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Let's talk about AAA RPG side quests and why so many are still shit.
- Thread starter BossAttack
- Start date
I don't find it THAT bad like some people said in FFVIIr. While many of the quests are very basic go here fight/find these, the game at least made it easy and straightforward to do, you do them, you get the option to immediately return to the quest giver. Some of them opens up new areas to explore, some leads to new enemies to fight (mostly latter side quests) including a really cool secret boss. It's more excuse to engage in the combat. If you're someone like me who enjoyed the combat, it's fine. Some of the quests even leads to other quests, made inter-related in some ways with some story connection. Some quests provide a bit of world building as well.
It is really hard to come up with hundreds of compelling reasons to kill things in games, and thats what story in AA/AAA boils down to. The games with good side content are those with settings that allow the writers to crib from other sources. Witcher 3 used a lot of stuff from western lit and history (as well as Sapkowski who used his own sources), rdr2 had the massive body of western fiction and film to draw upon, control used SCP collective fiction.
With worlds like FF that are trying to be their own unique thing not based on genres with mountains of material to draw from, the writers job is exponentially harder. You need to give those writers a bit more slack. I imagine HZD is the same, as there is a lot less post apocalyptic fiction that takes place after nature has fully reclaimed the planet. I didn't play past the audio log lore dump section so idk.
And, just as an aside, many players like 'bad' sidequests if they like the gameplay.
:( Single player big budget games are tuned to match the player. There is no need to treadmill as the game adjusts itself to keep the feeling of doable challenge no matter how much or little side content you do...well, assuming they aren't trying to push booster dlc and the like, then they make you work or pay.
With worlds like FF that are trying to be their own unique thing not based on genres with mountains of material to draw from, the writers job is exponentially harder. You need to give those writers a bit more slack. I imagine HZD is the same, as there is a lot less post apocalyptic fiction that takes place after nature has fully reclaimed the planet. I didn't play past the audio log lore dump section so idk.
And, just as an aside, many players like 'bad' sidequests if they like the gameplay.
:( Single player big budget games are tuned to match the player. There is no need to treadmill as the game adjusts itself to keep the feeling of doable challenge no matter how much or little side content you do...well, assuming they aren't trying to push booster dlc and the like, then they make you work or pay.
While I agree with you that sidequests should be better.
I think there is a place for the type of sidequest you presented for FF VII:R, sometimes you just want to go out fight a stronger than usual enemy to explore the gameplay. Not every single side quest should be a piece of narrative that is as well crafted as the main story.
But yeah, when every sidequest is like that I see the problem.
I think there is a place for the type of sidequest you presented for FF VII:R, sometimes you just want to go out fight a stronger than usual enemy to explore the gameplay. Not every single side quest should be a piece of narrative that is as well crafted as the main story.
But yeah, when every sidequest is like that I see the problem.
I mean obviously that would be ideal. Who wouldn't want that? I'm just saying with FF7, the side quests more or less replaced the grinding you'd typically do in just about any jrpg I can think of.
And yet, FF7R and several JRPGs despite costing millions to make have worse side quests than Kickstarter RPGs like Pllars of Eternity 2, DOS2 and KCD.
You can be constrained by budget and still make good quests.
This is what KS did
While multi-million Square Enix is still stuck with killing rats and analyzing species.
You can still write a good side quest even on a tight budget, look at Yoko Taro's games or the Yakuza series. Sure, mechanically they would probably be nothing special, unless you put some money behind them, but the writing doesn't have to be literally as primitive as "some new monsters appeared in town, go to that place on the map and kill 5 of those".
Hire better writers so that you dialogues in side content do not end up looking like smth your coding interns conjured up after 3 sleepless nights in a row.
Hire better writers so that you dialogues in side content do not end up looking like smth your coding interns conjured up after 3 sleepless nights in a row.
As with all things, this is probably the most likely answer, right? Games could use side quests to expand on characters, the world and lore but they don't. Imagine seeing a movie and then going back to read the book to expand upon everything and gain better insight but you could do it all inside a videogame, if you wanted to but if most people don't want to then why bother? People are happy with their one dimensional characters doing cool shit in a flat world while fetching 10 beast steaks.
Maybe devs need to solve the issue of players just sticking to main content and skipping the rest before they put time and effort into making quality side content.
Also game dev is not a contiguous process I imagine. Things get chopped and changed at the last minute and being able to do meaningful side content can be hard when you designing something only to have it not be in the final game anymore. Its probably easier to have the junior staff work on template quests concurrently with the senior staff that can be easily inserted into the final product near the end instead of tying up the main team into handling both the main game and side content.
As long as the gameplay is good and engaging on its own and the side content allows me to spend time messing with it Im good I think. Its when the side content and gameplay barely gets the pulse beating is when we're in trouble.
Really....those games didn't have cutscenes/CGs, polished 3rd person combat with bosses each with different mechanics, fully animated NPCs, fully voiced dialogues, etc. The only reason those kickstarter games tend to shine in this part is because that's the only thing it focused on ---- quests, or rather writing works. There's not alot of moving parts required for that.
DOS2 is a much bigger RPG than a lot of JRPGs when it comes to dialogue, writing and actual world building and it's fully voiced despite having millions of words in the script.
The key is not only production value, but also good writing, this is the thing, the Yakuza series is an AA series at best and all the side quests are much better than a lot of JRPGs out there, despite not needing AAA production value. No one is asking for 100 side quests with AAA cinematics, cutscenes or unique bosses, because this is way too much for any developer on earth.
This, people seem to think that good quests are only happening because you are throwing money at them, but that's not the case at ALL.
BotW is side quests done right - something that takes the main mechanics of the game and puts a unique spin on them (eventide, yuga clan) while also doing a bit of storytelling. And completely organic discovery as well (though that's just that game)
I thought Witcher 3s were underwhelming, and each one very samey in its "go somewhere, use witcher senses, go back to quest giver, go somewhere, use Witcher senses, fight mini boss" formula
and often I think they're not needed. There was loads in god of war that I missed not because they were no good, but just that the main story was enough
I thought Witcher 3s were underwhelming, and each one very samey in its "go somewhere, use witcher senses, go back to quest giver, go somewhere, use Witcher senses, fight mini boss" formula
and often I think they're not needed. There was loads in god of war that I missed not because they were no good, but just that the main story was enough
Hard disagree from me, the side quests in BOTW are uniformly terrible. The storytelling is very poor, the writing is uninspired and the tasks you have to complete aren't very exciting either. I struggle to remember a single interesting side quest from the game and I played it a week ago.
horses for courses but did you really not enjoy eventide (and apologies if you are still to play it)
......and Prey......that game ties it's side content into the story so well so don't realise you're doing it half the time.
Yakuza is a mechanically simple game that requires less effort and resources to create a side quest without a significant drop in quality than something like Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed or Red Dead, etc.
You're out of your mind if you thinks side quest on Yakuza takes even a tenth of the time and cost as a side quest on a AAA game does. A single employee could make an average side quest in Yakuza in a day.
The problem is this; Sidequests by nature have to be non-sequiters because they are inherently skippable. They can't have major character revelations or development for the protagonists because it won't be acknowledged in the story. And if it is then that side content is no longer side content.
I've only played Yakuza 0 so maybe that isn't true for the others, but the vast majority of the "substories" sidequests are trash. The "sidequests" that are legitimately good are precisely the ones that bring something worthwhile in terms of gameplay, like the Cabaret Club Czar or Real Estate Royale, with their own little systems and mechanics for you to play with.
Even on the writing side of things, the characters and their struggles are a lot more impactful if you're spending hours with them by playing with these new systems. A throwaway story about a character you won't even remember their name may be worth it in the moment, but it has no lasting value, no deeper quality to it. At the end of the day, the side character that ended up in that community top 10 was Yuki, not "shy dude #13".
Even on the writing side of things, the characters and their struggles are a lot more impactful if you're spending hours with them by playing with these new systems. A throwaway story about a character you won't even remember their name may be worth it in the moment, but it has no lasting value, no deeper quality to it. At the end of the day, the side character that ended up in that community top 10 was Yuki, not "shy dude #13".
No one said that lmao
There's a middle ground between "AAA production value side quests" and "Go collect X thing for me" or "Go kill z monsters".
Yakuza is just an example that shows that you can make interesting side quests even with low budgets.
The key here is having "interesting stories and expanding the world" through side quests and you can do this with good writers, no amount of budget will make them good if your writers are not able to create good stories.
Sidequests are skippable if you design them to be skippable lol
Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim side quests are designed to have an impact on the story and on the factions to begin with and in party based RPGs, side quests are used to expand companions stories and relations and you can use all the infos you gathered in certain situations to agree or disagree with said companions, as seen in Mass Effect, Dragon Age and the Divinity series.
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That's probably part of why the optional content in From games feels so well integrated, storywise. When the game's entire story is optional, they don't really need to follow these rules, because there's not even the expectation that most players will know what the hell happened when the credits roll. They can hide whatever information they want behind whatever content they want.
They put the fleshed out side quests as part of the main storyline. Like Jesse's quest that's sandwiched between two action setpieces and doesn't really add to the main plot otherwise.
But that costs more money.
Having a character in FF7 talk to another in a cutscene costs not insignificant development hours and budget compared to Yakuzas lower quality and reusable animations. And that adds up.
I don't think I ever did Eventide. It's definitely possible this is one of the few decent side quests in the game, in that case I'm sad to have missed it.
I think Tarrey Town perfectly encapsulates my issues with the game's side content. Your task is to help this guy build a town: great! What does that entail? Gather more than 100 wood bundles and one person in each of the four zones of the game for reasons that defy common sense. BotW likes to get whimsical but whenever a side quest sends me to the other side of the world it would be nice if it was for a good reason. This is one of the major side quests in BotW yet has you only perform busywork and offers no interesting information on the world whatsoever. The only cool part of this quest is that it changes the world.
Most other side quests require you to gather an item for equally uninteresting reasons and deliver it to the person for a small reward. Sometimes there are riddles involved but rarely do these side quests expand upon the lore of the gameworld. They're just not very interesting to me. I'm a hero trying to save the world. Why should I be fetching goat butter for you to cook a dish?
And yet for such a big game you don't find anyone praising DOS2 for having an amazing boss fight or great looking cutscenes.
Yakuza questing is pretty simple though and it's not even voiced or properly animated. FF7r sidequests seems aimed at character development and world building and the quests simplicity contributes well enough that plays into the game's strength which is its combat system.
Which part are you addressing? You dont have to have anything revelatory in side quests beyond just giving the player a bigger sense of the world including the mundane. Fallout New Vegas does this well because you deal with the NCR or Legion but the sidequests can illuminate both factions and how they work within the game world if only for reasons of story and not gameplay related.
I think that developers might hesitate to spend a lot of time and thought on content that most people will not play.
Fallout New Vegas is a very different sort of game though than what the OP is talking about.
Fair enough. I'm not a story guy really so I'm just looking for the gameplay, and I guess I like botws cos they use them as an opportunity to mix it up (eventide is a purely gameplay experience really)
which also explains why I was so underwhelmed with Witcher's as these are purely story vehicles with no interesting gameplay iteration
Because Divinity OS2 is designed like a proper RPG and excels in being an RPG? And having amazing boss fights and great looking cutscenes does not make your game a good RPG?
There's a reason why DOS2 or TW3 scored 93 while the "amazing great looking cutscenes and boss fight" titles, aka FF XV, KH3 and FF7R scored way less.
Of course, but this Square Enix and Final Fantasy, we are not talking about a Nippon Ichi title.
Using the budget excuse for SE and FF is too dumb, this is a series that sells close to 10 million copies at every major entry, they don't have to be cheap on this.
I thought I was agreeing with you but now it seems like Im not? Idk, w/e. I guess I was not really taking about this game but on games as a whole and agreeing with you that budget and potential player engagement limits the scope of side content.
But for some reason, apparently this does not work with FF7R because the game cannot expand on its world using side content. Good to know.
Well this isn't quite true. One of the most popular characters in the most recent Yakuza popularity poll done in Japan was from one single side story in 0 - the cult side quest. Never did quite understand the love for him, but he's brought back in 6 so someone sure loved him. His darn cultists manage to slither into Kiwami and 7 as well.
Also, since you've only played 0 you might not realise this but many side characters in Yakuza aren't one and done characters, instead they reappear through several games. Just a couple of examples:
Akimoto/Mizuki - these two end up in several weird shenanigans throughout the early games, where Kiryu and Haruka meet them in side stories in Yakuza 1, 2 and 3 (with previous plot points carrying over from each game). While they don't reappear after that in main games, both show up again in the Samurai games Kenzan and Ishin (with Kenzan again using them for a side story, but end up as brief main plot characters in Ishin).
Speaking of side characters crossing over into the main plot - 1/Kiwami has Dojima's wife appear in one of the more fleshed out side stories. She's so damn good that she's brought back for a bigger role in 2's main plot.
Heck, Yakuza 4's Kiryu stories are basically almost entirely taking previous (side) characters and bringing them back for "greatest hits" style side stories - from the colour gangs from 1, Date's daughter and florists son, fake Kiryu etc. And then you have 0, Kiwami 6 and 7 which have certain characters who have plot lines that span decades of in game time for their side stories! Though the best of those is Pocket Fighter and that definitely fits your "mini game" thing you mentioned above.
But on the whole, side stories in Yakuza don't need to be tied to mini games to be impactful. One of 7's funniest side stories isn't tied to a mini game at all. Likewise 0 and Kiwami both have "adult magazine" quests that sorta tie together - not based on a mini game, just Kiryu's absurd logic.
And heck, Yakuza 3's best side story isn't a mini game - but rather a full on Ace Attorney style plot line (and come to think of it, 3 also had that cool side story that ties back to the first 5 minutes of Yakuza 1...)
Different developers located in a different part of the world having different philosophy in regards to how they design an RPG is really a surprise for you?
Ah, see I thought you were disagreeing with me so I apologise for starting a confusing tangent.
I wasn't saying that a game can't expand on its world with side content, but whenever it does this it's developers are making a choice to exclude that content from the main story. So generally it tends to get less care an attention compared to the main story, because less players are gonna bother with it, and as a result what you learn about the world tends to be of less importance.
Like the main story says a faction is bad. The side quest could tell you what sort of bad stuff they do but you don't need to know that really.
Which is not to say it doesn't improve the world and story, but it generally has to be ancillerey.
If poor side quest design is part of your philosophy then I think that's a major problem.
Another aspect of the "story vs gameplay" debate for sidequests that is often ignored, is that gameplay also takes time and effort. Sounds obvious, I know, but you'll often see people describing these quests with shit tier stories as "no effort put into them". OP themselves say FFVIIR's feel like they were made by an intern with a $2 budget. Hyperbole to get the point across, obviously, but still shows the mindset.
As if:
- Creating a unique enemy/encounter
- A part of the map that has no use aside of that optional fight
- Balancing that for all difficulties
- Creating the equipment/materia that you get as a reward that is often unique to this quest and changes the way you play
- And playtesting and balancing all of that to make sure it doesn't break anything else
The part that likely takes the most effort is the dialogue system, but that is so widely used in the whole game that I imagine it's a fair bit more automated as a tool than having to create new materia from scratch, or a new enemy type. Maybe I'm wrong and it is actually harder, but I bet the people assuming it is are more likely not considering the above than just actually people who know how these things are made.
Another thing to consider: "sidequests that are indistinguishable from main quests" isn't really a fair standard, and benefits games with really boring cutscene direction. If characters looking at each other and talking in a sidequest can't be distinguished from a main quest, that says more about how boring looking the main quests are than anything else. Writing quality? Sure, that's a compliment, but the content as a whole? I'm not so sure.
It's a little harder to make your sidequests feel just like main quests when your main quest "characters talking to each other" cutscenes look like this:
And I didn't even pick a particularly good one.
On the other hand, the "sidequests that rival main quests" of Witcher 3 look like this:
This is obviously at least a little subjective, but to me it's a monumental step down in cutscene direction and especially character animation. It takes a lot more work to match a main story cutscene in FFVIIR than it does in Witcher 3, at least in animation quality. But if they downgraded every story scene but instead made the sidequests look like B/C-tier cutscenes, we'd be praising them for the consistency? No, thanks.
Because games media value writing more than production values or combat? Not sure how that objectively makes them better games, even inside a specific genre.
I feel like obvious codification into "main quests" and "side quests" might actually be detrimental to the play experience. I've actually come to the point where I kind of dislike checklist questlogs as well? I'd love if things could get weirder and more organic and fuzzier again.
Have players stumble upon things, which might or might not evolve into other things. Stop treating games as content-checklists.
Have players stumble upon things, which might or might not evolve into other things. Stop treating games as content-checklists.
I actually didn't do that quest, so I'll give you that, maybe that one is indeed great, I honestly wouldn't know.
I can't comment on the games I didn't play, obviously, though I can't wait to play them, LOVED 0, but the adult magazine quest in Yakuza 0 is kind of garbage, lmao. If that's part of the higher tier of quests, I'll definitely not change my mind with the other games.
The main quest and more elaborate side content are incredible, though, as is the city, and more than enough to carry me through the less than stellar combat and substories.
Fighting Mr. Shakedown between refreshes of my Real Estate Royale turns felt legitimately much more engaging than doing any substory, that's likely when I realized that I should stop doing those. I did fight Mr. Shakedown like a million times, though.
Amen.
That does require better level design than we see in the vast majority of the actually good RPGs, though.
No they don't and there's plenty of games on that top MC to prove that.
Look at the first 5 games on the 2020 hall of fame, do you think any of them reviewed as high as they did because the ''games media value writing more then production values or combat?''
This is some bullshit when you have titles like DMC 5, DOOM Eternal, Ori 2, Nioh with excellent combat scoring 88-90.
Let's stop with this excuse to justify poor writing.
Well yes, making a good AAA game is expensive and takes a lot of effort. I don't think anyone here is claiming otherwise. Yet there is still a very large gap between your example of making side-quests indistinguishable from the main quest and the example shown in the OP. There are a thousand ways to make that dog quest more interesting without expensive CGI cutscenes or intricately animated dialogue scenes.
They're not RPGs, though? Maybe Nioh 2 is, I guess, so I stand corrected for that one.
But are you really telling me games media don't value writing more than combat when reviewing RPGs? I'm not even saying that as a bad thing, it's just how it is. If it was the other way around, Witcher 3 would receive far lower scores than it deserves, while KH III wouldn't get its well deserved criticism on the godawful writing.
That is true, I agree. But when the counter example is precisely a quest where people do nothing but stand still and talk with short-reverse shot for 6 minutes, there's clearly a double standard going on, where effort is only recognized if it goes into writing/story. A quest that spends no time whatsoever with combat is a much better example of how to put more effort into quests than one with a unique fight and gameplay reward. Show examples of quests that do both, if the argument is "they can do both", instead of showing examples of games also having to choose what do to with their limited budget for sidequests.
Let's talk about entirely optional areas like the Forsaken Castle Cainhurst or the Painted World of Ariamis, because those are miles ahead of FFVIIR when it comes to side content for gameplay. No need to reduce the discussion to "this game focuses on the wrong things", which is what this ends up being if we compare it to games that are just as lacking in gameplay as FFVIIR is in narrative.
Yes they don't, because we have some good examples called Dark Souls series and the press didn't give a fuck about the story, nor talked about the story when reviewing all games, it was all about the excellent combat, bosses and level design and the same goes to Diablo II and Diablo III.
TW3 excelled in pretty much every aspect, maybe the combat was the weakest aspect just like Skyrim and Fallout 3/NV back in the days, because as a complete package they are good games, can't say the same with KH3, when not only the story is some dumb shit, but even the combat and the encounters were pretty disappointing before the patch that fixed the combat.
Not really when the strength of the game comes elsewhere. FFXIV is the only game I can think of where japanese developers adopting western mentality in designing the questline and it elevate the genre into a new height in terms of narrative/writing.
I would point out that I can't remember a single thing that happens in the main story of DOS 2, the focus of that game was completely different from FFVII. The number of games I've played that have an expansive and memorable main story that is the main focus of the game as well as well written side quests is extremely small
Why are bethesda RPGS so highly rated then ? The writting in these games is poor, so is the combat. Maybe , most critics looks at the end result? The sum of its parts and judge how specific game executed on what it was trying to achieve rather focusing one a single main thing .