I'm not sure about you, but I love playing videogames. I would miss work or class if it meant I would get another shot at the boss who's been plaguing the land with evil. He had it coming, anyway. Don't get me wrong, if it's a day I cannot miss - for fear of getting fired or maybe some kind of exam - I'll take the hit and leave my game behind, but will no doubt crave some more play time until I get back in the action. Somehow, I still sound like an addict, but what about those games that make you feel like you have to keep going? Is it always a good thing for the game to present you with near-infinite quests in order to keep you busy? Games are designed to grab their audience and keep them playing, but when does the point of "too much" come?
Anyone who has played any Role Playing Game (RPG) will attest to the countless quests available to fill your time. This is not a bad idea. I know I always want to continue from one mission to the next, despite only one out of 30 being part of the core story. I'm not sure why we feel so compelled to deliver some letters, kill a few bandits, or trek the world, facing demons, beasts or terrorists in order to find one missing person, but we do. To add insult to injury, most quests don't even give rewards worth the time sunk into completing the task. I once spent three hours, traveling from one place to the next, enduring many loading screens and killing anything that got in my way, just to get an item I vendor'ed before the next mission. All gamers know this feeling. Some game developers even praise themselves for all the possible tasks to undertake in their game, while leaving the main story as a small drop in the bucket. The entire series of Grand Theft Auto is a prime example of when extras take over the story; another series that does this is Fable. Neither of these games are known for their gripping narratives or involving gameplay, but for their open-world environments and incredible possibilities (many of which most other games do not have). The aspects which make these games famous have nothing to do with the core of the game, so how does one judge a game when its so full of extra material that it overshadows the main story?
To be blunt, it makes the game worse. By the end of Fable 2, I was sure I finished a bad game. I wanted to keep playing and kill more store/house owners to buy up their property, but I wanted nothing to do with the core game. The story was tired and dry, many quests felt like re-done versions of quests from the first Fable and the ending was just awful (the final boss is you either shoot someone once or your team member does). As for Grand Theft Auto, I don't even know what the story is. I've never seen anyone play the game and do missions to advance the character or story, just a lot of stealing cars, driving around, and blowin' stuff up real good. What makes a game great is when the player gets involved with the characters and cares about whether or not they succeed. You cannot possibly think a game is good, but the characters and story were trash. To take it one step further, one can say the entire genre of RPGs is guilty of going overboard. When did it get to the point that gamers even care about the position of the protagonist's eyebrows or width of their ears? And that's before the game even starts. Once you get into the game, there are, of course, numerous Quest-Givers who ask for a certain number of this or for you to go somewhere and talk to that guy, which do nothing other than grant you some experience or money.
The problem with this is the idea that side quests and the main story are different games unto themselves. Recently, more and more games have a tendency to provide the character with choices which affect small parts of the story. Games like Dragon Age: Origins allow the player to kill possible members of your party. This doesn't do anything to the protagonist or for the story itself other than give you fewer party members from which to choose. If you already love your current party, why not kill everyone else? Definitely makes it less to manage.
The solution to this problem is to make the side quests, all the "extra junk", have some kind of impact on the story. IGN discussed the difficulty of being evil in games, but Super Dope Games wants to take it one step further (especially since I personally have always thought being bad was much easier and more fun): Leave nothing in the game that does not affect the story in some way. This means more than just how your party members talk to you or how random Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) react to you. The Mass Effect series takes a nice step in this direction by giving you optional material which helps you out. Sure, you can ignore all your people, but you can also talk to them and make them loyal, which gives them a bonus ability, making them better in a fight. The "extras" in Mass Effect are optional, but they more directly influence how well you do in-game. None of which force you to be the hero, by the way.
If you decide to kill a party member who's a famous member of a certain race, then let that race make things harder for you: coming to sabotage your missions, putting a price on your head, refusing you from entering areas they control. More to the point: if you choose to ally yourself with monsters, let the monster-killers hunt you. As for the "conversational reactions" present in most RPGs, the intricate choices of facial structure can influence those. If someone has a giant nose or, God Forbid! a mouth that slope down too far, then people should find the protagonist unattractive and be less friendly. Maybe that strays too far away from "everyone's beautiful in their own way" but we all know that's a lie anyway. People like attractive people.
Even the fact that these optional aspects of gaming are known as "extras" lets people know how little they matter. The main story, quests that one cannot avoid to complete the game, is what's most important. That doesn't mean the optional quests have to make less of an impact, and it doesn't mean you have to jam a game full of them just to keep the audience entertained. We just ask that what our character does, matters.
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