Extra Punctuation: Sidequests Good and Bad

[Falseprophet]

Pokémon anime damn it.

Calm down weeabo. English speakers just use the word anime to distinguish Japanese cartoons to others. Calling Pokemon a cartoon isn't wrong. Just like a Japanese person could generalise all cartoons as anime despite the origin.

They do. Anime is the Japanese term for all animation. Disney animated movies are called anime in Japan.

I tend to distinguish between Japanese anime that has been significantly edited and modified for Western markets (e.g., Voltron, Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets, Robotech, the 4Kids version of One Piece, etc.), and anime which is more or less unchanged from the original with subtitles or dubbing (Beast King Golion, Space Battleship Yamato, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Super Dimension Fortress Macross/Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross/Genesis Climber Mospeada, the unedited release of One Piece, etc.). The former I call "cartoons"; the latter I call "anime". Not that it really matters.

 

[vivster]

Kinda makes you wonder how those isolated communities can be self-sufficient, as even most real-world townships relied on some form of trade and reliance on heroes is impractical. Further, it begs the question of how these people are so knowledgeable of places they can't go without dying and why any of this is less immersion-breaking than any other contrived system.

it's not immersion breaking if it is realistic inside the game world
it's absolutely plausible for a fantasy town to completely rely on heroes and other guards to protect them at their daily work... because it's extremely dangerous outside

it's NOT plausible for NPCs standing at the same point where just something bad happened to them waiting for someone to pass by instead of seeking shelter in the next town
e.g.

What makes me much more likely to do a sidequest is when I'm surprised by it in the field. If I'm driving through the countryside and a distraught woman runs out, flags me down and tearfully informs me that her husband has just been dragged into that shack over there by a mutant lobster antelope

if that happens more than once in a game i'll get suspicious of the game just setting me up
thus breaking immersion
i mean how likely is it to run into someone in a vast open world who has "JUST been attacked"

 

[GonzoGamer]

To the extent that side-quests are available, they should be SIDE-quests and purely for entertainment, extra non-essential gear/cash/xp, and exploration.

Nothing annoys me more than "side-quests" that are actually necessary. The GTA series has it right. You can do the pizza-delivery quests if you want and the rewards are worth the time and effort, but it's 100% optional and not necessary to finish the main storyline. On the other end of the scale is the Final Fantasy series where it seems that EVERYTHING is a side-quest and most of them are mandatory to successfully complete the game (I'm looking at you, FF7 and your bullshiat Golden Saucer games to get Omnislash and Knights of the Round Table!).

That's one of the things that I loved about San Andreas: some of the side-quests were pretty well hidden. I just grabbed some random old car by the gas station and all of a sudden I discover that there are pimp missions. One of my favorite parts of that game was slinging hoes while driving around listening to Master Sounds.
But that's the thing, it was all optional...which is why I don't understand those people who complain that San Andreas had too much content: most of the content was optional.
It's like people who complain about restaurants that serve large portions. If you don't want that much, show some self control and don't eat it.

 

[LobsterFeng]

Pokémon anime damn it.

If he watched the 4kids one then yeah I'd call it a cartoon too because of how much they changed it.

Spoiler: These donuts are great!

OT: Oh well then he's going to like Batman: Arkham City... at least I think he will.

 

[weirdee]

May be getting sidetracked here, but I played Radiant Historia recently, and the reason why I liked the sidequests there was that aside from the organic nature of finding people in need as a result of unfolding events rather than just any kind of arbitrary issue (which tucks them neatly into the main story), is the fact that you have to completely screw with causality in order to solve most of them, since they involve snapping back and forth between points on your timeline. In fact, some of them will actually notice that what you've done to help them is technically impossible, but are entirely happy to shrug off the means for the end result.

Then it turns out that those isolated acts of kindness do end up actually affecting things later on. Joke's on you!

I'd like to note that you are in fact, just a time traveling delivery boy still, but the fact is, you're the only one able to do it, and the abilities you were given are granted for that specific responsibility to repair damage done to time by the big bad, so they really do need your help.

 

[ImBigBob]

If you want a more recent cartoon to use as an example, try Avatar: The Last Airbender.

...Yeah, that's all I had to contribute to this thread.

 

[Akihiko]

To the extent that side-quests are available, they should be SIDE-quests and purely for entertainment, extra non-essential gear/cash/xp, and exploration.

Nothing annoys me more than "side-quests" that are actually necessary. The GTA series has it right. You can do the pizza-delivery quests if you want and the rewards are worth the time and effort, but it's 100% optional and not necessary to finish the main storyline. On the other end of the scale is the Final Fantasy series where it seems that EVERYTHING is a side-quest and most of them are mandatory to successfully complete the game (I'm looking at you, FF7 and your bullshiat Golden Saucer games to get Omnislash and Knights of the Round Table!).

When I first completed the game, I completed it fine without Omnislash and Knights of the Round. So they certainly aren't required.

Personally I'm not a big fan of sidequests in general unless they add story or give some nice dialogue. Otherwise they're just often monotonous and boring. As an example, Xenoblade is renowned for it's ridiculous amount of side quests. Around 400 to be exact. However, I would have much rathered them to only have about 100, and all those 100 be extremely well made, story, dialogue and all. Rather than 400 average sidequests.

Mind you even games which have interesting sidequests, like Yakuza 4 aren't perfect. You needed a guide of sorts to be able to find all the sidequests in that, since the tracking wasn't brilliant.

 

[blindthrall]

RDR had great sidequests because half of them were traps. Now that's an underused idea.

 

[duchaked]

yeah I've got to say RDR had it down when it came to delegating sidequests

 

[Arppis]

I love sidequests.

It's always fun to have more to do than just the main story. Something simpler and entertaining. It's all good fun!

 

[Worr Monger]

I miss the days of Morrowind... I enjoyed that it gave you nothing but a description of the quest. Maybe the name of an area, or a person... sometimes just a general direction.

I enjoyed the fact that it didn't mark the exact spot on your map. It allowed you to explore and discover on your own. Sure, sometimes it was difficult to find things with this system... but it brought a great sense of accomplishment when you found your goal.

I don't like the continuing trend of mapping the EXACT location of a side quest (Hell, even the main quest) on your map and having the game say "GO HERE, DUMMY"

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Well we already knew you watched Pokemon.
Probably most of us here did, including me.

So yeah, valid points on a worthy topic as always!

 

[Sylocat]

Hmm, I'm surprised that he didn't drop any hints as to the topic of tomorrow's ZP episode; he's been doing that a lot lately, and it's fun.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

While that's true, there's the other problem, exhibited by games like Prototype, Infamous, and Just Cause 2--where you might occasionally forget about the story altogether, because the side quests are the meat of the game. No one I know, when shown Prototype or Just Cause 2, ran straight for the missions. Several people forgot wholesale what the game was about, plot-wise, and it's not hard to see why. Consider a sample of gameplay from JC2: on the way to a mission, you find a stronghold, on the way to the stronghold, you find a village. Just past the village, you find an airport, and suddenly you're on the other side of the map, surfing a 777 into a seaside shanty, or doing circuits in of a highway in an ultralite. You have long since neglected any iota of this being a time-sensitive affair, and now exist in the game world independently, and purposelessly so, with no motive other than "blow shit up". And while blowing shit up might be the entirety of the game, it is really just the side quest to the main plot--but the side quests become the game here.

Well, maybe 'problem' isn't the right word. But, for someone who occasionally rags about games breaking flow, or being congruent, or having an unfocused game, then bringing up the occurrence that a game's ancillary material becomes it's primary material should be something you discuss alongside the right and wrong way a developer can use side quests.

 

[mjc0961]

Absolutely anything can distract me on the way to my actual duty in Infamous

Like what. There's nothing distracting at all in inFamous. You have required plot missions and you have required clean up the city missions (well, I supposed you could not do them if you want to be constantly raped by enemies and never be able to get anywhere in the game). Beyond that, there is nothing. Okay, very rarely you will encounter people trying to hang some dude, and if you're bad Cole, NPCs will throw rocks at you which don't do any damage or impede you in any way.

inFamous is not a sandbox at all. The only thing to distract players from their actual duty in inFamous is how damn awful the game is and the player's desire to rip the disc from their PS3 and put a fun game in instead.

 

[FreakSheet]

Something tells me this will be Yahtzee's reaction to people finding out he watched pokemon...

 

[RandV80]

i would like to disagree to that

for me it would be a total break of immersion if there are side quest just popping up along my way as if they "just waited for me"
it seems just logical that if you have some urgent(or not so urgent) problem you'd go to a place where there are many possible problem solvers to said problems... for example...a town!
i would declare anyone who just waits in the wildness for someone instead go looking for help in a town outright stupid

it's just the symbiosis of the the whole quest thingies
quest givers are weak and have problems and cannot go outside or they get killed
quest solvers don't have problems, lots of time and are strong enough to go outside

Yes I've come to call this the Harry Truman effect (from the Jim Carey movie), and the worst offender tends to be the Elder Scrolls series. It's one thing to build a large open ended game world to explore, but when the impression starts sinking in that everything is revolving around you the immersion starts to shatter.

Haven't played RDR to see it matches up though.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Pokémon anime damn it.

Anime is the cartoon extension of the art style that is called manga, not a genre or medium in and of itself.

Wrong, manga isn't an art-style. It can't be an art-style because a large number of wildly different art-styles are featured in things which are all considered "manga" (if you don't believe me, look at Crayon Shin Chan and then look at Lone Wolf and Cub). It's just the Japanese word for "comic book" (the Japanese reading of the Chinese word, if you want to get technical about it). Actually, if I were to walk down to the local bookstore right now (I'm living in Japan at the moment) I would find that all of their manga shelves are labeled with the English word "comics" written in katakana.

Similarly, "anime" is just the Japanese word for "animation" and is used in Japanese to refer to any animated production, regardless of its origin. some people use it in English to specify Japanese animation, but no one is under any obligation to do so.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Just Cause 2 didn't really have side quests did it? Just complete this village or that base.

Oh no wait, I guess Faction missions count don't they. Still fun as hell, and JC2 is one of my all time favourite games.