EA deactivates Failbetter's Dragon Age game The Last Court

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While fans race to preserve it.

(Image credit: EA)

The Dragon Age Keep was designed to allow players to create a world-state for importing into Dragon Age: Inquisition, since saves from the previous games couldn't be brought over. As a nice bonus, in 2014 Failbetter were commissioned to create The Last Court, an entire browser-based text game in the vein of Fallen London that could be played in the Keep, and which would unlock bonuses in Inquisition if finished.

The Last Court cast players as the Marquis of Serault, ruler of a corner of the kingdom of Orlais, given a week to prepare for a visit by Divine Justinia V. Affairs of court needed to be managed, trophies won, and NPCs recruited to fill important positions like Counsellor, Accomplice, Bodyguard, and Lover. 

As of November 17, The Last Court has been deactivated. Presumably the Dragon Age Keep is due for a refresh in advance of Dragon Age 4, but it would have been nice if The Last Court had been kept around for those who enjoyed it, or never got around to playing it. Fortunately, before it was taken offline a group of fans dedicated themselves to preserving it by screenshotting as many pages as they could. Given that The Last Court had a time-management requirement, and had to be played over the course of seven real-world days, that's not easy as it sounds. Co-ordinating on the BioWare Social Network forum and Reddit, they now have a Google Drive full of screenshots and a plan to collate them on the Dragon Age wiki. Fingers crossed they managed to grab the entire thing.

According to a note on the Dragon Age Keep, "If you have not completed The Last Court and wish to gain access to the war table missions in Dragon Age: Inquisition that unlock the Boon of the Serault Glasswork, you can do so via the Career section of the Dragon Age Keep." So that's something. 

Here's everything we know about Dragon Age 4 so far.

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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