I am actually really excited for Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film, I think this may be the best chance there is for getting an actually good adaptation, mostly thanks to the fact that Cregger seems like a super fan who actually understands what makes the games so charming. In other words: he knows ball.

"I want fans of the games to just know that I am a giant fan of the games, I am making this movie to celebrate the games—I haven't seen the other movies," Zach Creggers says during an interview with ScreenRant. "What I'm not doing in this is that I'm not going to cannibalise the characters and the stories that the games already do so well, because I'm not going to be able to improve on Leon. I feel like Leon exists in the games and anyone I cast and any haircut I give him or any line of dialogue I make him say it's just not going to be Leon because Leon exists.

"I feel like what I'd rather do is tell an original story that lives in the world of the games, that obeys the rules of the games largely, but feels like more of the experience you get when you're playing the games. That's leaning into the survival horror aspect of it—it's not survival action, it's survival horror.

As someone who has indeed watched the WS Anderson Resident Evil films this is actually a really good explanation of what the dividing line between a good and a bad resi film is. A film which embodies the survival action side of Resident Evil is incredibly hard, perhaps even impossible, to do well.

It just comes off as corny when watching film characters levitate and flip through a corridor full of red lasers or pull off inhuman stunts, whereas those same actions are cool as all hell when you're the one doing it in the games.

Whereas a Resident Evil film which instead chooses to play on the survival horror aspect of the games has a higher probability of doing well, because it's more grounded. That's not to say that Baron Harkonnen-looking zombie found in the sewer was realistic, it's just that the protagonists' actions and responses to said situation are more believable.

"What the games do well is they build this incredible atmosphere and this dread and this tension as you progress through these set pieces, and things just escalate, and escalate, and escalate," Cregger explains. "You always feel like you have not enough resources and you're wounded and the whole world is completely stacked against you—that's what makes Resident Evil so enjoyable for me to play. That's what this movie is built to do, to give you that slow dread tension and escalation that the games have perfected."

A new Dragon Age game would have a very difficult time getting off the ground, according to the series former producer and long-time BioWare veteran Mark Darrah.

BioWare's epic fantasy series hasn't had a smooth ride as of late, which is odd considering Dragon Age Inquisition was a critical and commercial smash. After a decade-long gap between games and multiple internal reboots, Dragon Age: The Veilguard tripped past the finish line when it came out in 2024 to mild sales.

Speaking to FRVR, Darrah says the Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the series' wider troubles were perhaps "happening because of EA's complicated relationship to shipping games at all." He then recalls how "someone once described to me EA as a hedge fund with a video game hobby that it wished it didn't spend so much money on, and I think that remains true."

The BioWare veteran of over 20 years doesn't see things changing anytime soon, either. "I have no concept of who could, would, possibly pitch that at EA," he says, partly because "EA owns a frightening number of IPs that are dormant." You can perhaps find Dragon Age laying in a damp cell alongside Titanfall and Mirror's Edge, then.

As for the reasons why a new Dragon Age project could hit a proverbial wall, well, there's quite a few. "The problem is I don't know who at BioWare would pitch a Dragon Age," he continues. "So the other option is somebody else within the EA organization decides they're gonna pitch a Dragon Age and, what I expect would happen if they try to do that, is somebody at BioWare would essentially become one of those people jumping under the vents to rip that person apart. I suspect that it wouldn't happen for a variety of reasons."

For context, BioWare's been hit hard by mass layoffs at EA multiple times over the last few years, meaning the storied developer might not even have the bandwidth to make a Dragon Age game alongside its next Mass Effect.

Complicating things further is the impending proposed buyout of EA by a group of investment firms led by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Group. Darrah questions whether the publisher's new ownership would even be interested in the series or the studio at all: "I could argue yes and no… do you want BioWare at all in this world?"

"It's a really compelling place to be left in": Dragon Age fans aren't giving up on the RPG – they're expanding it.