Sick Day- Dragon Age: Inquisition

I sat on my couch this week trying to recover from illness, I got to engage in some serious game time with Dragon Age: Inquisition.

There's a lot to like about DA:I, and one of the interesting mechanics of the game is the "war table" where you go in and assign your three advisers, a diplomat, a spy, and a general, to different tasks throughout the empire. The time it takes to accomplish that task will depend on who you assign: for example, in matters of negotiation, the diplomat will often take less time to accomplish the task than the general. The player is left to go on other adventures, some of which mandate the Big Cheese to step in, others are just there because reasons but having minions running around doing things while I have adventures adds to the sense that I'm managing an empire.

From a castle, no less! It has a stable for horses or god only knows what kind of mythical mounts, shops, kitchen storerooms, labs for the creation of potions, hell, there's even an architect to rebuild the castle. And for the most part, I don't have to build that stuff: I just claim the appropriate resources and then tell my person-in-charge-of-things, "Do that."

Which is why, for the life of me, I cannot understand why the blacksmith section is so tedious. Because if you want armor or weapons of your own, you can't just provide raw materials to your two blacksmiths, one of whom is a dwarf who specializes in adding magical runes. No, you have to put all those things together. Yourself.

Why? Why do I have to do that? I already have to drag my ass around the entire empire and collect resources. Just make the awesome thing. Or, fine, tell me; Hey, this is what I need to make the awesome thing (flowcharts, baby laughter, blueprints, my virginity back, whatever!) and I'll go collect it and then the blacksmith tells me: It'll be done soon!

But no. I have to micromanage this weird shit. And for the most part, I'm not even getting better armor out of it than I am by just stumbling across armor in the field!

Good thing I'm sick. Otherwise, who would put up with this crap?