How Dragon Age 2 Can Improve Sidequesting
Aug 15
Side-questers Anonymous
Hi, my name is Steve and I’m a sidequester. Sure, there’s a Blight to be stopped out there, but will it really hurt anyone if I walk from Orzammar to the Circle Tower and back to try to see if a dwarf girl can study with the magi? So as I ran around not fighting the Blight and thinking about Dragon Age 2 I had a couple thoughts about the quality of sidequests and how the game’s new format may help improve them.
Acknowledgement No. 1: Sidequests are optional
Yes, I realize that you don’t have to do sidequests. However, I have something of a sidequest disorder. If there are sidequests, I feel compelled to do them. I’m powerless against them. And honestly, nearly all players will at least do some sidequesting. They may not take it to the maximum, but I suspect there are very few players who never deviate from the main story line to take on a side job or twenty. So whether you’re a casual sidequester or hopeless addict, the below can apply to you.
Thought No. 1: The purpose of side quests
Lets be honest with ourselves, in RPGs, sidequests have become a necessarily evil of the genre. Developers want to give players the opportunity to increase their strength by giving them a medium by which to gain more experience, money or gear. Sidequests also have the beneficial effect of adding hours of gameplay to a game, padding out the total number of hours that it takes to finish the game, a game that promises 40 hours of gameplay is more attractive than a game that only offers 20 hours. If you don’t believe that, look around the BioWare forums for people doomcasting that Dragon Age 2 is going to be less good than Origins because it will be way shorter because of the addition of voice-over.
In the early days of RPGs – think first and second generation console games - the amount of sidequesting was relatively low. This was due in part to the programming limitations and size limitations of the media (cartridge) being used. A major mechanism in those games were random encounters, which allowed players the option to grind through monsters to rack up experience and gold. Nowadays random encounters are pretty much extinct.
Many games now have infinite spawns that you can choose to fight on the map, like Final Fantasy XIII or Dragon Quest IX. A big part of these kind of new “infinite” systems seems to be component grinding, where you may have to fight Monster X 100 times to gather a certain number of Item Y to craft Weapon Z.
Other games, like Dragon Age, have a mostly static number of enemies in the game. Once you clear out the darkspawn in the Deep Roads in the Orzammar quest line, there’s no more darkspawn there if you return later. Although there are some random encounters on the road and a few places where new enemies may pop up after you clear it (Brecilian Forest), you can’t really grind up effectively by these methods.
In both types of games, sidequests are added to fill those needs. The sidequests you run into the game are mostly (and I say mostly because we’ll get to a few exceptions later) there to fill a couple needs – experience, money, or gear.
Liked the article? Support us so we can bring you even more high quality content.
Loading ...
9 comments
Comment by Troy on August 15, 2010 at 10:19 pm
I fear that the problem with including sidequests as an offshoot of the main narrative of the game will ultimately detract from the immersion a player experiences in such an RPG. The primary game with which I compare Dragon Age, specifically, what I think needs to be done better, is Oblivion. Obviously, the sidequests in the Elder Scrolls games are the very definition of tedious: descending into some random dungeon or cave to find whatever item or person the assigning NPC has sent you off in search of. With that in mind, the structure of sidequests in such games needs to be heavily reformatted, to offer far more than mere dungeon diving. However, the scope of those sidequests and the availability of them is an area where Dragon Age could learn from The Elder Scrolls. Far too many sidequests in Origins were given by a specific group, whether it be the Mages Collective, the Chantry, the Blackstone Irregulars, or the Certain Interested Parties. It felt as though, by comparison, far fewer quests were given by random individuals in Ferelden. Granted that that could just be my impression, but still, I can't help but feel as though a wider breadth of sidequests would aid in strengthening the RPG. Certainly, these could be done as optional missions that are SEPARATE from the main quest, but still further the story itself. For instance, say that in DA2, Hawke has to go out and kill Miscellaneous Named Enemy. As a sidequest obtained elsewhere, perhaps you learn more about this individual and his or her actions, perhaps aiding some of their prior victims or gaining additional incite into their motivations not provided by the main quest. Just a few thoughts.
Comment by Nic-V on August 15, 2010 at 10:34 pm
My God finally someone as addicted to side quests as I xD I swear I went through several side quest lists online to make sure I got them all! XD Such is the power of the nerd XD
Comment by Celvin on August 16, 2010 at 10:49 am
I have to admit to being one of those compulsive questbook-emptiers, too. Dragon Age is actually on the better side of it. Ever played Sacred 2? That game is HUGE, and if you take on every side quest, the questbook's going to be pages long. Heaven for quest-addicts like me, but far more repetitive than DA. I really liked the variety in DA, for me the game just had the right amount of grinding and gathering quests. It's really going to be interesting how they implement that stuff in the framed narrative of DA 2…
Comment by Darq Gus on August 17, 2010 at 7:47 am
I took that Dwarven chick to the Mages tower. But in my mind I betrayed her, and after she was removed from her father and supportive community, I sold her into slavery.
I did wonder at the time why that quest was worth persisting in. In fact, I felt the same way through the entirety of Dragon Age. "Should I go on?" (I decided no and stopped soon after the Chirpy Dwarven Wizardette quest.) I guess I too would be a completionist if I didn't find Dragon Age and its characters a little hard to care about.
But it's an interesting game design choice to make the PC consider whether to sidetrack themselves away from the main plot. In order to keep tension you need the urgency of "we're all going to die and the land plunged into a thousand years of darkness!" …-which is completely ruined when you're doing quests like "sure mister! I'll help you find your lost cow!"
I'd like to say, limit the choices and penalise the player for veering too far away from the MISSION… but I know even I'd hate it. I LOVE sidequests (Good ones). They are the gravy to my charred unicorn meat. We all know that I WILL recover the golden artifact and SLAY my nemesis, but sidequests allow me to explore other fun little alignment scenarios with the assorted peons I call other villagers. And sell them into slavery.
But yes, it's a wide audience, I know. And some twelve year old girls might like Cow Hunt, and some sentient military algorithms like myself dig slave trading. No wait- …yes, there should be some penalty for completionists. Because I play in character. And given a range of assorted quests for players, if I accept quests that my character clearly wouldn't do then I DESERVE to be left holding a cow on a rope, and miss out on the Chalice of Ultimate Powa.
Because, simply put, it's a Role-playing game, and there are such delights to be gained in playing it through in character. Diablo is played by monkeys.
Comment by Simon 'Crowangel' Lewis on August 17, 2010 at 12:31 pm
I too enjoy the sidequests and before i began my awakening playtrhough i sadly went online and got a list of all the ones i could do in a 'checklist' of sorts.. not wanting to miss out on any experience XP or Experiences as in the things i could see and do..
Its such a rich and lavish landscape that even i sometimes between gaming session or while i drink my much needed brew will carefully position my warden at one of my favorite locations either looking up at the dark outline of the circle tower.. the ruins of wending wood, the sheer beauty of Ostagar's architecture..
Its the sidequests that also bring a great deal of understanding or at least a little more about what else is going on in the world around me.. and with now having both a true evil and a true hero warden amongst my collection its fun to try all the quests and side quests to see how you can manipulate them to your character style..
All in all i hope they continue to overload us with them as its a fun way to enjoy the game for longer, see more of the world, learn more things about the game, level up your character nd ultimatly makes the whole gaming experience last that little bit longer which for Dragon Age is never a bad thing.
Comment by John Ludlow on August 17, 2010 at 4:13 pm
I think in most RPG games sidequests are required, or at least the game is much harder if you don't do any of them, since you lose out on the potential loot and XP that the quest gives you (either as a direct reward or through the monsters you can fight and areas you can explore).
OTOH, they also break up the game and give you something else to do. It's no different to the side missions and minigames in GTA4 and similar games.
Comment by John Ludlow on August 17, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Part deux:
DA2's approach makes sense for sidequests, since you get around that issue of "hey there's a blight but I can't be bothered with that so lets go and rescue some kittens for a while", but I wonder how that will feed into the main quest. My first impression was that you'd do the main quest, then Hawke would say "did I ever tell you about the time…." and you'd do a side quest. (I guess there'd be a way for you to choose this, but the point remains). Say I pick up a cool piece of armour. When the sidequest ends and I zip back to the main quest timeline, do I suddenly have that piece of armour? That wouldn't make sense. I don't magically acquire items by telling people stories. Hmm, let me try : "Hey did I tell you that I gwas walking home one day and found an iPad?" Nah didn't work :) (It's a cool idea actually, now that I think of it, but doesn't work in the DA universe).
Comment by Ferai on August 18, 2010 at 10:53 pm
I've come to hate the word "immersion" because nobody seems to use it the same way. Some say 'immersion' and mean consistancy. Some say 'immersion' and mean drawing in the player and keepign them trapped. Some just say it and leave you wondering what they mean. Immersion is a silly concept to me; I'm always aware that I'm sitting there playing a video game. Just as no matter how good a book is or a movie, you still always know it's just a movie or a book.
Personally, I had no problem in DA with the side-quests; they were there and you could do them but had nothing really to do with the main quest. When time wasn't as much an issue (and to be honest, the entire game revolves around you; time is only an issue when they want to make it one), then letting your character wander and explore the countryside, poking thier nose into everyone elses business seems to be perfectly fine to me. That is the reason why this person is the main character, after all, they're motivated outside of whatever drives the rest of the characters in the game world.
You could easily just have certain side-quests close off after a certain point based on other criteria of course; on a simple level, like how Lothering gets sacked in DA after you leave but aside from that you could have other hidden options and flags being set.
I also didn't have a problem having the quests on a board, it sure saved from having to run around and talk to every possible person like you would in an old Final Fantasy game.
Comment by @MKEGameDesign on August 31, 2010 at 2:18 pm
One thing DA2 could change that you didn;t point out– the combination of a framed narrative and a "very reactive" world might mean that we end up with branched storylines aside from the main story. i.e., making choice X sometime in mission Y opens up mission Z.
This makes every playthrough different–and means that unless you cheat and reload saves–sidequests aren't a matter of running around and checking stuff off the list.