If you took a survey of every Dragon Age: Origins player ever, I’d imagine most of them wouldn’t have the most positive impression of the game’s Fade sequence, which whisks you off to a bizarre alternate dimension separated from the rest of your party. Naturally, there will always be Fade apologists who argue the tonal and mechanical shift keeps things fresh, but there seems to be a general consensus that it wasn’t the best use of resources, and now one of the most foremost authorities on the game itself is solidifying that notion.
“It’s not very good content,” says Dragon Age: Origins co-director Mark Darrah in a new video posted to his TikTok account (via Kotaku). In the video, Darrah is responding to a commenter who asks what features he would remove from each Dragon Age game if he had the chance, and he goes straight to the Fade as an example of a sequence that didn’t “age super well.”
“I think I would be tempted to either cut or dramatically reduce the dream sequence part from the Mage Tower,” says Darrah. “It’s not very good content. It’s kind of filler. It was definitely done pretty fast in the end.”
That settles it. If you’ve spent the last 17 years breathlessly defending BioWare’s bold experimentation in the Fade, you now have one of Dragon Age: Origins’ directors working against you, essentially admitting the whole sequence was a rushed effort to pad out the game’s runtime – even though it would still be an absolutely massive RPG without it.