Former BioWare developer and Dragon Age: Origins‘ lead environmental artist, Ian Stubbington, has revealed to TheGamer that not only did Dragon Age originally not feature any dragons, the game’s title came from a random name generator.
“Early on, Dragon Age didn’t have a name,” Stubbington told TheGamer’s Cian Maher. “There were some ideas but nothing concrete, so it was decided that one of the coders would make a quick random name generator. They knocked something together and added a whole bunch of fantasy words to the list. It was fired up and produced some names and the one that got the final vote by the team at the time was of course ‘Dragon Age.'”
It was at that point that lead writer David Gaider figured that Dragon Age should actually have dragons somewhere in the story.
“Yes, originally Dragon Age was a fantasy world that was kind of… past its ‘high fantasy’ stage,” Gaider added. “Magic was on the decline and dragons had been hunted to extinction. The big story in Dragon Age: Origins was not only that the darkspawn were returning but that this was the unexpected return of a fantastical past the setting had thought it’d left behind.”
Origins writer Jay Turner revealed that “Dragon Age” sounded “pretty generic” but the team eventually got used to the title.
Dragon Age 4 is currently in development. Reports suggest that it’s on track for release in 2023. BioWare has said that it’s hard at work on the game and will reveal more information when it’s ready.
[Source: TheGamer]
