Side quests can sometimes be overlooked in video game writing, whether it’s due to the compelling main narrative, or the time and attention people have when playing their 100-hour epics. In this BA Presents, we would like to highlight our favorite games and what we love about them, and for this article, we thought we would take a moment to showcase some of our favorite side quests we have found and enjoy in some of our favorite games.
This article is part of BA Presents, a series of articles that feature collaborative and experimental topics and formats. The aim is to provide you, our lovely readers, with something a little more personal, and maybe different than you might find elsewhere. Be sure to check out more of our BA Presents as we release them!
Table of contents
Borderlands 2: Shoot This Guy in The Face – Cande’s Pick
When I think of Borderlands 2, the first thing that comes to mind is Tiny Tina, and how many characters I love are voiced by Ashly Burch (Chloe Price, Aloy).
The next thing that bulldozes its way into my mind is how Borderlands 2 absolutely nails the feel-good game vibe. It doesn’t bother with over-the-top graphics or a particularly intricate storyline — in fact, having played the GOTY Edition, I can barely tell what’s DLC and what’s base game. What I can tell you is that a certain side quest, picked up from a random guy on the side of the road, has lived rent-free at the very forefront of my brain ever since. A psycho, desperately begging: “SHOOT ME IN THE FACE! IN THE FAAAAAAACE! DO IT! SHOOT ME IN THE FACE! FACE FACEFACEFACEFACE…”
There are no stakes here, no complex plotlines — it’s just plain funny. He’ll go on for quite a while, demanding to be shot, and if you even try to shoot him anywhere else, his health bar won’t budge. Face McShooty, you shan’t be forgotten.
Skyrim: Dawnguard: Serana’s Bloodline Quest – Amanda’s Pick
The moment Matt asked about our favorite side quests, I knew mine had to be from Skyrim. After all, I am a notorious side quest hoarder in this game, talking to everyone in the hopes of another random task for my quest journal. When I think side quest, I think Skyrim. Well, I think of a jingle from a Glass Cannon Network podcast called Side Quest Side Sesh, but then I think about Skyrim.
Because I’ve done so many Skyrim side quests, it’s tough to think which is my favorite. And yet, the answer is obvious – helping a vampire with a dry sense of humor totally stick it to the patriarchy. Yes, I’m talking about Serana’s Bloodline Quest, one of the new ones added with the Dawnguard DLC. When I stumbled upon that new story in the Dimhollow Crypt, I could not believe my luck. The former Twilight girlie in me rejoiced at the chance to wander Skyrim with this actual vampire and help her work to undo her father’s evil workings. All while making jokes about the sun. Count me all the way in.
This quest also lets you become a vampire if you want to, and while I’ve always said no, it’s nice to remember there’s still yet an uncharted corner of Skyrim lore waiting for me whenever I need my next fix.
Witcher 3: Skellige’s Most Wanted – Matt’s Pick
Some side quests can be just for fun. I mean Cande’s choice shows that point perfectly. However, some side quests can reinforce the quality of a game’s writing and showcase a character at its core. For me, Skellige’s Most Wanted, a contract quest in The Witcher 3, is both entertaining and a true showcase of Geralt as a character.
The quest has Geralt take on a contract involving a wagon, which, after a chat with a local peasant who asks for your help, you find has been attacked and ransacked. What follows is pretty standard Witcher stuff; you use Witcher Senses to investigate, track, and find the creatures responsible, albeit with a stray boulder nearly killing you in the process. After becoming trapped in a cave, fighting a few monsters, and generally being awesome, you find that the monster you have been chasing wasn’t a monster at all, and instead, it was all a rouse. Upon further investigation, you will find a final room with drawings revealing a plan with you in the center of it. You also find the location of the perpetrator’s meeting place.
Following that, we get to the real highlight. Upon reaching the meeting point, you are greeted by four monsters: a troll, a doppler, a godling, and a werewolf. Given a Witcher’s profession, they see you as a murderer of their kind, and it turns out they wanted to scare you. Well, the werewolf wants you dead though. Of course, you can kill them, but the other option is the clear better choice, as you list off the monsters you’ve spared, those you have helped, and they come to see (minus the werewolf who still goes for you) that you aren’t the monster you think. As Geralt says, “We know both worlds, we protect both.”
For me, it perfectly encapsulates who Geralt is. He isn’t a mindless monster. He is a man, one with a code, and one who does what he can so both man and monster live in peace, and it is easily one of the game’s best quests and a true highlight for an already fantastic game.
Final Fantasy VII: Shinra Manor Hidden Quest – Ezra’s Pick
Most gamers have an adventure that has left a fundamental mark on our hearts. Final Fantasy VII is one of two that shaped my love of video games. I played FFVII for the first time when I was sixteen. It was a task, as I’d never played a traditional, PS1 JRPG before.
As I played through the game, I found myself falling in love with the world, its characters, and the story that grew more compelling with every new discovery. However, when I stumbled upon Shinra Manor for the first time, FFVII chucked a challenge at me that took days to solve.
I accidentally found the safe with the Mansion Key inside. After obtaining the key via a long and difficult process of trial and error and a miserable boss fight, I used the key to open the cellar of the mansion. In the basement, I found Vincent and, by sheer luck, answered the questions he asked correctly, allowing him to join my party. To this day, Vincent Valentine is one of my favorite characters of all time.
The key point here is that I was never a particularly patient or focused child. I struggled to keep focus on things, and if I wasn’t able to sort them quickly, I’d often lose interest. This quest taught me what treasures can be hidden under puzzles, and how endurance frequently has rewards you can’t imagine. I am so grateful to FFVII and Vincent for teaching my younger self the joys of treasure hunting in games. To this day, I never leave any stone unturned when working through whatever new title I have picked up.
Horizon Forbidden West: The Second Verse – John Mercury’s Pick
A huge part of the Horizon series is this idea of tribalistic humans living alongside highly advanced machines that have been created to mostly resemble animals from throughout Earth’s history. While the game’s Nora tribe, which protagonist Aloy is vaguely a part of, have this respect for all animals and machines that they must hunt in order to survive, it’s not until Horizon Forbidden West that we see a human tribe revere machines as actual gods.
As part of the game’s campaign, Aloy meets the Utaru tribe, a people who live off the land and are the most eco-friendly in the series to date. They work the land, growing food from it with the help of a group of machines they call Land Gods. Each one resembles a triceratops, but what sets them apart is that they’re respected. Generations of handprints decorate them because they come and fertilize the land, as is their role in the greater scheme of every machine’s purpose in this post-apocalyptic setting. Most machines are destroyed for parts at some point, but the Utaru don’t hunt the Land Gods because they enable the tribe to exist and are thus worshipped for the bounty they provide.
Aloy meets the Utaru at a time when the Land Gods have become corrupted by a program and are actually tilling poison into the soil. But this isn’t ever resolved in the main campaign. In The Second Verse side quest, Aloy works with the Utaru Zo, who becomes a close friend, to identify what the virus in the Land Gods is and find a fix. The whole quest feels like you’re on a journey to help a being that’s so powerful it should never need help. I imagine it’s a bit like what exotic vets feel when they’re helping a polar bear or a jaguar. The raw power of the thing you’re helping feels like it should never be in your hands. But for this brief moment, it is, and you can’t help but feel like the world is wrong while it’s there.
I won’t spoil the moment-to-moment gameplay of the quest, but it’s a lot of fun for anyone who managed to reach this point in the story. It plays into the overarching narrative really well, but what makes it my favorite is how it ends. When Aloy and Zo find the fix the Land Gods need, they install it. In any other game, this would be it. The machines would go about their business, and that’s all. In Horizon Forbidden West, the machines begin to sing. It’s their reboot process, and it’s how they share their data, sync up, and initialize.
The Utaru, being the nature-loving people they are, all gather around the Land Gods and sing. There’s a full 3-minute song that plays on a loop for hours. I actually spent about an hour just walking around listening to the rise and fall of the Utaru voices and this oddly touching blend of robotic noises from the Land Gods that finally made me understand the Utaru’s whole philosophy and existence.
The Utaru tribe all carry seeds in a pouch around their necks. When they die, the seeds are planted with their body, so new life comes from their death. The Land Gods are machines following protocol. They leave their Cauldron, a kind of den, each year to pump goodness back into soil that’s long since forgotten how to host plants. Then, once they’re spent, they return to their home adorned with new handprints and offerings from people who don’t just believe their lives depend on this cycle. They really do.
The music is stunning, but this side quest will never leave me because it puts me in my place in the real world. We exist thanks to the grace of nature. Every part of Earth’s ecosystem is designed to host life, and it’s desperately trying to find a balance as we suffocate it. The Second Verse really puts into perspective how we should probably all be living at the mercy of the cycle of life instead of trying to change that cycle to choose us and cause what might be irrevocable damage.
If you have any suggestions for another BA Presents, we would be more than happy to hear them!
Alternatively, you can check out the article that started the BA Presents idea which covers our favorite Summer Showcase indie demos.
About the Author
Discover more from Bonus Action
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
