Quest for the Sidequest!

[CharlesA]

Er, the whole Biggoron Sword quest in Ocarina Of Time.

And any unlockable door in a game where picklocking is a skill, I'm looking at you KotOR.

Also, the unbeatable castle gards in Chrono Trigger.

As far as Fallout 3 goes, it's forgivable because the fetch quests themselves often could be handled in many different ways or skipped altogheter, like the Little Lamplight gates or the fetching of the disk for 3 Dog. It's rarely (never?) an actua key to a door, but more along the lines of triggering certain events in particular.

 

[xqxm]

Haha, well written.

You asked what the most absurd key-fetch quest i've ever witnessed was - and it struck me, i've seen some people go for one in real life. Whether it was out of stupidity or ingenious manipularity, i do not know.

I'm speaking of the company CipSoft GmbH. They're most known for developing the obscure MMORPG Tibia, which has been in operation since '97. They also apparantly made the worlds first mobile phone MMORPG, but that's not what i'm here to rant about.

No, you see, Tibia was becoming plagued by cheaters. Cheaters in all shapes and forms.

Because PvP combat was heavily based on skill, both tactical and hand-eye coordination, some players took to cheating in some respects. They made bots to automatically aim and fire spells at other players, and healing spells at themselves, thus being able to be much more effective in combat than others.

Cipsoft felt the best solution to this was to integrate the "aimbot" into the client, as to level the playing field.

This, of course, had far-reaching consequences both in PvP and PvM combat. Seeing as how you could now make every attempt to fire a spell hit without doubt, some classes became grossly overpowered. This was solved by lowering damage and prices to shoot them, so that the only way PvP could ever be carried out was if you had a well-coordinated team of at least ten to take on a group of enemies.

There were also people who would use bots to fish, make sellable runes for profit and level their characters for them, alternatively share their characters with other people.

Cipsoft saw only one solution - you need bait to fish, you need soul points gathered by killing monsters for making runes, and you can only level 6 hours a day.

At a later point, they invented a sort of server-based anti-cheating system, which they refuse to give out details on the operation of, which they claim is 100% effective, but which any given player will tell you is total BS.

I feel, that destroying your MMORPG in this fashion, instead of just bundling it with some punkbuster-like application, is completely asinine, and the closest i've seen to a fetch-key-quest i've seen in real life.

 

[Orange_Clockwork]

I hate quests that do that; "Grab item x to go through path y." almost as much as I hate "Get x amount of y and come back."

It's not really that they're so simple and straight-lined, it's that they want to make you roam around for a bit, even if you really badly want to push the plot.

 

[MNRA]

Excellent article!

Also, this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsqcuB38geI] pretty much sums up Resident Evil 4 (and all the other gaming fetch-quests). Curse you, waist-high wall... CURSE YOU!

I'd rather curse the consoles for seldom including a "jump" button, the PC-gaming-god I am...

 

[xqxm]

Excellent article!

Also, this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsqcuB38geI] pretty much sums up Resident Evil 4 (and all the other gaming fetch-quests). Curse you, waist-high wall... CURSE YOU!

I'd rather curse the consoles for seldom including a "jump" button, the PC-gaming-god I am...

http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-17

heh.

 

[Zydrate]

Spelling error; "Shove" for "shovel", I think. I dont know, didn't play that game.

 

[Dhatz]

Work. that's the fucking problem. if they had to do anything more than nesessary walking/driving/shoting/reloading, it would require animation or making it unrealistic and skip the ingame porcess of doing something. As I was taught the first would cost money. so tehy chose the less costy solution, same thing goes for sidequests, the story is doney, paid for and writer is gone, so they use everything else except that talented person.

 

[Da Ork]

Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix. So many "key" quests it felt you like you were the go fetch boy for everyone in the school rather than a wizard.

 

[Archemetis]

My example:

The literally hundreds of "Oh, go could you go talk to this guy behind me?" quests in WoW...
I realise it's like free experience (not much I admit) But when it's easily covered by a scripted "cutscene" of the guy TURNING ROUND and talking to the guy himself, it's a bit annoying.

Especially in Darkshire where there is a questline almost entirely CONSISTING of these kind of quests.

Also, another WoW example:

The Attunement quests for Karazhan.
Admittedly I kind of enjoyed it, sharing a quest line with people from my guild in the same situation to achieve what would passage into (for the time) end-game content.

But then Blizzard got rid of the need for it.
Thank you.

 

[Woodsey]

The quest that pissed me off the most has to be the entire Thieve's Guild quest in Oblivion. Mainly the bit where you have to sneak through a monastery where all the monks are blind. Could I not just kill them all, then use the power of the Elder Scroll to bring them back to life? They picked me up in a jail, so they would know already that I'm fairly morally bankrupt...

May I recommend the Dark Brotherhood?

 

[Chipperz]

The quest that pissed me off the most has to be the entire Thieve's Guild quest in Oblivion. Mainly the bit where you have to sneak through a monastery where all the monks are blind. Could I not just kill them all, then use the power of the Elder Scroll to bring them back to life? They picked me up in a jail, so they would know already that I'm fairly morally bankrupt...

May I recommend the Dark Brotherhood?

Did all that. Probably should have been more of an indication to the Gray Fox that I would have seen "kill them all" as a decent idea.

 

[Zivlok]

A game that does this really well is Chrono Trigger DS (yes, I am referring to the new version for a reason), which has a fetch quest in which you must literally CAUSE A TIME PARADOX to get a copy of an item that only one of should exist in the world. These two items then fuse into an item whose apparent only use is to bring to a guy who likes said item, so he can give you a reward. But the thing is, you fuse the two items in the past, and pocket the resulting item, meaning the original first half of the item never would have made it to the future when you took it, then brought it back and placed it next to itself, causing it to fuse, which would... It still hurts my brain thinking about it.

It didn't take a long time to do this, but it did take a fair amount of lateral thinking, and that's really cool.

 

[Orange Monkey]

I think it was in Condemned, one of the first things you had to do was find a certain type of crobar to open a door, i had about three other perfectly suitable melee items that could of done the job just fine. It was plain ridiculous.

There was another instance in ''Mystical Ninjas: Starring Goemon'' WAAAY back on the Nintendo64. My characters had bombs, bazookas and magic ninja powers and they still had to find a key to open a WOODEN door >_<

 

[Orange Monkey]

Ahh just remembered another similar incident.
Dragon Quest 8, their is a small segment where you and your party are imprisoned in an underground cave, and the only thing between you and the elevator to freedom are fairly sturdy wooden bars and a couple of guards.
Now fair enough this would contain your average NPC , but my characters were near godlike at this point, Just before we were captured we had taken on the games version of Satan and won!

One of my characters could of set the bars on fire with a snap of her fingers, and paralyzed the guards with her cleavage (i'm not kidding, that was one of her powers). But the ''proper way'' to get out was to go through a lot of talking and trading items with other people in the cell. An information fetch quest is still a fetch quest, these kinds of breaks in in-game logic really bug me.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

There is justification for this, game heroes are not wanton vandals who blast apart other peoples property to get in to their house. Sure we use mini nukes and Infinity swords +1 to burn them down to little more than a puddle of nasty smelly ash, and scorch the country side for miles to ensure the ecosystem dies a slow painful death and killing the half starving town nearby when the fires of our rage burn their crops to the ground.

But one thing we don't do is shatter rusty locks, that would be wrong.

 

[WolfThomas]

I think it was in Condemned, one of the first things you had to do was find a certain type of crobar to open a door, i had about three other perfectly suitable melee items that could of done the job just fine. It was plain ridiculous

Another bad thing is it made the door opening weapons (axe, crowbar, sledgehammer or shovel) equal or worse to any other weapons like pipes and conduits.

In condemned two, the fireaxe was one of the best weapons I used in that game.

 

[NBSRDan]

Though I love the game anyway, it is pretty ludicrous in Golden Sun: The Lost Age when you rescue a penguin's mate so that it gives you a "pretty stone" as a reward, so that you can give the stone to a bird halfway across the world in exchange for a cloth, so that you can dress-up a cow with the cloth in exchange for its milk, so that you can feed a dog with the milk in exchange for a small turtle it captured, so that can you give another turtle the small turtle as a friend, so that you can ride the larger turtle to a secret cave.

 

[Calatar]

* In Champions Online,my hulking superhero had to quest to get a key to open a wooden outhouse. A terrorist outhouse.

This, to me sounds like a joke. I don't know the circumstances, but it almost seems like the developers were poking fun at the fetch quest thing. A terrorist outhouse.

Spoiler: Similar example: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

If you cast "Limited Wish" and wish for "an adventure unlike any I've ever experienced before," you end up with an elaborate, but entirely optional fetch-quest on your hands.
The wish just gives you a note that says to go to a tavern, where you observe a fight because one man refused to return the other's mother's gong. One guy sold it, so it is your job to first find the guy he sold it to. Then you need to kill a troll which was annoying that guy, then he tells you that he sold it to a different troll. So you travel across the land to find the other troll, and it refuses to tell you where it is, and naturally you have to fight it. When it is almost dead it begs for its life and offers information about the gong in return. Turns out the troll sold it to an ogre-mage. So you mosey on over to this guy, and he's been using it to shovel manure for his pet cow Bessy.
He offers to trade it for a Wand of Frost, which you may or may not have already gotten, possibly requiring you to travel some more and buy one. At last, you complete the trade, travel back, return the gong and get a +2 Returning throwing dagger.
Upon replaying the game, you discover you could just have pick-pocketed the guy in the tavern in the first place.
Good times, good times.

I didn't mind this quest, nor did I mind the sheer stupidity of that NWN2 gate plot, mostly because the quests were FUN! I fully enjoyed killing those thugs and orcs, even if the plot was merely the pretense for doing so. I find that is how most DnD games I'm in actually work.
-You enter a dungeon for teh goldz/because somebody told you to/all of the above
-Crazy random monsters attack
q.Why are these monsters here?
a.COMBAT TIEMS IS FUN TIEMS, WHO CARES

While I agree that game developers really SHOULD put more thought into their contrivances to get you into the gameplay, if the gameplay is good enough it's an unnecessary luxury. I guess that is the difference between a fun game and a superb game.

 

[Tyras612]

Because I'm curious: What's the most arbitrary or asinine key-fetch you've ever had to do in a game?

This isn't exactly a fetch quest. But the majority of locked doors/chests in Oblivion that are made of wood. I mean honestly, you carry at least one -sharp- thing and you're able to burn stuffs. (obviously burning wouldn't always be the best answer)
What actually stops your character from chopping open that wooden "Requires a key" chest. (And yes, I'm aware that there are mods to fix this)

 

[SimuLord]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/9/27/

An entire game dedicated to arbitrary, asinine fetch-quests.

As an aside, the worst fetch quest I personally have encountered is the one in Port Royale 2 where your WIFE runs off with pirates and you're supposed to dutifully go get her so you can resume accepting quests from her father, the governor. I get it---PR2 is supposed to be more like Sid Meier's Pirates than Patrician 3. But still. That was just plain asinine...and what's worse, fetch quests in a trading sim just seems wrong.