Side Quests - How To Make A Good Detour

Every game that lets me do sidequests before accepting them gets a thumbs up from me

Love how in God of War 2018 Kratos only agrees to go do sidequests that make him and his son more prepared for their journey. Makes sense from an in game standpoint to ignore the main missions for a while.

Didn't even need to watch the video to Know Yakuza will be here.

you didn't mention the worst part of the paper mario sidequests... you don't know the rewards unless you look them up! Normally that wouldn't be the worst, but as you pointed out, you can only do one at a time, they're lengthy, and they're almost always not in your next destination so no parallelisation...

The skyrim quest: A night to remember. funny, layered, and takes you all over the map, it's one of my favourite quests and really a breath of fresh air from dungeons and straight forward fetch quests. I even ran a dnd oneshot based on this quest

That’s why Majora’s Mask is actually my favourite Zelda Title. The side quests. They give you so much more story and emotions to all the different characters. Something about the mysterious and dark setting combined with all these different stories and how the people are effected through the catastrophe just makes it so special. This game fascinated me when I was a kid - and still does.

"Don't put a really good reward after the hardest challenge in the game or the reward itself will be pointless (shows Julius from KH: Dream Drop Distance)". Yes. What's the point of getting the game's strongest sword by killing the game's strongest superboss? By defeating the toughest enemy in the game, the sword becomes pointless, since there aren't any more difficult bosses to kill by using it. This bothers me in games. One of the worst offenders is Zelda: OOT. By finding all of the skulltulas, you can obtain infinite rupees. However, by the time you kill the last skulltula, you're near the end of the game, and rupees become pretty much pointless since you don't really need to buy anything (especially if you did the sidequests to obtain the bigger quivers and bomb bags. You will have so many bombs and arrows, that by the time you're running out of them, it's just easier to cut grass to find more).

Bug Fables quests had me straight addicted. I would spend entire days just doing quests, and I loooooved it

Can you make a video about how to make 3D platforming levels that don’t become repetitive or boring and feel fun

Ayy CrossCode got mentioned! That game is definitely worth playing. It's worth mentioning that a lot of the later sidequests get a lot more complex, with their own set pieces and unique encounters and boss fights. Some of them are actually pretty funny. It's just that the earlier ones are usually fetch-quests with a script on the side.

...Thousand-Year Door had side quests? It's been over a decade since I've played it, but I don't recall any time I had to pick up anything from a quest board. ...you can get Ms. Mowz on your team!? Did I even play this game?

Tales of Symphonia has a pretty bad sidequest. Mostly because it starts as part of the main quest, and you don't discover how to complete it until later in the game.

I'm kinda surprised that Chrono Trigger wasn't mentioned given how the whole game kinda feels like a side quest to become strong enough to defeat Lavos. Also that each character has a major side quest towards the end of the game which gives great rewards for each character and fleshes them out as well.

See, I didn't really like Tarrey Town in BotW that much because Akkala was one of the last regions I went to. Because of that, when I got to the Tarrey Town quest it was pretty much something that I had to do all at once, and didn't feel nearly as rewarding or fun because I didn't get that feeling of seeing it grow over the course of the game. I think they should've put it closer to the Great Plateau so it'd be easier to find

You showed it off, but didn't talk about it much. I love the sidequests in Nier/Automata. The way they tie into the main themes of the games is just amazing.

Big ups for the Bug Fables mention! As soon as I heard the Snakemouth Den theme I got excited lol. And the Termite Kingdom music at the end was a nice touch! The game's sidequests are awesome. I 100% agree that you can easily get lost in that game's sidequests and forget to make actual story progress. To make the easy comparison, sidequests are one of the many things the devs did better than Paper Mario on IMO.

Radiant historia has tons of sidequest that connects to the main game if you want to get the true ending

Don’t forget Celeste! The strawberries, B sides, C sides, etc. Are all a good example of creating flavorful side quests out of just the games mechanics. There’s practically no text or story to them, but the joy of finding another red berry around the corner is irresistible.

YOOO! Finally someone mentions CrossCode! That's an underrated game right there.

what i like most are side quests who don't say they're side quests. You just happen to encounter someone who says/do something and you realise how it could (or could not) be an interaction that can be pushed. Finding a quest is a reward in itself