Dragons are some of the most common creatures to be featured in high fantasy stories, and BioWare's Dragon Age is no exception. The game is called Dragon Age after all, though there was apparently a point in development when it wouldn't have included dragons at all. Not only that, but there was a time when BioWare didn't even know what to call Dragon Age, and it may have gone by a completely different name.
This has come to light thanks to an interview conducted by TheGamer. As explained by Dragon Age: Origins lead environmental artist Ian Stubbington, BioWare didn't know what to call the game early on in its development. And so the team used a random name generator filled with fantasy words and they wound up with Dragon Age. The only problem was that the development team had already decided that dragons weren't going to be in the game.
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The original idea behind the Dragon Age: Origins story was that dragons would have been long extinct, and that the game world in general was many years removed from high fantasy creatures and tropes. But when the team decided on naming the game Dragon Age, they shook things up a bit and incorporated dragons. This included the Darkspawn leader, the menacing Archdemon dragon.
Prior to the Dragon Age Archdemon becoming a dragon, it was envisioned as a "big, freaky, anime-villain," according to managing editor Daniel Erickson. Erickson likened the original design for the Dragon Age Archdemon as "Lovecraft does Final Fantasy." Before the team decided to turn the Archdemon into a dragon, they thought they could get by with naming the game Dragon Age and justifying it by saying that it was equivalent to the in-game Bronze Age or Iron Age, but that didn't pan out.
Had Dragon Age: Origins not featured dragons, it could've resulted in a much different series of games, at least when it comes to some of the high fantasy themes and tropes. But at the end of the day, dragons were added and the Dragon Age series became the series that fans know and love.
Looking ahead, there's plenty for Dragon Age fans to be excited about. BioWare is actively working on Dragon Age 4, which is rumored to be launching at some point in 2023. Whether or not the rumored Dragon Age 4 release date is true or not remains to be seen, but fans should be able to look forward to gameplay reveals and more in the months and years leading up to its release.
Dragon Age: Origins is out now for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
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Source: TheGamer
