise? It required a little bit of creative accounting to make that work, but it got it closer than you would think,” he continues. “The idea was to have minimal DLC, maybe one significantly sized piece of DLC or even an expansion pack, and then quickly move on to the sequel. “
Joplin’s development was then held up by devs being pulled away to help on Mass Effect: Andromeda. They are credited as the “Dragon Age Finaling Team”, or DAFT. Darrah says this acronym was intentional.
However, this wasn’t meant to be. After Andromeda wrapped, resources were swallowed up by Anthem. then, it was decided that Dragon Age 4 should be a live service, so Joplin was swapped for a new version of the game, codenamed Morrison. This too would eventually be canned, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard was built from its ashes.
Now, it seems we couldn’t be further from Darrah’s vision for the franchise. After The Veilguard failed to meet EA’s sales targets, every writer who has ever worked on the series has either left, been moved to another studio, or laid off.
- Released
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November 3, 2009
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content
- Genres
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