Why Do So Many Open-World Games Forget How To Make Good Side Quests?

Fetch quests are the most typical side missions you’ll find in role-playing games, open-world titles, and massively multiplayer online games. These usually require players to collect items or defeat enemies, but the rewards are often quite small. While they aren’t completely useless – they can help you earn money or experience points – they generally aren’t very exciting.

Many games try new things with side quests, offering unique twists on familiar tasks like fetch quests. It’s often surprising that more games don’t borrow these ideas. Titles like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Red Dead Redemption 2 stand out not just as great open-world experiences with engaging quests, but because the variety of those quests keeps players hooked. More games should take inspiration from these examples, and here’s why.

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Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

Deliveries That Matter

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach centers around completing deliveries. The core gameplay involves transporting packages between isolated bunkers, which establishes connections and builds relationships. Players continue making deliveries to improve these relationships, unlocking access to new blueprints for 3D-printed items. These items range from vehicles and weapons to helpful tools like antigravity nodes, which reduce backpack weight and make traveling on foot easier.

Beyond traditional missions, players can discover bandit camps filled with valuable supplies to aid their settlements. These camps can be tackled with either guns blazing or a stealthy approach. What truly sets this system apart is its excellent design – it’s a significant improvement over similar delivery systems in other games. It takes the familiar concept of fetch quests and gives them real purpose, making it a standout feature of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach that other developers should look to emulate.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Mini-Games That Expand The Story

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth features typical side quests, such as collecting items or defeating enemies to help people and improve areas. However, the most engaging quests are tied to the game’s mini-games. Throughout the game, players can catch chocobos in each region by sneaking up on them. Once caught, these chocobos allow access to new, previously unreachable areas.

Queen’s Blood is a card game within Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that also functions as the game’s most extensive side quest. Players compete against various characters, culminating in a surprising final showdown. Another quest involves searching for Gilgamesh, and it’s surprisingly varied, including elements of real-time strategy and a chase after a massive sand creature. Unlike many games with throwaway side quests, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth really develops these stories to make players care about the characters involved, and these are just a few examples of the rich content the game offers.

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Animal Crossing: Hawaii

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth features many side activities, or mini-games, that can take a significant amount of time. These aren’t just about getting rewards from characters; they often include engaging stories and interactions. For instance, the game has a collectible battle system similar to Pokémon, where you recruit enemies and compete in tournaments. There’s also a major quest where you travel to Dondoko Island and work with the locals to rebuild it, constructing homes and improving the island’s facilities.

While most of the game unfolds through turns, battles on the island happen in real-time, and players will need to fend off bandits. There’s also a quest that involves traveling around Honolulu to make friends with the locals. These side activities – like a Pokémon-style collecting element, building relationships with a town, and a life simulation game – are surprisingly well-developed in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and they’re just a small taste of the game’s incredible variety.

Batman: Arkham City

Put On Your Detective Hat

What makes Batman: Arkham City truly special is how much it respects fans who have followed Batman in the comics and animated series for years. While the main story has its core villains to defeat, the game also includes many other iconic Batman enemies in optional side quests – you can choose to help them or ignore them completely. Instead of simply stating problems, the side quests are presented as mysteries, which fits perfectly with Batman’s reputation as the world’s greatest detective.

In Batman: Arkham City, players explore different locations and solve crimes that escalate into conflicts with unexpected villains – think a surprise appearance like the Mad Hatter. While not every villain has a major storyline – The Riddler, for example, offers more side content – the game excels at letting players feel like detectives. The ability to scan environments and reconstruct crime scenes with advanced technology is much more engaging than many typical game quests.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

A Fantasy Detective

Like a Batman game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt focuses on investigation and problem-solving. Players won’t just be collecting items or fighting monsters; every quest involves detective work. What starts as a typical RPG task usually unfolds into something more complex and engaging.

The quests in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt aren’t simple – they demand players pay close attention and make difficult choices based on what they learn. For instance, you might have to decide whether to show mercy to a soldier who abandoned his duty to be with his newborn child, or side with those who want him punished for deserting. These quests are complex, diverse, and consistently feature compelling stories.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Gathering Allies

In Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, players will complete missions starting from their headquarters, Mother Base. These missions include a variety of tasks like eliminating enemies in open areas, rescuing prisoners of war, investigating strange locations, and collecting resources. While many of these missions are typical for video games, the rescue missions are particularly engaging, as this type of quest isn’t often featured in games.

What makes these rescue missions special is that the people you save become valuable members of your team. You can bring rescued civilians and soldiers back to Mother Base and assign them to tasks – sending them on missions or having them build equipment to strengthen your mercenary force. These missions are rewarding because they directly contribute to building a better base, and collecting materials through them is also essential for growth.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Stranger, Stranger

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a fantastic open-world Western game. While activities like robbing banks and hunting animals for profit are fun, the most engaging parts of the game are the stranger missions. These missions introduce you to interesting characters as you approach their locations, a feature common in many open-world games where points of interest are marked on the map.

It’s always a pleasant surprise to encounter strangers while traveling across the vast, open landscapes. These encounters lead to unique missions where you might help a writer interview legendary gunslingers, locate vanished entertainers, or solve disturbing murder cases. Each of these stranger missions is carefully designed with strong writing, aiming for a similar level of storytelling quality as found in the game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

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2026-04-14 22:49