“Dragon Age in the early days had its fair share of identity crises,” Flynn says. “Was it going to be a tools-driven, modding-driven game like Neverwinter Nights? Was it going to be a big singleplayer RPG like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?”
“Dragon Age on PC shipped with the toolset, so we did do that,” Flynn says.
Dragon Age: Origins does have a quite prolific modding community that’s created new party members, tons of hairstyles and armor sets, combat mods, and more. The output for Dragon Age 2 was noticeably smaller. Then BioWare switched to DICE’s Frostbite Engine, notoriously difficult for modders to use, especially without official tools, and Dragon Age: Inquisition’s modding community was hamstrung.
“I wish we’d kept that up and stuck to that,” Flynn says of shipping Dragon Age games with modding tools. “Unfortunately we got, I’d say, a little too homogenous between Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I wish we would have kept more of a PC-centric, Neverwinter-like identity for Dragon Age.”
Flynn describes the move to Frostbite as a push to standardize tools internally across BioWare’s then-growing studios. “We had so many different engines for so long at BioWare,” Flynn says, explaining that the studio hoped to create a more common vocabulary across teams who could share what they’d built with one another’s projects.
The golden age isometric RPGs (BG1 & 2, NN, Fallout, etc) were dubbed Computer RPGs, because the idea of translating a pen & paper roleplaying game to the computer was novel. But as the 2000’s marched forward and 3D graphics became an expectation - and video game budgets ballooned - simulation and writing took a backseat to visual spectacle, action gameplay, and set-pieces. Niche CRPGs became too expensive to be worth the risk, leading to KOTOR, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, etc; which would have more mass appeal.
As Larian has been showing, the ability to pack all that story and character moments, and present it with a cinematic look and feel is becoming increasingly possible (with years of hard work). Larian and Obisidian have been whetting everyone’s appetites for the CRPG format, and now BG3 seems to be reaping the rewards.
I found a nifty little video discussing the rise, fall and rebirth of CRPGs if you want some more info: The CRPG Revival: DnD to Baldur’s Gate 3