Former Dragon Age Producer Mark Darrah on What He'd Cut from Each Game

Mark Darrah, former executive producer of the Dragon Age series, discussed potential changes to each game in a TikTok Q&A, offering a retrospective view of design decisions that spanned nearly two decades.

For Dragon Age: Origins, Darrah would cut the Lost in Dreams quest entirely. "I would be tempted to cut or dramatically reduce the dream sequence part from the Mage Tower," he said. "It's not very good content. It's kind of filler. It was definitely done pretty fast in the end." The Fade sequence has long been controversial among players, with many installing mods to skip it. Darrah acknowledged he'd have liked to add another human origin story set in the Korcari Wilds but noted the cost would have been prohibitive. "I would like to have another human origin, but wow, what an expensive add," he said.

For Dragon Age 2, Darrah identified the forced final battle against both templars and mages regardless of player choice as a design flaw. He suggested adding more playable locations and reducing the gold available during Act Two's critical path missions. The abundance of gold undermined the intended incentive to complete side quests for expedition funds. "If you just do the crit path, the crit path gives you enough gold to go on the expedition so it kind of doesn't work," Darrah explained.

Dragon Age: Inquisition's open-world scope concerned him most. "I'd probably cut Hissing Wastes maybe or one of the big levels because it's too big," he said. He'd also dramatically reduce the Power requirement gating critical path missions. "That's there for not-super-great reasons, and I think you could cut it by 40 to 60% and the game would just be paced better."

For The Veilguard, Darrah expressed regret about the absence of the Dragon Age Keep, a feature that imported player choices from prior games. "The thing that I would add is the Keep. I told them to. It wouldn't take 'that much'. I mean, it would." When asked what he'd remove from Veilguard, he declined to offer a specific answer.