Dragon Age Almost Became A Multiplayer

Dragon age origins multiplayer — Would you have been a fan? | © BioWare

Did you know that Dragon Age: Origins almost became a multiplayer game, or at least partly? Let’s take a look.

Dragon Age: Origins, one of the best single-player RPG’s out there (though Inquisition was better, fight me)... imagine if a game as immersive and as beautifully created, with a story so well-written and characters so perfectly fleshed out, turned into something else… like a multiplayer. Ugh, no, thank you.

There's enough multiplayers out there. Even The Last of Us 2 has one.

But actually, that’s what we’ll talk about today, because thanks to an interview with Jay Turner, writer of Dragon Age: Origins, and TheGamer, we now know that Dragon Age: Origins almost had that component.

Does Dragon Age Origins Have Multiplayer?

No, Dragon Age: Origins does not have multiplayer, though it almost would have. Here is what Jay Turner had to say in his interview with TheGamer in regard to the Dragon Age: Origins multiplayer.

The big [change] was a multiplayer mode that was cut sometime in the middle of development. There was celebration in the streets at that point because multiplayer was causing all sorts of problems for single-player, and those of us focused on the story got a lot of resources and freedom back.

To give you a little more inside on why the Dragon Age: Origins multiplayer was cut, Dan Trudge, the creative director for DA: O continued to say that they “didn’t really have time” for it.

I say: Thank god they focused on the single-player aspect. Yes, the Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer wasn’t necessarily bad and shows that BioWare probably could have figured out a way to make a DA:O multiplayer work. But was the Inquisition multiplayer really necessary in the end? Did it have enough players to be sustainable? No, absolutely not. Because people don't play Dragon Age for multiplayer, and they probably wouldn't have if it were solely that. It's like Regina George once said: "Stop trying to make fetch happen," only that this is me to BioWare/EA: "Stop trying to make multiplayer in Dragon Age happen."

BioWare easily could have focused some more on the story of Inquisition instead of producing a multiplayer, and that’s exactly what they did for Dragon Age: Origins.

Thanks to everyone that made that decision, it is highly appreciated.