Side Content in Games

[Moonface]

Whether it be collectibles, quests, or any other task, a lot of games tend to provide us with something on the side to do alongside the main mission or focus of the game. So what's some of your favourite or least favourite side content in games you've played or seen?

Regardless of the game, my biggest gripe with any side content is when you can miss it and the game doesn't give you any way to access it unless you restart the entire game. GTA V does that with a side mission I never managed to find because it requires the player to go somewhere with no hint beforehand. Thinking of bad or nonexistent hints, NFS: Underground 2 had that same problem too, with bonus races and events available in the open world which are relayed to you once, and once only, via a phone call that I don't recall being easy to hear and the game has no subtitles, so if you missed any details then tough shit, and the same goes for if you did catch it but maybe it's been an hour of playing other events and now you can't remember all the details of the phone call you got, so you get to either miss the event or spend however long roaming the open world trying to find the event marker hidden somewhere. I also don't know if that content would disappear after a certain point, but if so then you might happen to drive through the area where a hidden event marker was that has since despawned.

One of my favourite side quests in recent memory though is the Shield Weaver armor quest in Horizon Zero Dawn. It's something you get to discover entirely by yourself through exploration, and it's easily one of the best collection related side quests I've ever experienced in a game. You either find one of the five pieces first, or you discover the locked away armor first, but either way it highly encourages you to explore the world and find all these old facilities you may not have found otherwise, and the whole quest just constantly snowballs into giving you more and more cool things while looking for the pieces you need to unlock the armor room. I can't think of many other quests I've played that overlap multiple separate elements in such a way.

[Mr EliteL]

I don't mind side quests and extra stuff to do, usually I am willing to do them and definitely will if I really enjoy the game, apart from possibly collectables. For instance Uncharted, I really like the game series but have not gone out of my way to collect the all hidden treasures throughout the main story of 2-4 (still need to play the original but will likely be the same). I just don't want to.

For NFSU2, I remember that being a problem of getting a call but losing where the challenge/event is meant to take place on the open world. Can't think of an exact example but know it did happen to me before.

Having some unlockable characters hidden behind side quests I can see being an annoyance to some players who don't like to go through something not a apart of the main route of the story, especially if they could be one of the strongest in the game. I prefer getting quirky characters through those means, kinda like Ms Mowz, who got a piercing defence standard attack in PM:TTYD, Alice and Therese in Luminous Arc 2, I think one of them had a max attack stat or something like that. Or they're joke characters or extremely overpowered, or plain weak.

Can't think of favourites just yet but I should at least come up with some.

Would've tried thinking of a different side quest, but Pit of 100 Trials is a good one. Being completely optional to do, plus being a challenge for the player and being available to tackle throughout the game, or just be an endgame dungeon/gauntlet once the main story is over.

[Moonface]

For NFSU2, I remember that being a problem of getting a call but losing where the challenge/event is meant to take place on the open world. Can't think of an exact example but know it did happen to me before.

To be fair any instance of it would be an example since I don't think you have to do anything missable to trigger the calls themselves. They happen after you finish x amount of regular events, and it isn't so bad in the early game because the open world isn't fully unlocked so it vastly narrows down the area to search, but as you unlock more of the map it gets worse trying to find things if you miss details because there's a wider area to search, since calls aren't triggered based on the area you're in as far as I can recall.

So I've seen some discourse about side quests in Elden Ring due to the lack of a quest log, so I'm curious what people here think of a game that has side quests but zero way to track them. I know Bloodborne does that and I absolutely hate it in that game because a vast number of the NPC's are faceless people at windows, and only a small handful of the interactable windows and doors in the world actually relate to a quest NPC. You also won't get a quest from them all the first time you talk to them, but after you do something elsewhere in the world, and then you get the fun of trying to figure out if any of the NPC's you've spoken to so far will now give you something more and even if one gave you a hint beforehand to see them later, it's hard to remember any of them when they're just faceless voices who talk through windows and doors that all look the same. Sekiro lacks tracking too but in that every NPC has a model right from the get go and few of them (if any) are present just for the sake of being present, so all of them serve a purpose. Bloodborne is riddled with NPC's that are initially or always just voices and a huge number of them are nothing more than just voices that exist for the sake of world population.

[Kyng]

This was something I loved about the first two Harry Potter games. The maps were stuffed with secret areas - which were filled with chocolate frogs, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, and - most interestingly of all - Secret Wizard Cards. The first game had 25 of these cards - but, somewhat cruelly, some of them were permanently missable, so I had to go back to the start of the game if I wanted them all. The second game had 101 cards, but because the game had a more open-world structure, these weren't missable, so it was more forgiving in that regard.

Batman: Arkham Asylum offered something similar: I had good fun hunting around the map for the Riddler trophies, messages, and other hidden secrets. However, the later games had larger maps, which really had too many hidden items - and I kind of lost interest.

[Moonface]

This was something I loved about the first two Harry Potter games. The maps were stuffed with secret areas - which were filled with chocolate frogs, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, and - most interestingly of all - Secret Wizard Cards. The first game had 25 of these cards - but, somewhat cruelly, some of them were permanently missable, so I had to go back to the start of the game if I wanted them all. The second game had 101 cards, but because the game had a more open-world structure, these weren't missable, so it was more forgiving in that regard.

Did you not play the third one @Kyng? I only ask because I know that one was full of secrets and side stuff too but you only mention the first two.
Those games had a lot of neat stuff to find though. I think the second game also had Fred and George's store where you could buy things like spells and such that would let you get to more areas around the school to find even more stuff. I love when side stuff in games doesn't just stop with a singular goal and sometimes one side element opens up into another one.

[ShiraNoMai]

I enjoy when side content reaps constant rewards for doing, like a passive reward system. "Hey, do this side quest, and get auto refills on this inventory item you have!"

[Moonface]

I enjoy when side content reaps constant rewards for doing, like a passive reward system. "Hey, do this side quest, and get auto refills on this inventory item you have!"

Yeah, I enjoy side content that gives you a reward that works long-term, instead of just maybe being more XP or items that you could still get without the side quest. I prefer unique rewards from them.

Also, having been playing a lot of side content in Ghost of Tsushima recently, I really like how that game uses its side content and its world structure together. The lay of the land naturally leads you to side content, and some of that side content leads you through the lay of the land when it's set up to be seen from a distance, which in turn causes you to note the land you're passing through towards something in the distance or pass by side content on the way. It reminds me of Breath of the Wild's world design where it tries to lead you around based on the landscape, but far more fleshed out.