Kill 10 of X and deliver item Y to person Z.

[achtungexplosiv]

During a lull at the Notting Hill Carnival yesterday, there was a comment in the conversation about quests in games and how unoriginal they generally are. Whilst MMOs were the broad topic, this runs through pretty much all game genres that have such concepts such as RPGs with side quests, RTSes with multiple objectives and FPSes with missions.

Comments

[jon_a_five]

Some side quests can be awesome. The Loyalty side quests in Mass Effect 3 give real depth to the party characters. And I agree with exploring being more fun. In Fallout 3 I'd spend whole evenings missing the main story because I'd got distracted by a building on the horizon and ended up having a little adventure.

[achtungexplosiv]

Heh, I'm absolutely terrible for that. I can leave the 'main' questline for days of playtime because I'm chasing something else and stumnble upon other thigns to do or side-quests. It makes the worlds seem more alive if I have the freedom to do that.

Also, Mass Effect 3 :-O

[quilluck]

It all depends on how they are implemented and how well they tie into the story. To me a good side quest is something that expands on the game's story or setting, but isn't strictly necessary to get the full experience.

Mass Effect 1's sidequest system was terrible in spite of this. Mostly because you had to use that friggin Mako, which was a hell of an effort to fiddle around with, and the recycling of maps for the missions and being so lazy as to not even blot out the area of the map that they had closed off for this particular mission.

Deus Ex Human Revolution has been doing sidequests right in my opinion (so far). It spices up the game's story and atmosphere, adds a bit of spice and it is not just Another Quest To Do, it really feels like most of them could easily be part of the main story arc both in story, gameplay and design.

Sadly, plenty of games just tack them on since it is almost mandatory these days and there is no inspiration behind them at all. But despite that, I am such a sidequestaholic that I will do them anyways

[achtungexplosiv]

Side quests end up tickling my completionist bone in a manner similar to achivements. I don't like messy ! in my minimap and I want to clean them all out :-P Curses to games that have a maximum mission log size (looking at Champions Online and Rift here...)

But then again games don't have to have masses of quests and missions either, see AO which has a tiny fraction compared to everything else out there and the mission system is 100% player-chosen.

[jon_a_five]

I preferred Mass Effect's Mako exploration ("Oooh! A crashed probe!") than ME2's planet scanning yawn (although some of the hidden missions were neat).

[quilluck]

Oh, the exploration bit was great. I do love taking my time and roaming around places in games if I am allowed. But the Mako handled awkwardly, lessening that experience somewhat on the more rocky planets you would visit.

ME2's planet scanning was definitely not a good feature either. But it was less frustrating than getting the Mako around :-)