this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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What ever will they do without the man who designed compelling quests such as "go to this cave and grab this item" and "go to this outpost and kill this nameless dude"?
This is literally every quest in every game, though
You could boil chess down to "go to this place and kill this dude" if you wanted
Yeah... No. That's not even every quest in Starfield, much less every game. I get that you are being hyperbolic, but to imply there is no difference between the generic mission board quests (i.e. Transport Passenger, Kill Target, Survey Planet, etc) and the more handcrafted quest lines (i.e. infiltrating the Crimson Fleet) is overtly reductive and disingenuous.
And while Starfiled does have some actually engaging quests, mostly in the Faction quest lines, its flatout dishonest to try and sweep the problem of its numerous boring generic quests under the rug of "that's every quest if you get pedantic enough!".
I wasn't saying there's no difference, I was pointing out the absurdity of reducing all of Starfield's quests to "go to this cave and grab this object." The quest design in Starfield is actually pretty good. If they had simply not added those odd job radiant quests, I doubt people would be complaining about the game lacking good quests.
As I mentioned earlier, I understand you were being hyperbolic, and I acknowledge that Starfield does feature quests that are more engaging than the generic missions. However, even at its peak, the quest design is of mediocre to subpar quality. The recurring pattern of "travel to location X, eliminate target Y, or retrieve item Z" becomes repetitive. Additionally, the process of reaching these objectives consistently follows the same formula: fast-travel to the nearest point, follow the waypoint marker, enter through the front entrance, navigate through a dungeon that is a copy and paste job, and optionally return to the quest giver.
I recognize that this issue partially stems from the game's ambitious scope, but it's a consequence of spreading resources too thin.
Discussing the intricacies of quality quest design is a complex topic, and while Starfield's quests may lack inspiration at times, it's important to remember that it can still be an enjoyable game. However, when you compare it to titles like Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout: New Vegas, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, etc, it becomes evident that Bethesda had to make concessions in quest design to accommodate the game's vast scale. For a prime example of the same studio achieving more with less in terms of questing, one need only look at Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood questline
And while removing the radiant quests would have made the problem less agregious, more effort still would have needed to be invested in the handcrafted quests to remedy the problem.
The thing is tho, that's all the quests in Starfield are even written as. What makes the quest interesting isn't the goal, but the story surrounding it. The story surrounding a good bulk of the quests in Starfield are literally just "go here and get this. Why? Because we need it."
Idunno, there are quests in Starfield that I liked. Sarah's companion mission and the whole Crimson Fleet one come to mind.
Hell, I once bought and played 15ish iterations of a game where the whole goal was to get some broad out of a castle. You never seem to get her out, either. 0/10 terrible design, avoid Nario if you can (I think that's how it's spelled).
Folk are gonna try to defend Mario's quest design because of its generation, ignoring that games like Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda managed to have incredible world building and deep stories with the same technology in the same era
Not to dunk on Mario, there's a reason it's widely considered one of the greatest games of all time
I guess the instructions of a quest are just the tip of the iceberg. The goal of mario was just to go right all the way. The real design was the obstacles in the way.
Learn sentences to become a skilled swordman.
This comment has confused me for the last 17 hours, I gotta be missing something here
Cos you haven't played that game?
Well yeah, the quest could have very simple instructions, but the actual map is designed so achieving the goal requires strategic decision making. I guess the hard is making it so the player self selects the difficulty that is the most fun for them.
Which I think is honestly a lot of players' fault. Like yeah if you play an RPG, avoid all the sidequests and just go straight to max level as fast as you can, it's pretty freaking hard for the game designer to make the right guardrails to force you to actually enjoy the game lmao.
That used to be every quest in every game, over a decade ago.
But Starfield released in 2023, and even Ubisoft of all godforsaken developers does a better job at side quests than Starfield did.
How to tell if a person didn't play Starfield
Oh I played Starfield alright.