When side quests are executed properly, they can be as enjoyable as the main story, or even better. Games like The Witcher 3 and the Mass Effect series have great examples of well-executed side quests, where you feel like you’re doing something important.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to all games. Throughout history, there have been many side quests that were completely disappointing. They are the quests that, after playing them, you feel like you totally wasted your time and didn’t get any value from them.
Whether they take a long time without rewarding returns, or are just exercises in frustration, there are many boring side quests to be found in games of all kinds.
In honor of these bad quests, I will cover 10 of the worst examples I’ve encountered in side quests. We’re talking about specific side quests from games, not types of side quests as a whole (although anything involving an unplayable NPC should be removed from any game, period).
If you’ve faced any of these quests, I feel sorry for you. I’ve been through them too.
10. Breath Of The Wild
There’s a lot to see and do in Breath of the Wild, but let’s be honest, the side quests were disappointing. Most of them don’t offer valuable rewards and are just decent fetch quests; the only exception being the shrine quests, which require you to do something a little different to open the shrine (like strategically placing a metal object on top of a strange hill to attract lightning, revealing the shrine).
However, there is one shrine quest that is the worst of all. We’re talking about the quest in Korok Forest, where Link is asked to carefully follow a small Korok through the forest without being seen.
There are many annoying aspects to this quest. Firstly, the tiny Korok constantly disappears in tall grass. Secondly, the stealth system in BOTW isn’t really that good. Thirdly, the Korok will suddenly turn around and discover you for no reason while you thought you were safe.
What usually happens here is that you’ll redo the same quest 10 times, and each time you’ll think it would be much easier if you could just throw a remote bomb at the Korok and get rid of it altogether.
9. Fallout 4
