Dragon Age Legends

Did You Know?

• Dragon Age Legends: Remix 01 was co-developed by Evan Miller, creator of Hunted Forever.
• Ravi became ruler of Kaiten after vanquishing his demon-possessed uncle Khedra 13 years before the events of Legends.

Development and release

Legends was developed as a Flash game by a team from EA2D, later reformed as BioWare San Francisco, led by designers Soren Johnson and Ethan Levy. It was announced in November 2010 for a February 2011 release and promoted as companion gaming, a social glue for friends to quest, loot, share rewards, and grow a kingdom, with a major incentive being the opportunity to unlock additional content in Dragon Age II. Beta testing opened via registration on the official website shortly after the announcement, and a closed beta on Facebook began on February 1, 2011.

Marketing included key art, press releases, and blog posts. EA offered the BioWare Signature pack as a tie-in for players who bought and logged into Dragon Age II by March 15, 2011, granting Hawke as a companion along with other items and bonuses. The game went live on Facebook on March 16, 2011, and a Google+ port followed in August 2011 with no functional differences; items did not need to be unlocked twice as both versions were linked to the player's EA account.

A modified version, Dragon Age Legends: Remix 01, was released in May 2011 on IGN, co-developed by Levy and Evan Miller using the original assets. Levy cited Bayonetta as an inspiration and described it as fast, fluid fun; it followed another aspect of Viscount Ravi's backstory. In May 2012, EA announced servers would shut down on June 18, 2012, with the in-game store closing a month earlier due to insufficient revenue. A standalone version running on Adobe Air, with social features and microtransactions removed, was released as a free download after server closure; players could download their pre-existing characters as a Saved Game and continue offline.

Reception

Kotaku recommended Legends as one of the best Facebook games before its removal from the platform on June 21, 2012. Stephen Totilo of Kotaku enjoyed playing it; he initially suspected it was merely a marketing ploy due to the nature of Facebook games relying on chain letters and word of mouth, but found the overall gameplay pleasant and was impressed by the amount of options. He praised the combat as swift and fun and felt the social elements never became obnoxious, though he considered the enemy AI weak.

Nicole Tanner of IGN called it one of the best games on Facebook at release. Conversely, Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun was highly critical, calling it a modern reworking of old coin-op side-scrolling beat 'em ups that shamelessly profited from Dragon Age fans. He noted that the alternative to spending real money was unnecessarily long wait times and opined that the game was essentially an advertisement one had to pay to keep watching, questioning whether compulsion equated to legitimate entertainment.

While supportive of good social or freemium games, Meer was unimpressed by Legends' features, calling it a slovenly, cheating, cynical wolf in RPG's clothing. In October 2011, Levy disclosed at GDC Online that Legends received up to 100,000 Facebook likes and its trailer over 100,000 views, but conceded that attention from journalists and social media was overly optimistic. He noted the game failed to retain most of its huge early audience and identified the premature launch, due to strict adherence to the marketed release date, as the main issue.