This post originally appeared on The Mep Report blog a hair under 10 years ago.

Procrastination (or Death By Dragon Age)

Procrastination is many things. One hypothetical type of procrastination is eagerly awaiting the arrival of new release Dragon Age: Origins. And, the day Dragon Age: Origins arrives, you install Dragon Age: Origins, and attack the opening campaign as if your disk drive will start manifesting $100 bills upon its completion.

Procrastination is devoting every last waking hour to Dragon Age: Origins, because at least it’s not a life-stealing MMORPG that goes on without end. At least it is a singly contained story that can theoretically be beaten without taking out a mortgage on your ever-loving soul. And so, when we theoretically procrastinate by spending the better part of every waking hour marauding around as an Elven Champion, in some sickly nostalgic attempt to resurrect Skystrider Antilles, we drive off the Procrastination Boogeyman by immersing ourselves so deeply into the game that we realize we have been hunting through the catacombs of a werewolf nest for five hours vainly searching for some creature called Witherbark who, as elven legend has it, can remove the curse that has afflicted the Dalish elves whose help you require to vanquish the vast undead army known as the Blight, all while seeking your revenge upon the Vassal Lord of Ferelan who left your Grey Warden Master to die a bloody death at the hands of said Blight. Yeah.

And when, hypothetically speaking, you look outside your window, and daylight is streaming in, when you were pretty sure you started playing this campaign just after work ended, and you’re not sure if you’ve eaten in six hours and yet you wonder how many more Levels Up before you can unlock the Champion Prestige Class that will REALLY begin to allow you to simulate the MMORPG days of yore and wonder why your party’s shape-shifting forest witch refuses to properly appreciate your generosity after you give her a found onyx statuettes as a gift and notice that you’ve used the highly detailed character creation features to craft an Elven Warrior that looks exactly like yourself in digi-form and find your in-game-self getting annoyed that he can’t get the local merchant to give him a sweetheart deal on a brand new, Tier 3, steel greatsword, and you might just have to make due with crappy Grey Iron, and you hear morning birds chirping outside and workaday world alarm clocks going off and you haven’t even reached the bottom level of the werewolf catacombs yet, so clearly you can’t stop the campaign for something as trivial as the dawn of a new day in the outside world and you think your rear end might be inextricably stuck to your leather desk chair as you think about getting up for a second to grab some light sustenance except for the fact that your party’s inventory is dangerously close to full which means that there is actually a limit to the gigantic horde pile of shit you will be able to drag out of the catacombs to sell for cash and you lament the fact that the catacomb geists don’t have their own merchant handy and you realize that 45 more minutes passed as you’ve been making these decisions and you’re only on your second day of playing Dragon Age: Origins and wonder how much effort it would take to rig up an IV solution next to your computer to ensure that you’re properly hydrated before you black out and crave things that you would never have in your barren kitchen, like Ready Made Western Omelets and Rendered Nutrient Paste Tubes (as invented by John Malkovich’s character, Dr Jeff Peters, in the little known sci-fi romance Making Mr. Right) and you wonder where, in the global scheme of things, you rank as far as the first phalanx of players playing through Dragon Age: Origins who ordered it the day of its release (and didn’t get to play through it in some early, previewy, game tester environment) and maybe you’re on the front lines of getting deep into the story and you think someone told you that today is Veteran’s Day which means your school is closed and you don’t have to take any breaks for teaching…

Yeah, that’s also a type of procrastination.