{"id":473,"date":"2008-12-03T09:23:17","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T15:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lungfishopolis.com\/?p=473"},"modified":"2008-12-03T09:23:17","modified_gmt":"2008-12-03T15:23:17","slug":"fetch-quests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/2008\/12\/fetch-quests\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fetch Quest Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

I’ve never played World of Warcraft, or any MMO for that matter, but a recent Penny Arcade Comic<\/a> made me start thinking about how the “quests” in so many RPGs simply require you to travel to a faraway location, and either find an item, kill an enemy, or simply visit point A, then point B, then point C. This has been the case going as far back as Ultima 3, where you had to visit the bottom of dungeons to get brands, or Legend of Zelda, where you had to visit the bottom of a dungeon to get a raft or flute. As games evolved, quests began to take place outside of dungeons, dark enchanted forests, and mad wizards’ fortresses.<\/p>\n

Sidequests, at one point, were a great innovation in gaming. Here was a purely optional mission that could get you extra experience, more equipment or gold, or simply tell portions of a story that a player could choose to skip. But they’ve grown cumbersome.<\/p>\n

In all fairness, these quests have evolved beyond fetching and killing. In Baldurs’ Gate, you could talk a man out of commiting suicide. In Fallout 3, there is a section where you have to come up with a “creative” way to kill a woman, such a rigging her stove to explode, dropping a chandelier on her, or reprogramming her security robot to kill her. But despite these evolutions, these are all conversational-model “quests” – just an evolution of the old text adventures. I crave something more.<\/p>\n

Today’s sandbox RPGs have become nothing more than a series of endless fetch quests. I don’t have a suggestion for a solution to get beyond this, but when a game developer comes along and gives us something new, an RPG where you’re doing something more than killing ten molerats or collecting twenty cans of Nuka Cola Quantum, it will be innovation. And I think people will love it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"