The Best Sidequest Ever

Sidequests are not known for being amazingly written, or even that enjoyable. Most times they’re thrown in the game to pad out length, or to give the player the idea that the game world is larger than it is. Some games don’t even have them at all. Every once in a while, however, you get to experience an amazing diversion from the main quest. Every once in a while, you get to see what happens when game developers and writers really flex their creative muscles.

Whodunit, a sidequest in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of these rare pieces of magic. It’s fun; it’s witty; and it might be the most memorable part of Oblivion.

Oblivion is the 4th major game in The Elder Scrolls franchise. It takes place in the Imperial province of Cyrodiil.

Whodunit is a sort of Clue the movie inspired quest for the Dark Brotherhood, the guild of assassins in The Elder Scrolls universe. The Brotherhood sends you a number of assassination missions prior to this one, but most are fairly simple besides the sneaking and evasion. A mysterious third party assembles a group of people in a large mansion, luring them with the promise of of hidden treasure. You, the assassin, join them as the 6th guest. In reality, your mission is to dispose of all the people inside.

The Dark Brotherhood will only contact you after you commit a murder in cold blood. Oblivion is the first game  that gave you the opportunity to join them, but you've met them in Morrowind as well.

You can kill all of them outright, but you get a bonus if you can kill each member without being seen. Yes, you can just wait until all the partygoers are alone, then take them out, and get your money. However, you can also get to know all of them, slowly plant seeds of mistrust, and watch the treasure hunters tear each other apart. Each of the characters in the house have their own backstories, ideals, hates, and prejudices. The only thing they share is that they’ve wronged your client in some way.

Summitmist Manor, where it all goes down. If this house could talk, it would tell a really messed up story about you.

I think everybody has a little bit of Machiavelli in them, and situations like this really bring out the inner manipulator in people. The more you learn about the guests, the more you can figure out how to play them against each other. Maybe you convince the sweet old disgraced noble that the Dark Elf girl is really a seductress after the older soldier she fancies. Maybe you convince the fatherly old Nord who thinks the Dark Elf girl looks just like his departed daughter that the old soldier might harm her. You get to watch the house slowly fall into madness and before you know it, it’s just you and some poor soul you’ve turned into a murderer. It’s rare that a game hands you reins and says, “Go, have fun. I’ll wait,” but that’s exactly what happens here. It’s also a great quest because you can tell that a bunch of people decided to put their heart into something, rather than just crank out the usual “the world is ending you’re our prophesized savior go kill the evil demon/dragon/wizard”.       

So it begins. Playing this quest slow and steady is definitely the best way to experience it.

I see my love of games as an extension of my love of reading. I loved books because they could take me anywhere. I love games because they handed me an interactive book, as I could change the story as I went. There’s honestly only about three or four ways to play the Whodunit quest, but it’s one of the few quests that really makes you feel like you’re writing your own story. You know how it’s going to end, and you know how it starts, but all the in-between is up to you and you alone. Not to mention there’s something awesome about exercising your inner Petyr Baelish a little.

Whodunit is so much fun that it’s worth installing Oblivion again just to give it another go, and it’s my favorite side quest in my 18 years of video game playing.

Why back in my day, we had 151 Pokémon and we liked it!

The Pokémon series is one of the longest running series in video games. It has sold over 200 million games as of 2015 and with Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon coming soon, that number will undoubtedly increase. Since the first generation of Pokémon games, the formula has remained largely the same: choose a fire, grass, or water starter Pokémon, beat the 8 gym leaders to acquire badges, stop a nefarious gang, and then beat the Elite 4 to become champion. Here’s my issue: Every time a new game comes out, it gets a little easier, and kids are the ones who lose out.

Who knew kids would love forcing various kinds of animals to cockfight so much? God bless Japan.

Pokémon Red is a simpler game than Pokémon Y. There’s fewer Pokémon, attacks, stats, items, and places to go. Yet somehow, it’s a way harder game. In the first generation, after choosing your starter, your rival chooses the Pokémon that’s strong against yours and challenges you to a battle. In Y, your first battle is against a Pokémon that you are strong against. Because you already have an elemental attack, you should win hands down.

See, this battle used to be hard. Now they hand you victory on a silver platter.

After the first gym victory in Gen 1, you wander through a multi-level cave filled with dead ends and trainers. Exploration here is rewarded with several new attacks and rare items. You can totally miss all of these, as they’re not on the path to progress through the cave.  After your first victory in Gen 7, you’re given the Exp Share, which allows you to level up your Pokémon super-quickly. Gen 7 feels as if the designers were afraid that kids would wander off if they weren’t immediately given everything on a silver platter, as compared to Gen 1 which made you work for your progress.

To get through Mt. Moon, you need to get to 3, which leads to 6, where you can get to 7, which is the exit. You can miss several levels, rooms, items, and trainers by just trying to find the exit.

Even the mechanics have been softened up considerably. In Gen 1, if your Pokémon got poisoned, it would lose HP every turn in battle and every few steps after battle, until it fainted. You had to plan ahead, strategize, and stock up on useful items. In Gen 7, poison doesn't do any damage outside of battle at all. Moreover, Gen 7 hands you tons of items that you never need to use. Perpetration is key for a lot of life, and games are no exception. When games remove the need for planning ahead, they cheapen the experience.

Challenge allows kids to think more critically about games and strategy, like in gym battles. In any Pokémon game, the gyms are the major checkpoints of progress and often the most challenging part, culminating in the ultimate series of battles with the Elite 4. The gyms of Gen 7 are much easier, partly because they send out fewer Pokémon. No leader has more than three Pokémon, whereas in Gen 1, gyms 5, 6, 7, 8 have at least four. Even though the leader’s Pokémon in Gen 7 are higher leveled, the Exp Share removes any leveling challenges. Less Pokémon means faster battles

The general power of the leader’s Pokémon has also been decreased. In Gen 1, the second gym leader, Misty, has two Pokémon: Staryu and Starmie. Starmie is a powerhouse in Gen 1, possessing an extremely high speed and special stat. To beat her, you needed to capture a grass Pokémon around Cerulean City or initially picked the grass starter. In contrast, Grant, the second gym leader in Gen 7, has two much less powerful Pokémon, Tyrunt and Amaura. Given the different types of Pokémon you can catch before this gym, plus the strength of your starter, this gym is a cakewalk. Pokémon’s tagline is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”, but the later games are removing the need to catch a varied team.

Even an over-leveled Pikachu would find this difficult, just because Starmie can do so much damage with Bubblebeam.

Gen 1 taught you early on that building a team of different Pokémon is essential to your success and demanded that you train them so you’re ready for anything. In Gen 7, you are given 3 powerful Pokémon just by making your way through the story. In Gen 1, you are given your starter. You can find other free Pokémon throughout the game, but it requires exploration and backtracking. You are encouraged to find out more about the game, while knowing that very little will be handed to you right off the bat.

Seriously, you just get a gym leader's Pokémon, for going through the story. With the Gen 7 starter, the Gen 1 starter you get, along with Lucario, you can make it through the whole game no problem.

In Gen 7, a whole cast of characters reminds you what you should be doing along the way. Exploration barely factors in to the storyline. In Gen 1, you are told that there are 8 Gyms and the Elite 4 and by beating them, you can become Champion. You have to figure out where they are, how to get there, and how to defeat them. For example, after you beat the 3rd Gym you’re basically left at a dead end. But, you have just received the HM Cut, which allows your Pokémon to cut down certain trees. By backtracking to an area previously blocked, you find Rock Tunnel. Rock Tunnel is pitch black and can only be illuminated by a Pokémon with another HM, Flash. You can only get this HM by going through another cave and finding a helpful scientist. Gen 7 would never put you in this kind of position. You would have been told exactly where to go, given the Flash HM, and be guided through the whole cave, which has at least person who will heal your Pokémon in the middle. Is it easier? Yes, but it makes the game less memorable. You also help them become better game players, because you’ve forced them to be more explorative and analytical.

I grew up on Gen 1, so they have a special place in my heart. I can fully admit that I’m way nostalgic for the original games, but they weren’t without their problems. The original games are full of unexplained mechanics and balance issues. You have no way of knowing which attacks were better than others, or which attacks were which type. There was no counter to psychic Pokémon, and poison Pokémon were essentially useless. Pokemon could have the wrong stats for all of their moves and be terrible (lookin’ at your Flareon and Arcanine). Your backpack only had 20 slots, so you are constantly forced to head back to the PC to drop off spare items. The newer games have improved in so many ways, but those improvements came at the cost of challenge. There’s a middle ground where things can be understandable without being obvious, where the game can be hard without punishing, and where you can challenge and intrigue kids without frustrating them, and hopefully Pokémon will find it with Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon.

Rant: Conflict between story and gameplay in open world games

You’ve all seen this in lots of games. It’s that moment when you’re fighting the last boss, you win, and then the cutscene shows the last boss turning everything around. This might not seem like an issue, but given how constant it is, it seems like a very solvable problem. I’m going to focus on open world games, because they’re so common there. This is usually called Ludonarrative dissonance. I’m starting to hate open world games, and I really don’t want to do that.

You just know that you're gonna be kicking the crap out of Sauron, but then in the next cutscene he'll just destroy you.

The most annoying thing about this design choice is how early it shows up in open world games. With a few exceptions, the second you get your main quest, the game starts getting confused. “You are the only hope, chosen one! The great demon will be here soon! Head to xyz and warm the imperial chancellor!” Yeah, sure. I’m just going to explore literally every corner of the map before I do that. Oh, and join every other faction. Oh, and I’ll learn how to be a master blacksmith, the world’s best sword fighter, and maybe I’ll marry an NPC or two. When a game warns you about the crazy extreme danger you’ll be facing when this big evil thing comes to your land, and then nothing happens after literal years of in game time, you know there’s a problem. It separates you from the game faster than your parents unplugging the box when you were a kid.

Yeah, sure. I'll stop the world ending dragon or whatever, but for now, I'm going to explore the hell out of some caves. No, shut up. They might have stuff in them.

This is so avoidable as well! Just put a time limit on the damn main quest. Fallout 2 did a great job of this. If you don’t move your ass, your village dies and you fail the game. This makes sense, and the gameplay works with the mechanics. Yes, it’s open world and you do end up exploring a lot the wasteland, but it’s because you’re looking for something rare and precious. Stop telling me I need to do something and then not doing anything to make that real. It’s stupid, annoying, and so common. Fallout 4, Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 are examples of this, but those are just the games I’ve played the most.

This guy will show up every few weeks in your dreams to kick your butt in gear. The messages get progressively more desperate the longer you take. It's like the ultimate passive-agressive parent. "Oh, you didn't find the one piece of technology that saves our village because you're off in New Reno gambling? No, that's fine honey. I wanted to lose some weight anyway. I hear starving is good for that."

The next part of this dissonance is a total lack of draw with regards to the main quest. Exploration is inherently fun and interesting, because you’re discovering something new and finding new things. The Legend of Zelda wouldn’t exist if not for how much Shigeru Miyamoto loved exploring his childhood town. So where is the draw for the main quest? Fallout 4 made an admirable stab with its family angle, but you never get to know your family, so it’s hard for them to mean a lot for you. Hell, I care more about Dogmeat than I do about anybody else in Fallout 4. He’s adorable, he helps me carry loot around, and he holds enemies in place while I try to line up a shot.

Just look at him! Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?!

Maybe main quests shouldn’t start so early. Maybe your main quest should have some kind of goddamn effect on your gameplay? Anything, really, to make sure that you care about it even the littlest bit. You don’t have to make your players fall in love with the main quest, but if you give it some kind of tangible effect, people will care about it. Aren’t you tired of main quests that have no kick to them at all?

Lastly, why do open world games let you do everything? Why can I become the leader of the Companions in Skyrim, the Archmage of Winterhold, the Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood, and the leader of the Thieves’ guild? Many of these guilds are opposed, or at least, don’t like each other. How are they okay with this? For some reason, developers seem to think that anybody that plays games can’t stand having closed doors in their proverbial house. In older games, you couldn’t do everything in one run, which makes sense. This means that being the leader of one of these guilds is meaningful, and enjoyable. It’s no fun playing a game if you know you’re going to win every time, and it’s no fun starting up an RPG if you know you can do everything in one run. I’m not quite sure why developers are doing this so much. I think it could be a time issue, but then why are you putting 500+ hours on content in a game. Why not make something more concise that has multiple options for playing? It’s just strange, really. It’s almost patronizing. “Oh, you want to be king of hill and the best at tag? Sure, kid. And you don’t even half to work for it. Oh, you’re also the most popular kid in class!” Let us earn our place, please.

I love open world games. They offer a kind of exploration that you can’t get outside of video games, except when you actually explore the real world. However, ludonarrative dissonance is so common, it makes it hard to get excited for any open world game. It’s getting to the point when I hear “open world” and I just start to wonder how many of the usual decisions are going to be made. I know developers are not in complete control over their games. They have marketing people, producers, and more to answer to. Money people don’t want to hear about how a game is going to be great, just how it’s going to sell. That doesn’t make the current state of things any less frustrating. If the status quo is bad, then you change it.