Mark Darrah, an ex-BioWare developer who had a hand in either producing or directing the first three games of the Dragon Age series, has finally revealed that he agrees with what a lot of longtime fans have always thought about one particular moment in Dragon Age: Origins—the Fade kinda sucks.
“It’s not good content,” he said in a video posted to his TikTok channel.
In the video, Darrah was asked what he would add to and what he would remove from each of the Dragon Age games. For Origins, the Fade was the first thing he brought up, saying he’d like to either cut it entirely or cut it down into more digestible pieces. “It’s kinda filler,” he said.
The Fade is one of the most divisive sections in Dragon Age: Origins. During the Broken Circle quest in which the Warden and their party of misfits are sent to a tower of mages to put down a rebellion, a demon puts them to sleep, casting them into the dreamworld of the Fade. It’s a weird sequence in which you’re separated from your party and must acquire shapeshifting powers to unlock special doors to progress. The encounters can be difficult; it takes a long time to complete; once you’re in, there’s no way to back out; and you’re alone throughout most of the journey. Lots of fans enjoy it and equal numbers hate it, putting it in the pantheon of “places the Dragon Age fandom loves fighting about,” right up there with Dragon Age II‘s Deep Roads and Inquisition‘s Hinterlands.
Interestingly, what he’d put in the “add” column for Dragon Age: Origins was an Avvar origin. Avvar are burly, big-game-hunter-like folk who have a penchant for chucking goats. Darrah said he would have liked to include another human origin but it would have been too expensive. Avvar show up throughout the series, but can be seen most prominently in the Jaws Of Hakkon DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Darrah had some notes for the rest of the game series as well, and his proposed alterations to Dragon Age II would have made significant changes to the story. The final confrontation in DAII has protagonist Hawke choose a side: the mages, led by First Enchanter Orsino, or the templars, led by Knight Commander Meredith.
“No matter what you choose, Meredith is right,” Darrah says. And he’s correct. The whole crux of DAII‘s final act is whether mages are entitled to their humanity or if, because of their unpredictable power, they must be locked up for their entire lives. Even if you side with the mages, however, First Enchanter Orsino succumbs to the very blood magic Meredith has been raging about the entire game. It leaves a poor taste in the mouth, a very “both sides are equally bad” kind of result. Darrah would change that ending.
“If you side with the mages, then you don’t fight Orsino.”
Darrah’s suggestions for Inquisition, meanwhile, have more to do with the game’s pacing than anything that might impact the story. He’d cut areas to shrink the game’s size and change how the game’s power mechanic works. In Inquisition, you can only tackle story missions once you’ve met a certain power threshold. “That’s there for not-super-great reasons,” he said, indicating that drastically cutting power requirements would pace the game better.
