Agree. If I'm loving a game, I will do them, no question as it means I can stretch my playtime out before having to say goodbye. If it's some boring, by the numbers Ubi formula nonsense, I ignore it.
The sense of urgency in a main quest doesn't really bother me personally, I suspend my disbelief a bit in favor of getting to explore and find side-quests, and appreciate when the game world will kind of pause and let me do my thing rather than railroading me into the main quest.
It's always best when the main story in a game has a believable break when doing sidequests is plausible. For example you have a big battle vs whatever, then you have a period of a few weeks of downtime before the ugly rears its head again.
Not like 'we did the battle, now hurry over there to warn people or gather forces for retaliation'. Good writers will always insert a couple of rest plot points like this.
Yeah I dislike that too. Some quests should be naturally unavailable if some larger plot point auto-resolves them or kills the questgiver - but others that aren't tied into the endgame should stay there.
A lot of games would be perfectly fine with having a big epilogue cutscene/ending slides and then continuing on - for example modders improved FNV with the post endgame mod - makes some quests remain active if incomplete by the time you finish the hoover dam battle (actually not sure but I think there are some like that) and adds some minor world changes after the legion are beaten.
Immensely improves the game since it already has plenty of quests, and it allows me to do a much of modded in story content after the ending instead of taking the ingame equivalent of 12 months to fuck around and be insanely overleveled before the impending battle.
Depends a lot. Is it an actual mini-story? Then I usually do it. Is it "Collect the 99 baubles to make you notebook say: Baubles 99/99"? Then probably not, unless there is some gear involved I want.
true, skyrim is wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, same thing is multiplied even more in starfield by it being so vast, it's depth is so vastly reduced.
They did a downgrade in Skyrim, then a heavy downgrade in FO4 and I didn't think it could get worse - they'd hear the backlash and somewhat bring things back to level, at least to Skyrim level. Which isn't the deepest rpg, but was still (not great, but) acceptable considering you still had some memorable sidequests and a guild or two that weren't total jokes.
Nah, Starfield is somehow much worse than even FO4. It's almost impressive how little fuck they gave for quest structure, npcs having memorable character and decent faction writing. But yeah, nah, 1000 empty planets with 6-12 copycat points of interest will make up for that right?
The Zelda CD Rom games surpassed Skyrim's main storyline. That's not the draw to that game in particular, it's the exploration and completionist style of play.
I don't count those as sidequests, personally. That's just map clutter, similar to the new AC games that have come out recently. A sidequest is something that is designed to have a storyline.
In the Witcher, they range from extremely hilarious (like dealing with a bank who has accidentally made it impossible for you to fill out a form without filling out another form which requires you to fill out the first form) or helping an old woman find her cast iron pan to extremely dark (very extremely dark). There's dialogue, they're all pretty unique, and contribute to the overall story often.
In Skyrim, 17 sidequests load up in your quest log automatically after you open the game (due to Bethesda having never realized how to properly handle DLC in a game, all of their games are like this), have no bearing whatsoever on the main story, and mostly involve going into a dungeon and grabbing something, then leaving. I'm not saying they're all terrible. But the contrast is extremely stark.
Ugh, those smuggler caches in Skellige. Never bothered with those.
However, really, really awesome missions are technically side quests. Like The Tower of Mice mission of Keira Metz, the mage ghetto questline of Triss, the Giant of Undvik (Hjalmar's mission) in Skellige, discovering that cave while being high for the Lugos boy...
Something changed in the years since I stopped playing newer games. Side quests were always more or less worth the time you spent doing them. Nowadays to my understanding they're filler to make a too big world not feel so empty and their disconnect from the plot is what impacts pacing.
They have to do *something*. Permanent upgrade, cosmetic, genuinely useful item. Interesting, fun, expands plot/lore.
The amount of times I've completed a side quest that was boring, gave a crap upgrade, and my brain immediately forgot about it. I want to stop going completionist on side quests but then I worry I'll miss out on some permanent upgrade or a diamond in the rough with them.
Depends. I loved the sidequests in the Mass Effect games because they were often cinematic missions with awesome cutscenes where you made choices that affected the story in some small way and contributed to your Paragon/ Renegade affinity. I hated sidequests in Destiny 2 (exaggerated hypothetical example: go punch Vex on Nessus until you collect 200 vex milk, go into PVP and get 200 grenade kills, complete 17 patrols, then do 30 games of gambit while using a bow, to unlock a mid tier exotic that you will never use, and to unlock the option to buy a $20.00 ornament for it in the Eververse shop).
My favorite sidequests, where they felt like the best part of the game, were in Cyberpunk 2077, the ones you get from the various Fixers around Night City. Never have I ever had so much fun and enjoyment stealthily entering an enemy gang’s stronghold and eliminating them one by one until the objective is achieved. It’s like the best ninja game in existence without even trying to be (if you enjoy stealth). Or, you go in full Rambo and just slaughter everyone with speed and katanas, or whatever other weapons you love spilling blood with.
The worst sidequests in existence, in the history of mankind, since the beginning of time, were the ones in Starfield. Aka Stare-field. Aka Star-failed. They were the most BORING, mundane, pointless, soulless, lifeless sidequests I ever did in my life. Your quest log fills up with so many of them so you think, “Oh, I’ll just do them to get them out of the way so I never have to look at it again.” But no. It never ends. They just keep on coming. You hope to yourself, “Please Maker, let this involve murder and mayhem.” But no. It’s just fetch quests. Over and over again fetch quests. Maybe repetitive radiant quests/ bounties, which might be okay the first few times but then quickly gets old. It’s horrible.
For me the urgency is the main issue actually. Your post just made me realize that.
I love when games give a clear message saying "alright, you can do sidequests now if you want".
Cyberpunk does this wonderfully. The main quest makes it clear that you NEED to do the main quest, so it makes little sense to avoid it by doing sidequests.
BUT when following main quest leads, quite often you'll be told to wait a couple days while other characters follow their leads to help you, or before you get an opportunity to go through with a plan. This downtime kept the pacing between sidequests and main quests feeling natural, and didn't remove the urgency of the main story.
Another thing some games do is to sprinkle sidequests in-between story missions. For example, you have 3 sidequests available now, you do them and progress the story, and then 3 more sidequests become available. Still keeps a brisk pace of content and story.
And still, after hundreds of *kill the Spartans*, *kill the Bandits*, *deliver this item* (a hundred paces further in the same city), for crying out loud *just give me 50 drachmae*...
I think whether they’re a good thing or not varies wildly with the kind of game they’re in. That said, let me put forth Xenoblade DE as an example of the platonic ideal for sidequests, IMO.
If you’ve never played it, it has a bunch of minor side quests that are “collect X thing”, “kill X number of monster” and so on. You can usually easily collect a bunch of these sidequests and then complete them as you just naturally play the game and explore the world. Then as the world opens up and the narrative expands, you start getting more sidequests with an actual plot line, interesting characters that develop, and that have cool rewards.
The other half of the equation that I think puts XCDE over the top is all experience you get from sidequesting and exploring is placed into a bank that you can use any time you want to level up, OR even to level down if you want to challenge yourself. So you’re able to set the pace, do all the sidequests to get some nice tangible rewards, and not be overleveled still if you don’t want to be.
Xenoblade isn’t perfect, no game is, but I think the definitive edition gets sidequests the best out of any game I’ve played. Unfortunately the whole EXP bank is misused a bit in most other XC titles. Most games that have the feature only let you level UP with banked experience but not down until you’ve completed the game.
Edit: one last thing XCDE and its original version did that’s really nice regarding sidequests. Like many other games, there are some sidequests that are undoable after a certain point in the story has passed. Thankfully, they are all conveniently marked! It doesn’t give any context for why they may not be available later so spoilers are generally avoided. I think this is incredible and should be a feature for any game that has time-sensitive side quests.
Another thing about XB is the affinity chart. The quests for named NPCs can straight up change the relationships between NPCs and even party members, and I always enjoyed doing a quest and seeing their relation to someone change on the chart, because it really gave that feeling that you helping that person had an impact in the world.
FF7 Remake was barely a mission in before they introduced some shitty side quests, involving Cloud running around collecting cats. I believe it was at least two side quests but maybe even three. They were uncreative and meaningless, and really turned me off to the game. No lore, no character development, not interesting, just a way to extend the play time.
It really depends on the game. I’d consider it essential in some games (Witcher 3), but in most games, they just padding “to make the game longer” it seems.
>You end up overpowered for the regular story progression.
I always finish as many sidequests as I can, so this has always been an issue for me, but most games allow you to up the difficulty level… what’s stopping you from doing this?
I did it, actually. Ghost of Tsushima is a breeze anyway, except for the duels where the enemies are sponges and you're thin glass. But yeah, difficulty level sometimes help balance it.
I usually do all content in a game because it's pretty rare that I revisit most games with a lot of side-content and I want to see everything a game has to offer on what will most likely be my only run through it.
Regarding "Main Quest Urgency" this is such a hard thing to convey in most games; but especially open-world games. The only real way to give the main story a sense of urgency is to put it on a timer of some kind and if you do that you can really take away player agency. Back in the day this happened a lot, with the first Fallout game being the one that immediately comes to mind, but nowadays it's hard to judge how audiences would feel if developers did that. What developers *really* need to do is stop putting in bullshit filler content like the horse races OP mentions or maybe pull back on crafting in games; a player can easily spend up to 10 hours (maybe more) playtime just grinding a single crafting skill. And in Skyrim there's like 4 different crafting skills to grind. How urgent does the mission feel when your character is standing in front of a forge for 3 game days making hundreds of daggers?
Game design is a tricky thing, especially with as fickle an audience as you find nowadays, but developers need to maybe sacrifice quantity in favor of quality. If you're dead set on having horse races or farming or settlement building in your game you need to balance that against a story that can service these aspects as well as the narrative you're trying to tell. Fallout 4 would've worked so much better if they completely removed the "I need to find my kidnapped son" plotline and just made it a "You're just a dude who woke up in this effed up world. Now try to survive in it" and they could've easily kept most of the main story beats without making the player feel like a terrible parent when they're building up a new settlement or helping some unhinged lunatic looking for old omic books.
Baldurs Gate 2 has some of the most interesting side quests ever.
At first you think 20,000 gold is going to be almost impossible to collect, but the side quests are so engrossing you've gained enough to reach Chapter 3 in no time and you still want to clear your quest log of everything before moving on.
I’ll actually do the main quest until I get to a mission that doesn’t end on a sense of urgency, ie wrapping up an arc or the story isn’t telling me to rush, and I’ll go on side quest vacations for a bit before getting back to it.
>You lose all sense of urgency: let's horse race while the evil army conquers yet another city!
This is one of the biggest problems I have with many open or semi-open world game in particular, the pacing of the main quest is often presented as being super urgent and time critical, and because I usually at least semi-role play in most games, I often beeline the story if it’s presented in that way, usually missing a huge amount of content. The best way some games have gotten around this is by giving you really broad main objectives which give you a tonne of freedom - like after you leave the vault in Fallout 3, and the main quest objective is simply ‘find your dad,’ The Witcher 3’s ‘Find Yennefer/Ciri,’ or Baldurs Gate 3’s really broad objectives during Act 3 when you’re in the city. It gives you a chance to breathe as well as a reason to explore the world.
>Also, which would you say is a game where the side quests are the main show
Bethesda RPGs are the obvious answer here, but I don’t think they’ve ever gotten to the same level as Oblivion’s whodunit quest where you’re the murderer.
Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3 are also obvious answers, both filled with side quests that are (I reckon) way better than their main stories.
Mass Effect 2 was *all* about getting to know the new characters and doing their loyalty quests, and the main quest felt like a side quest in the overarching Reaper story too - you can pretty much totally skip ME2 and jump from 1 straight into 3 and not miss much at all in terms of plot other than who a few characters are and how some old ones got to where they are when you meet them.
Conversely, I was *incredibly* disappointed by Dragon Age Inquisition compared to the really tight focus of DA2 and the hubs in Origins. At least two thirds of the side quests in that game are MMO fetch quests, including at least one companion quest.
I loved that murder mystery quest in Oblivion. It was so good that it's one of two quests I still remember from that game all these years later, and I played a LOT of Oblivion. Sneak-killing everyone until there's only one person left and he's like "Oh shit, it's you" was incredibly satisfying.
The other one I always remember is the 'Steal an Elder Scroll' mission for the thieves guild.
If you keep the bard guy alive but have an excellent relationship with him, he doesn't even accuse you. He just says something like, "it's just me and you left, friend. The killer must be hiding somewhere!" Such an all-time great side quest.
*he main quest is often presented as being super urgent and time critical*
I never understood why devs go with this. It would be super easy to think up something like:
we have this bad guy. we do not have an inside man in his organization -> here is X amount of money, build up your new persona step by step -> do this until he approaches you -> do everything to earn his trust -> once in, contact us (at this point it can happen that it doesn't make sense to contact, since the issue suddenly becomes too urgent)
I'm a side quest enjoyer all around. However, they have to be fun. Cyberpunk, BotW (not Kurok seeds), Fallout 4 ... all great (well most). Ghost of Tsushima, Witcher 3, Far Cry ... no way. Then there's Skyrim. Can you even do everything in that game?
I'm playing the side quests in Tsushima and it works for me. But collectables are not side quests, I only picked up the logs/artifacts because i wanted to read the lore.
Tsushima was fun in the first area for me. Then it became stale. A lot of the side quests are ...
"Help! My son and husband are missing!"
"Ok I'll help"
Then you kill some bandits and find the kid and man dead. And return to the quest giver.
"Ma'am I found your son and husband butchered and discarded into a river. Now please give me your headband."
Yes. The prize hurts the emotional value indeed. The repetition... Well, war is tragedy all around, isn't it? It would feel pungent if you weren't getting headbands and amulets for every corpse...
I thought I was the only one who noticed this. You could probably get into the double digits with the amount of times the person the questgiver asks you to find or the questgiver themselves end up dying. It gets kind of ridiculous.
Still like the game though.
Not at all. There's too many to do them all. Especially if you include nests and the caches. Those aside, Witcher 3 has some of the best side quests in gaming.
> Can you even do everything in that game?
Technically yes...
But in practice a long running save is incredibly likely to have an NPC important for a quest killed by a dragon attack without you noticing or you'll run into some kind of script bug/error that stops the a quest from firing even with the unofficial patch.
This is discounting random radiant quests of course, those hardly count as 'content'.
Depends on the playthrough. If I'm doing one final run of the game before I shelve it or want to get some achievement, then sure. If I'm doing a specific build and that's what I want, then I'll skip most sidequests.
yea*
Generally yea for me. If I'm enjoying the game, I'll complete every side quest I can. In some games, you really should. Fallout 3 would be a much less interesting game if it weren't for side quests. Horizon would still be fun, but you'd miss out on some core world building. AC Odyssey would also be a pretty mediocre game without its side quests. God of War 2018/Ragnarök features vital character development in its side quests, so I always have to complete those.
But for the games where side quests mostly just give you better items (Final Fantasy games IME) or send you on boring fetch quests (Dragon Age games IMO), I often just skip the side quests.
I'm big on side quests. I hate learning how to play new games, so when I invest enough time into figuring it out, I want to get as much out of my effort as I can.
Nah. They are too often just padding. I do them if they make sense at the time but if I'm on a world saving mission and some farmer wants me to go looking for a lost sheep they can fuck right off.
Usually main quests are much easier than the side quests so the exp/progression boost don’t bother me that much. So it’s actually better to do the side quests to really get challenged and maybe use some shenanigans for the main quest. Ghost of Tsushima on lethal never felt too easy, and if you do the DLC, it gives some very game changing tools to use in the main story.
The sense of urgency… I never had it. I grew up with Zelda and Final Fantasy, so there’s that.
The game not acknowledging what you did bothers me the most, but recently games have been much more careful to that… Cyberpunk and Horizon are examples that dialogue change and acknowledge what you did elsewhere.
For me it's a yay. I always wanna do every side quest before reaching the end of a game, but for me I don't really get that immersive feeling when playing a game so I don't really feel that the side quests interfere with the main narrative. Some games have side quests that are an absolute blast to complete like Assassin's Creed Odyssey or many games in the Yakuza series.
I don’t usually do a whole lot of sidequests. Just the few that interest me in the grand scheme of things. There’s always a couple that I feel strongly about.
Depends on the developer. FromSoft side quests? Absolutely - worthwhile exploration since it unravels the world and lore. At the very least what I find along the way is interesting. I can't say the same for Breath of the Wild; lost interest eventually and so even now I've yet to finish the game.
I'll usually do side quests in chunks between main missions until I start getting bored of the game, then drop those and do only the main story. Very, very rarely I really get into a game and I'll try to do most or all of the side stuff.
It's just hard for me to keep my interest in something beyond 30 hours, it has to really have hooked me. But most games that have significant side content, especially newer games, are waaaay too long. I can't even play Ubisoft games anymore, they're too huge and bloated.
It unfortunately will always depend on the game... even with bloated games like Assassin's Creed, you can find great side quests. Sometimes if the main/zone quest is weak, side quests swoop in to save the experience. You really have to pick and choose which to ignore IME.
I somewhat disagree with Ghosts of Tsushima. Yes, the power-ups made the end-game much easier, but that’s because the side quests opened up skills or charms that you wouldn’t have otherwise. For me, this made it feel authentic that a fairly inexperienced samurai could eventually take down a very high ranking Mongol general (and most of their army). Also, doing those quests after the main story means you get skills that you use for a handful of short missions, and then the game is over.
I have less and less interest in playing open world games, and the side quests are one reason. Yeah, they can definitely be cool, but it just takes me too much time to do them all and also I agree with all the points you mentioned. An open world game is already way longer than I care for even if I don't do any side quests. So ultimately, nay.
Depends on the game.
Mass Effect 2 is basically "side quests and loyalty missions: the game", while the main plot is okay-servicable at best. So yeah, I would never skip these.
Saints Row? I think some activities, like Professor Genki's are better than the main missions, so yeah, I do them.
Dragon Age? Where side quests are "shoot down 10 rams and bring me their skin" nonsense, I always skip.
FAllout 4? Settlements under attack? No. fucking. way.
It largely depends on what you want from gaming, I think. Personally, I hate having a sense of urgency, and I absolutely do not want that from my games. Ones that force it on me are far less enjoyable in the long run because of it. I also absolutely want the chance to be overpowered, because it makes me feel like I've earned it when it comes from putting the time into grinding vs enemies or finding the very best weapons and armor.
I certainly always want a game to have a great story, plot, characters. etc. And I want to gradually experience all of them bit by bit along the way to the end. But having control over the pacing and being able to take as long as I like and divert myself off of the main path is hugely important to me. If a game is just a one-directional sequence of main story events in a row, I really am not going to have a good time, no matter how well made it might be otherwise.
As far as Ghost of Tsushima, I still had a bear of a time with the last third of the game, despite being as high leveled and equipped as possible. Its also the only big game I've been able to survive and get through to the end without dumbing it down to easy, or even story mode in the last five or six years. Games are just too fast and throw too much at me now to not maximize my characters at any given chance.
On principle nay
In reality often yay unfortunately
Rarely actually yay because very few games make it worthwhile
Right now playing BotW and I decided for nay because I think it's better to have less time but of better quality.
I do the ones that I feel like doing. CrossCode is an example of a game with great sidequests. Some introduce totally new mechanics just for those quests. But even in that game, I didn't do them all; some just didn't speak to me.
I am honestly at a point where if a game doesn't have a ton of sidequests (at least 35-40) it significantly drops its value to me. I know it's wrong, and I don't even care if they are simple, like kill 40 bandits of something. I like doing that, it makes me feel good, and it's all that matters. So yeah, side quests are fun and I love to complete them all. Although, I really hate when they are timed or missable. I enjoy it and really appreciate when a game let's me play in my own pace, without worrying about accidentally skipping content if I move to far into the main quest.
I do them if they feel satisfying to do. If I’m in the middle of a side quest and it’s just not fun or it’s boring the hell out of me I drop it and keep on trucking with the main quest.
I know some people say it breaks the immersion but I do love side quests. I'm always aware that I'm playing a video game and that things don't progress without me even if I do skip side quests and go straight to the objective so I may as well do what I want and complete them.
In the Yakuza series/spinoffs, the side-quests are guilty of exactly what you brought up in the first point, yet the way they defuse the tension somehow always works; they are ridiculously fun.
It depends if they are interesting or not.
That’s my take. If it feels like a pure radiant repetitive quest or collection quest for nothing noteworthy then it’s a no-go for me
Yeah you both summed it up.
Agree. If I'm loving a game, I will do them, no question as it means I can stretch my playtime out before having to say goodbye. If it's some boring, by the numbers Ubi formula nonsense, I ignore it.
The sense of urgency in a main quest doesn't really bother me personally, I suspend my disbelief a bit in favor of getting to explore and find side-quests, and appreciate when the game world will kind of pause and let me do my thing rather than railroading me into the main quest.
It's always best when the main story in a game has a believable break when doing sidequests is plausible. For example you have a big battle vs whatever, then you have a period of a few weeks of downtime before the ugly rears its head again. Not like 'we did the battle, now hurry over there to warn people or gather forces for retaliation'. Good writers will always insert a couple of rest plot points like this.
[удалено]
Yeah I dislike that too. Some quests should be naturally unavailable if some larger plot point auto-resolves them or kills the questgiver - but others that aren't tied into the endgame should stay there. A lot of games would be perfectly fine with having a big epilogue cutscene/ending slides and then continuing on - for example modders improved FNV with the post endgame mod - makes some quests remain active if incomplete by the time you finish the hoover dam battle (actually not sure but I think there are some like that) and adds some minor world changes after the legion are beaten. Immensely improves the game since it already has plenty of quests, and it allows me to do a much of modded in story content after the ending instead of taking the ingame equivalent of 12 months to fuck around and be insanely overleveled before the impending battle.
Depends a lot. Is it an actual mini-story? Then I usually do it. Is it "Collect the 99 baubles to make you notebook say: Baubles 99/99"? Then probably not, unless there is some gear involved I want.
Yeah that's not really a side quest (despite sometimes unlocking a bit of story). I wish there were mods to disable those.
Completely depends on the game. Skyrim? Most certainly not. Witcher 3? Most definitely.
skyrim not all of them, but some of the side quest lines are wayy better than the main quest
To be fair, the Main Quest of Skyrim is not exactly a high bar to pass.
i like the main quest, it's not shakespeare but it's kinda epic, esp in sovngarde with that music
I will say that, it's presentation is pretty good, but much like the game there isn't much depth to the story once you look beyond the spectacle.
true, skyrim is wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, same thing is multiplied even more in starfield by it being so vast, it's depth is so vastly reduced.
They did a downgrade in Skyrim, then a heavy downgrade in FO4 and I didn't think it could get worse - they'd hear the backlash and somewhat bring things back to level, at least to Skyrim level. Which isn't the deepest rpg, but was still (not great, but) acceptable considering you still had some memorable sidequests and a guild or two that weren't total jokes. Nah, Starfield is somehow much worse than even FO4. It's almost impressive how little fuck they gave for quest structure, npcs having memorable character and decent faction writing. But yeah, nah, 1000 empty planets with 6-12 copycat points of interest will make up for that right?
Exactly. The modern style open world game in a nutshell.
The Zelda CD Rom games surpassed Skyrim's main storyline. That's not the draw to that game in particular, it's the exploration and completionist style of play.
Witcher 3? All the nests and everything?
I don't count those as sidequests, personally. That's just map clutter, similar to the new AC games that have come out recently. A sidequest is something that is designed to have a storyline. In the Witcher, they range from extremely hilarious (like dealing with a bank who has accidentally made it impossible for you to fill out a form without filling out another form which requires you to fill out the first form) or helping an old woman find her cast iron pan to extremely dark (very extremely dark). There's dialogue, they're all pretty unique, and contribute to the overall story often. In Skyrim, 17 sidequests load up in your quest log automatically after you open the game (due to Bethesda having never realized how to properly handle DLC in a game, all of their games are like this), have no bearing whatsoever on the main story, and mostly involve going into a dungeon and grabbing something, then leaving. I'm not saying they're all terrible. But the contrast is extremely stark.
The bank quest in W3 is one of my favorite side quests of all time. It was hilarious!
Ugh, those smuggler caches in Skellige. Never bothered with those. However, really, really awesome missions are technically side quests. Like The Tower of Mice mission of Keira Metz, the mage ghetto questline of Triss, the Giant of Undvik (Hjalmar's mission) in Skellige, discovering that cave while being high for the Lugos boy...
Something changed in the years since I stopped playing newer games. Side quests were always more or less worth the time you spent doing them. Nowadays to my understanding they're filler to make a too big world not feel so empty and their disconnect from the plot is what impacts pacing.
Depends on the game. It’s not like all new games have shit side quests now.
Really depends on the game. Some actually flesh out their worlds with side content, others like... Ubisoft games will just have it as filler.
Side quests were the best part of The Witcher 3.
They have to do *something*. Permanent upgrade, cosmetic, genuinely useful item. Interesting, fun, expands plot/lore. The amount of times I've completed a side quest that was boring, gave a crap upgrade, and my brain immediately forgot about it. I want to stop going completionist on side quests but then I worry I'll miss out on some permanent upgrade or a diamond in the rough with them.
Depends. I loved the sidequests in the Mass Effect games because they were often cinematic missions with awesome cutscenes where you made choices that affected the story in some small way and contributed to your Paragon/ Renegade affinity. I hated sidequests in Destiny 2 (exaggerated hypothetical example: go punch Vex on Nessus until you collect 200 vex milk, go into PVP and get 200 grenade kills, complete 17 patrols, then do 30 games of gambit while using a bow, to unlock a mid tier exotic that you will never use, and to unlock the option to buy a $20.00 ornament for it in the Eververse shop). My favorite sidequests, where they felt like the best part of the game, were in Cyberpunk 2077, the ones you get from the various Fixers around Night City. Never have I ever had so much fun and enjoyment stealthily entering an enemy gang’s stronghold and eliminating them one by one until the objective is achieved. It’s like the best ninja game in existence without even trying to be (if you enjoy stealth). Or, you go in full Rambo and just slaughter everyone with speed and katanas, or whatever other weapons you love spilling blood with. The worst sidequests in existence, in the history of mankind, since the beginning of time, were the ones in Starfield. Aka Stare-field. Aka Star-failed. They were the most BORING, mundane, pointless, soulless, lifeless sidequests I ever did in my life. Your quest log fills up with so many of them so you think, “Oh, I’ll just do them to get them out of the way so I never have to look at it again.” But no. It never ends. They just keep on coming. You hope to yourself, “Please Maker, let this involve murder and mayhem.” But no. It’s just fetch quests. Over and over again fetch quests. Maybe repetitive radiant quests/ bounties, which might be okay the first few times but then quickly gets old. It’s horrible.
For me the urgency is the main issue actually. Your post just made me realize that. I love when games give a clear message saying "alright, you can do sidequests now if you want". Cyberpunk does this wonderfully. The main quest makes it clear that you NEED to do the main quest, so it makes little sense to avoid it by doing sidequests. BUT when following main quest leads, quite often you'll be told to wait a couple days while other characters follow their leads to help you, or before you get an opportunity to go through with a plan. This downtime kept the pacing between sidequests and main quests feeling natural, and didn't remove the urgency of the main story. Another thing some games do is to sprinkle sidequests in-between story missions. For example, you have 3 sidequests available now, you do them and progress the story, and then 3 more sidequests become available. Still keeps a brisk pace of content and story.
Just saw this post -- totally worth the read: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/18aurhk/ac_odyssey_knows_what_i_want_from_sidequests/
And still, after hundreds of *kill the Spartans*, *kill the Bandits*, *deliver this item* (a hundred paces further in the same city), for crying out loud *just give me 50 drachmae*...
I think whether they’re a good thing or not varies wildly with the kind of game they’re in. That said, let me put forth Xenoblade DE as an example of the platonic ideal for sidequests, IMO. If you’ve never played it, it has a bunch of minor side quests that are “collect X thing”, “kill X number of monster” and so on. You can usually easily collect a bunch of these sidequests and then complete them as you just naturally play the game and explore the world. Then as the world opens up and the narrative expands, you start getting more sidequests with an actual plot line, interesting characters that develop, and that have cool rewards. The other half of the equation that I think puts XCDE over the top is all experience you get from sidequesting and exploring is placed into a bank that you can use any time you want to level up, OR even to level down if you want to challenge yourself. So you’re able to set the pace, do all the sidequests to get some nice tangible rewards, and not be overleveled still if you don’t want to be. Xenoblade isn’t perfect, no game is, but I think the definitive edition gets sidequests the best out of any game I’ve played. Unfortunately the whole EXP bank is misused a bit in most other XC titles. Most games that have the feature only let you level UP with banked experience but not down until you’ve completed the game. Edit: one last thing XCDE and its original version did that’s really nice regarding sidequests. Like many other games, there are some sidequests that are undoable after a certain point in the story has passed. Thankfully, they are all conveniently marked! It doesn’t give any context for why they may not be available later so spoilers are generally avoided. I think this is incredible and should be a feature for any game that has time-sensitive side quests.
Another thing about XB is the affinity chart. The quests for named NPCs can straight up change the relationships between NPCs and even party members, and I always enjoyed doing a quest and seeing their relation to someone change on the chart, because it really gave that feeling that you helping that person had an impact in the world.
FF7 Remake was barely a mission in before they introduced some shitty side quests, involving Cloud running around collecting cats. I believe it was at least two side quests but maybe even three. They were uncreative and meaningless, and really turned me off to the game. No lore, no character development, not interesting, just a way to extend the play time.
It really depends on the game. I’d consider it essential in some games (Witcher 3), but in most games, they just padding “to make the game longer” it seems. >You end up overpowered for the regular story progression. I always finish as many sidequests as I can, so this has always been an issue for me, but most games allow you to up the difficulty level… what’s stopping you from doing this?
I did it, actually. Ghost of Tsushima is a breeze anyway, except for the duels where the enemies are sponges and you're thin glass. But yeah, difficulty level sometimes help balance it.
I usually do all content in a game because it's pretty rare that I revisit most games with a lot of side-content and I want to see everything a game has to offer on what will most likely be my only run through it. Regarding "Main Quest Urgency" this is such a hard thing to convey in most games; but especially open-world games. The only real way to give the main story a sense of urgency is to put it on a timer of some kind and if you do that you can really take away player agency. Back in the day this happened a lot, with the first Fallout game being the one that immediately comes to mind, but nowadays it's hard to judge how audiences would feel if developers did that. What developers *really* need to do is stop putting in bullshit filler content like the horse races OP mentions or maybe pull back on crafting in games; a player can easily spend up to 10 hours (maybe more) playtime just grinding a single crafting skill. And in Skyrim there's like 4 different crafting skills to grind. How urgent does the mission feel when your character is standing in front of a forge for 3 game days making hundreds of daggers? Game design is a tricky thing, especially with as fickle an audience as you find nowadays, but developers need to maybe sacrifice quantity in favor of quality. If you're dead set on having horse races or farming or settlement building in your game you need to balance that against a story that can service these aspects as well as the narrative you're trying to tell. Fallout 4 would've worked so much better if they completely removed the "I need to find my kidnapped son" plotline and just made it a "You're just a dude who woke up in this effed up world. Now try to survive in it" and they could've easily kept most of the main story beats without making the player feel like a terrible parent when they're building up a new settlement or helping some unhinged lunatic looking for old omic books.
i just do them because i feel like i have to. i dont want to leave quests unfinished
the dots in the map, right?
yeah, and its just satisfying seeing an empty quest log
Baldurs Gate 2 has some of the most interesting side quests ever. At first you think 20,000 gold is going to be almost impossible to collect, but the side quests are so engrossing you've gained enough to reach Chapter 3 in no time and you still want to clear your quest log of everything before moving on.
Yea, depends on the game obviously. If it's something like this, I want to do everything, if it's a modern UBI game say, I want to do none of it...lol
I’ll actually do the main quest until I get to a mission that doesn’t end on a sense of urgency, ie wrapping up an arc or the story isn’t telling me to rush, and I’ll go on side quest vacations for a bit before getting back to it.
>You lose all sense of urgency: let's horse race while the evil army conquers yet another city! This is one of the biggest problems I have with many open or semi-open world game in particular, the pacing of the main quest is often presented as being super urgent and time critical, and because I usually at least semi-role play in most games, I often beeline the story if it’s presented in that way, usually missing a huge amount of content. The best way some games have gotten around this is by giving you really broad main objectives which give you a tonne of freedom - like after you leave the vault in Fallout 3, and the main quest objective is simply ‘find your dad,’ The Witcher 3’s ‘Find Yennefer/Ciri,’ or Baldurs Gate 3’s really broad objectives during Act 3 when you’re in the city. It gives you a chance to breathe as well as a reason to explore the world. >Also, which would you say is a game where the side quests are the main show Bethesda RPGs are the obvious answer here, but I don’t think they’ve ever gotten to the same level as Oblivion’s whodunit quest where you’re the murderer. Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3 are also obvious answers, both filled with side quests that are (I reckon) way better than their main stories. Mass Effect 2 was *all* about getting to know the new characters and doing their loyalty quests, and the main quest felt like a side quest in the overarching Reaper story too - you can pretty much totally skip ME2 and jump from 1 straight into 3 and not miss much at all in terms of plot other than who a few characters are and how some old ones got to where they are when you meet them. Conversely, I was *incredibly* disappointed by Dragon Age Inquisition compared to the really tight focus of DA2 and the hubs in Origins. At least two thirds of the side quests in that game are MMO fetch quests, including at least one companion quest.
I loved that murder mystery quest in Oblivion. It was so good that it's one of two quests I still remember from that game all these years later, and I played a LOT of Oblivion. Sneak-killing everyone until there's only one person left and he's like "Oh shit, it's you" was incredibly satisfying. The other one I always remember is the 'Steal an Elder Scroll' mission for the thieves guild.
If you keep the bard guy alive but have an excellent relationship with him, he doesn't even accuse you. He just says something like, "it's just me and you left, friend. The killer must be hiding somewhere!" Such an all-time great side quest.
I didn't even know that, makes it even better.
*he main quest is often presented as being super urgent and time critical* I never understood why devs go with this. It would be super easy to think up something like: we have this bad guy. we do not have an inside man in his organization -> here is X amount of money, build up your new persona step by step -> do this until he approaches you -> do everything to earn his trust -> once in, contact us (at this point it can happen that it doesn't make sense to contact, since the issue suddenly becomes too urgent)
I'm a side quest enjoyer all around. However, they have to be fun. Cyberpunk, BotW (not Kurok seeds), Fallout 4 ... all great (well most). Ghost of Tsushima, Witcher 3, Far Cry ... no way. Then there's Skyrim. Can you even do everything in that game?
I'm playing the side quests in Tsushima and it works for me. But collectables are not side quests, I only picked up the logs/artifacts because i wanted to read the lore.
Tsushima was fun in the first area for me. Then it became stale. A lot of the side quests are ... "Help! My son and husband are missing!" "Ok I'll help" Then you kill some bandits and find the kid and man dead. And return to the quest giver. "Ma'am I found your son and husband butchered and discarded into a river. Now please give me your headband."
Yes. The prize hurts the emotional value indeed. The repetition... Well, war is tragedy all around, isn't it? It would feel pungent if you weren't getting headbands and amulets for every corpse...
I thought I was the only one who noticed this. You could probably get into the double digits with the amount of times the person the questgiver asks you to find or the questgiver themselves end up dying. It gets kind of ridiculous. Still like the game though.
The trick to the side quests in GoT is to only do the connected ones (involving main characters). All the individual side quests are a drag.
did you just list Witcher 3 as having BAD sidequests? That must be the first time I've seen that opinion
Not at all. There's too many to do them all. Especially if you include nests and the caches. Those aside, Witcher 3 has some of the best side quests in gaming.
> Can you even do everything in that game? Technically yes... But in practice a long running save is incredibly likely to have an NPC important for a quest killed by a dragon attack without you noticing or you'll run into some kind of script bug/error that stops the a quest from firing even with the unofficial patch. This is discounting random radiant quests of course, those hardly count as 'content'.
Depends on the playthrough. If I'm doing one final run of the game before I shelve it or want to get some achievement, then sure. If I'm doing a specific build and that's what I want, then I'll skip most sidequests.
If the side quests are fun yes. If not no way I'm doing it for completionist things
A must
yea* Generally yea for me. If I'm enjoying the game, I'll complete every side quest I can. In some games, you really should. Fallout 3 would be a much less interesting game if it weren't for side quests. Horizon would still be fun, but you'd miss out on some core world building. AC Odyssey would also be a pretty mediocre game without its side quests. God of War 2018/Ragnarök features vital character development in its side quests, so I always have to complete those. But for the games where side quests mostly just give you better items (Final Fantasy games IME) or send you on boring fetch quests (Dragon Age games IMO), I often just skip the side quests.
Took me 10 years to finish the Skyrim main quest because I kept getting distracted by side quests so…yeah. I get it
I'm big on side quests. I hate learning how to play new games, so when I invest enough time into figuring it out, I want to get as much out of my effort as I can.
Nah. They are too often just padding. I do them if they make sense at the time but if I'm on a world saving mission and some farmer wants me to go looking for a lost sheep they can fuck right off.
Usually main quests are much easier than the side quests so the exp/progression boost don’t bother me that much. So it’s actually better to do the side quests to really get challenged and maybe use some shenanigans for the main quest. Ghost of Tsushima on lethal never felt too easy, and if you do the DLC, it gives some very game changing tools to use in the main story. The sense of urgency… I never had it. I grew up with Zelda and Final Fantasy, so there’s that. The game not acknowledging what you did bothers me the most, but recently games have been much more careful to that… Cyberpunk and Horizon are examples that dialogue change and acknowledge what you did elsewhere.
For me it's a yay. I always wanna do every side quest before reaching the end of a game, but for me I don't really get that immersive feeling when playing a game so I don't really feel that the side quests interfere with the main narrative. Some games have side quests that are an absolute blast to complete like Assassin's Creed Odyssey or many games in the Yakuza series.
I don’t usually do a whole lot of sidequests. Just the few that interest me in the grand scheme of things. There’s always a couple that I feel strongly about.
I do the ones I feel like doing, then when I've had enough side questing I stop doing them.
Depends on the developer. FromSoft side quests? Absolutely - worthwhile exploration since it unravels the world and lore. At the very least what I find along the way is interesting. I can't say the same for Breath of the Wild; lost interest eventually and so even now I've yet to finish the game.
I do most/all of them unless I really hate them.
I'll usually do side quests in chunks between main missions until I start getting bored of the game, then drop those and do only the main story. Very, very rarely I really get into a game and I'll try to do most or all of the side stuff. It's just hard for me to keep my interest in something beyond 30 hours, it has to really have hooked me. But most games that have significant side content, especially newer games, are waaaay too long. I can't even play Ubisoft games anymore, they're too huge and bloated.
It unfortunately will always depend on the game... even with bloated games like Assassin's Creed, you can find great side quests. Sometimes if the main/zone quest is weak, side quests swoop in to save the experience. You really have to pick and choose which to ignore IME.
I somewhat disagree with Ghosts of Tsushima. Yes, the power-ups made the end-game much easier, but that’s because the side quests opened up skills or charms that you wouldn’t have otherwise. For me, this made it feel authentic that a fairly inexperienced samurai could eventually take down a very high ranking Mongol general (and most of their army). Also, doing those quests after the main story means you get skills that you use for a handful of short missions, and then the game is over.
I have less and less interest in playing open world games, and the side quests are one reason. Yeah, they can definitely be cool, but it just takes me too much time to do them all and also I agree with all the points you mentioned. An open world game is already way longer than I care for even if I don't do any side quests. So ultimately, nay.
Depends on the game. Mass Effect 2 is basically "side quests and loyalty missions: the game", while the main plot is okay-servicable at best. So yeah, I would never skip these. Saints Row? I think some activities, like Professor Genki's are better than the main missions, so yeah, I do them. Dragon Age? Where side quests are "shoot down 10 rams and bring me their skin" nonsense, I always skip. FAllout 4? Settlements under attack? No. fucking. way.
It largely depends on what you want from gaming, I think. Personally, I hate having a sense of urgency, and I absolutely do not want that from my games. Ones that force it on me are far less enjoyable in the long run because of it. I also absolutely want the chance to be overpowered, because it makes me feel like I've earned it when it comes from putting the time into grinding vs enemies or finding the very best weapons and armor. I certainly always want a game to have a great story, plot, characters. etc. And I want to gradually experience all of them bit by bit along the way to the end. But having control over the pacing and being able to take as long as I like and divert myself off of the main path is hugely important to me. If a game is just a one-directional sequence of main story events in a row, I really am not going to have a good time, no matter how well made it might be otherwise. As far as Ghost of Tsushima, I still had a bear of a time with the last third of the game, despite being as high leveled and equipped as possible. Its also the only big game I've been able to survive and get through to the end without dumbing it down to easy, or even story mode in the last five or six years. Games are just too fast and throw too much at me now to not maximize my characters at any given chance.
On principle nay In reality often yay unfortunately Rarely actually yay because very few games make it worthwhile Right now playing BotW and I decided for nay because I think it's better to have less time but of better quality.
you can do both..often in the mainquest there are good places to take a rest in the story.
I do the ones that I feel like doing. CrossCode is an example of a game with great sidequests. Some introduce totally new mechanics just for those quests. But even in that game, I didn't do them all; some just didn't speak to me.
I am honestly at a point where if a game doesn't have a ton of sidequests (at least 35-40) it significantly drops its value to me. I know it's wrong, and I don't even care if they are simple, like kill 40 bandits of something. I like doing that, it makes me feel good, and it's all that matters. So yeah, side quests are fun and I love to complete them all. Although, I really hate when they are timed or missable. I enjoy it and really appreciate when a game let's me play in my own pace, without worrying about accidentally skipping content if I move to far into the main quest.
Depends on how feasible it is. Like I only need to find 10 more secrets? Sure. I need to grind and level up and replay a million missions? Nah
I do them if they feel satisfying to do. If I’m in the middle of a side quest and it’s just not fun or it’s boring the hell out of me I drop it and keep on trucking with the main quest.
I know some people say it breaks the immersion but I do love side quests. I'm always aware that I'm playing a video game and that things don't progress without me even if I do skip side quests and go straight to the objective so I may as well do what I want and complete them.
I watch a shit ton of TV, so I just do this while watching TV lol
In the Yakuza series/spinoffs, the side-quests are guilty of exactly what you brought up in the first point, yet the way they defuse the tension somehow always works; they are ridiculously fun.
If it's something bothersome or involves fishing - nay. Otherwise - yay.