I’m playing Mass Effect 1 at the moment, the legendary edition. I was surprised to find I’d got to a very significant main story mission after only playing for 10 hours. I’m sure it took a lot longer way back when I first played it. Which made me think. The main story, like in many games, carries a sense of urgency that, if you take it seriously, is incompatible with toodling around doing side quests.
I mean I could go and scan all these little aliens but another much more menacing alien is working hard to destroy the galaxy and I feel stopping them is probably more important.
I’ve built up quite a list of side quests to do, and I know in reality the game will wait for me to do the main missions when I feel like it, but I’m still reluctant to do them.
Are there any examples of games that successfully fool you into feeling you have the freedom to do side quests while also maintaining a sense of urgency in the main story? I’m thinking a game could effectively ask you if you’re ready to do a main quest without appearing to be asking you and to give the impression the main quest is not ready for you rather than the other way around.
There was an overarching quest but it rarely felt urgent. I mean, you are a guy on a horse traveling across a country…how urgent can it all be? If you are on your horse in Chicago and the next quest marker is in Boston…gonna take a few days to get there. You’ve got time to explore a little.
You get a sense the world is working in the background but nothing that compels you to do something at the moment.
Not surprisingly from the same studio, Dragon Age: Origins.
The Blight is spreading across the land. There are narrative prompts in-game that convey the urgency of stopping the Blight’s spread. Even more effectively for me, the standard transition screen is a map of the kingdom, with slowly expanding shadowy splotches. To me, it really conveyed the sense that the Blight was spreading in the background in real time as I was playing. I felt like taking side-quests was a trade-off - I might get stronger, acquire allies, and/or strengthen local resistance to the Blight, but the Blight was also getting stronger while I was doing that.
Even for the main quests, there are choices and forks, where it seemed like an important strategic calculation which path to choose, and like I needed to prioritize and figure out which main plot point was most urgent.
As I was playing through a second time, I realized that was a carefully crafted illusion. It didn’t actually matter which quests I went on or in which order. All of the plot points would be waiting for me when I got there. But it was a really well-crafted illusion.
I think Mass Effect 3 did a pretty good job at showing that every side mission was contributing to your overall success in the final battle (by recruiting allies or gaining diplomatic support or whatever).
“The latest news I have of my adopted daughter is that she was wounded and fleeing for her life. That means it’s the perfect time for some horse racing and Gwent tournaments!”
The ancient (1993, I think?) Dark Sun: Shattered Lands did that, too. In-story, everyone knew that the Evil Empire was going to come after the independent desert settlements sooner or later, but nobody knew precisely when. In-game, of course, it happened right after certain components of the “main quest” were completed, and it was pretty clear which those were. But there were also side quests that would gain you extra allies in the big epic battle, and if you weren’t using cheesy buggy tactics in the end battle, you had very little chance without at least a decent number of those allies (but of course, you did use cheesy buggy tactics anyway).
In fact, Mass Effect 3 is so clever that it even makes clear that the seemingly meaningless side quests from Mass Effect 1 (e.g. helping Jenna, being nice to Conrad Verner, scanning for minerals) had some benefit in the final fight!
reminds me of when fasa designed the sega version of Shadowrun and the original Mechwarrior game (and others I’m told)
If you didn’t do any of the side missions you could beat the game in 45 minutes because the game scaled the story mission’s difficulty to your lvl
So if all you did was say use a light mech and just made it a walking short-range missile launcher and nothing else that’s pretty much what you would fight at the end but there’d be 3 of them Shadowrun was pretty much the same …
The original Fallout has this after a certain point in the story. (After you get a water chip you have no real time limit.)
In Fallout 2, there’s some urgency sent your way on occasion, but there’s only a hidden timer that triggers after 12 in game years. Which is way more than is needed for every quest. People still hit that though, since you probably don’t hit max level by then.
In Fallout 3, there’s no urgency that I can think of. And New Vegas and Fallout 4 are basically at your own pace, imo. (For me, I did the main quest last, or reluctantly in 4.)
I finished ME1 today after playing for about 17 hours. I pretty much did no side quests, not because I was avoiding them, but because it felt like saving the galaxy was more urgent. I didn’t romance anyone. I didn’t do any companion quests. There were a couple of things I did because they happened to be on the way to main quest stuff, but that was about it.
I think games like Dragon Age and the Witcher manage to get away with it more because there isn’t quite the same sense of urgency. There’s the sense that you need to do things, but it doesn’t feel like a race to beat the bad guy to the macguffin.
I might have short changed myself then
It’s a pity ME1 doesn’t let you keep playing after the main story so some of these side quests could be tidied up.
I would strongly advise you to play it again and do all of those side quests (and a romance) before you import your save to ME2. You’ll be missing out on a lot if you don’t, and in ME3 it’ll be actually impossible to get some of the best endings if you haven’t explored everything available to you.
I might do. I’m not sure really, I don’t tend to be into replaying games and I’ve already played ME1 twice. The first time was the original and I spent time doing the side quests.
Fallout 3 and 4 are similar to Witcher 3 in the sense that the (false) urgency comes from learning your character’s family is alive and potentially in danger. Fallout NV’s urgency would come from the idea that an important battle is imminent and your character’s actions could change the tide, but I found that the number of side quests unrelated to the main plot was pretty small in Fallout NV.
New Vegas at least kind of makes sense. The Courier’s main motivation in following the story line is personal, to find out who betrayed them. So there’s no real urgency in pushing that forward, and it makes sense that the Courier would take some time wandering the Earth in order to get stronger - since they’ve already lost to the betrayer once in a fight.
All the other bigger quests are largely optional, and it really doesn’t matter too much which side you choose in the Big Conflict of the game so there’s really no push to pick a side until you want to.
