The oft-dreaded fetch quest remains a crutch for many contemporary RPGs. It's easy to understand why: fetch quests are essentially filler content. They boost play time without requiring the resource investment necessary for creating a compelling quest, namely quest design, writing, excessive voice acting and so on.
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Unpopular opinion i like fetch quests in moderation. Sometimes youre just not in the mood for a 7 quest long massive quest chain with multiple big choices.
Just tell me to go pick up someones sword he forgot in a cave with a few monsters sometimes
> Narrative director Philipp Weber explained the lessons the team has learned from The Witcher 3 and which ones they’ll be applying to The Witcher 4.
> “We also know the things that The Witcher 3 was good at,” Weber explained. “We can’t break that. The stuff we want from a Witcher game, that people want from a Witcher game, we can’t break that. We have to do that.”
>”A lot of the narrative lessons from The Witcher 3, we use them exactly the same way,” he continued. “A lot of the rules on how to do quests that we wrote down, for, as an example, new team members on The Witcher 4. Those are the rules from The Witcher 3. Sometimes we have new things for new features, but the core stuff, it’s that same philosophy we wanted.”
I love Witcher 3 but it does have its fair amount of fetch quests, this must be clearly written by AI or someone who didn’t play the game.
Jesus, just one of the first quests, if not the first quest almost everyone finds is a fetch quest. Remember the frying pan?
I never minded fetch quests so long as they made sense. One example of a bad one would be a World of Warcraft quest where you had to collect basilisk brains. The drop rate isn’t great, but that’s the problem. Why would a basilisk not have a brain? If they dropped a Ruined Basilisk Brain, that would make sense, but they don’t. Just a low chance of getting an item that logically makes sense for the mob to have. That’d a bad fetch quest.
Assassin’s Creed needs to go back to being inspired by the Witcher series for this reason. I actually really enjoyed Odyssey and its sequel for this reason. I could have used some cutting back of content but I had a lot of fun. Near the end, I do avoid most side content and just go for the finish to not get burnt out.
Fetch quests work in certain open world games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout imo. But then another Bethesda game Starfield makes them a slog by going through at least 5 loading screens before you collect what you need, and at least another 5 on the way back.
I’m pretty sure 3 had a couple of fetch quests, like the one where you have to get a goat back to its owner.
They need to implement the equivalent to Johnny’s Malorian Arms 3516 from CP2077. It’s quite good gameplay wise.