BioWare fans have been waiting on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf for quite a while now. Dragon Age: Inquisition was released all the way back in 2014, with its Trespasser DLC wrapping up the story the following year. Many fans are hoping for the game to be released sometime this year or next, but it's entirely possible that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf might spend an entire decade in development.
While many series fans would want to get the new Dragon Age as soon as possible, there is another way BioWare could help keep the series alive. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition was a massive hit and helped to reinvigorate a series that had been dormant since the underwhelming launch of Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017. BioWare could do something similar with its Dragon Age trilogy, and it might even be a mistake not to.
A Dragon Age Legendary Edition is a Big Opportunity
Dragon Age is not a young franchise anymore, with Dragon Age: Origins launching over a decade ago in 2009. While BioWare put Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition in relatively quick succession, Dreadwolf's troubled development has dragged on for quite a while. That won't stop diehard fans from playing the new game, and BioWare has stated that new players will be able to enjoy the game without playing the first three.
However, that doesn't mean Dragon Age couldn’t still do with some franchise revitalization ahead of Dreadwolf's release. This was one of the main benefits of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, which was many players' first interaction with the franchise. Quite a few of those players will probably want to try Mass Effect 4 when it finally releases. The remaster bundle also helped to get people talking about Mass Effect again, despite the big gap since Andromeda. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is hopefully coming a lot sooner than Mass Effect 4, but that doesn't mean Dreadwolf wouldn't benefit from the spike in interest that a potential Dragon Age: Legendary Edition could generate.
Remastering Dragon Age
Of course, generating interest for Dreadwolf is not the only potential benefit. The first Dragon Age is starting to show its age, with former developer David Gaider saying DA: Origins needed a remaster. This isn't just about the graphics, though a fresh coat of paint wouldn't hurt. The first game is old enough that it's starting to have stability issues on modern PCs, and fans might appreciate quality-of-life improvements. This includes Origins online services, which rely on servers that haven't existed for several years. Origins' DLC is also quite buggy, with the Awakening expansion being notorious for the sheer number of issues that developers left unresolved.
A remastered Dragon Age trilogy would let BioWare take a second pass at things that didn't quite work out in the first three games. Dragon Age 2, for example, suffers from several issues brought about by its extremely short development cycle. This included the game's excessive reuse of the same environments, recycling the same handful of dungeon maps in slightly different configurations. Its combat can also feel excessively padded, throwing almost comically large groups of primarily weak enemies at the player in every encounter.
Meanwhile, Dragon Age: Inquisition had a significant problem of player burnout in the game's earlier stages. This was primarily an issue with the game's quest system, which tended to pepper an excessive number of objectives around the map. This was especially bad early on, with the early-game Hinterlands zone being particularly notorious.
Addressing some of these issues may or may not go beyond the scope of a simple remaster. However, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition also featured modifications to the original game's combat, so this wouldn't be unprecedented. Developers shouldn't go overboard changing things, but there's a lot that BioWare could do to make the trilogy shine and put the franchise's best foot forward ahead of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf's release.
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is in development.