10 Open World Game Tropes We NEVER Want To See Again

10. Empty Side Quests That Pad Out Completion Times

The best open-world games make their worlds feel engaging and believable with worthwhile side quests. They’re usually given by secondary characters, and they can be assigned automatically or discovered accidentally as you explore the map.

As demonstrated by Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Red Dead Redemption II, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (among other knockout titles), the ideal side quest progresses the narrative, offers a substantial bonus, and/or entertains enough to justify the effort invested.

Far too regularly, however, what should be a tightly woven and perpetually rewarding campaign of a few dozen hours is turned into a bloated 80, 90, or even 100+ hour slog due to the obligatory inclusion of tedious and insignificant side quests that don’t impact the story or the player - typically collectathons, exemplified by the feathers from Assassin's Creed.

Some of the other most common types of these meandering tasks are unimportant fetch quests; irritating escort missions; repetitive item searches (for example, “Find all 20 pieces of graffiti”); and cyclical jobs that require players to backtrack across various places and speak to various people in a specific order.

Rather than enhance the experience, these unoriginal and cumbersome side quests distract from the main mission(s) as they grate on our nerves and waste our precious time.