Fallout 4 Vs The Witcher 3: Which Is The Best RPG Of 2015?

7. Side-Quests

And so we arrive at one of the defining features of the RPG genre. For me, a rich sea of side-quests is more important than the main story or graphics. It's in the side-quests that that you really get to shape your character and decide what kind of person they'll be. Do you side with the drug dealer or drug addict? Do you try to extract as much money as possible from a peasant asking you to take out a monsters' nest, or do you do it for free? These kinds of questions crop up all the way throughout Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3, and both games do a great job of executing them. One way in which The Witcher 3 bests Fallout 4's side-quests is in the way it deals with the player's dialogue decisions. Much like in real life, it's not always clear what the right answer is, and sometimes saying what you think will resolve a situation peacefully could lead to bloodshed. This makes each chat a more tense and interesting affair, whereas Fallout 4's new Mass Effect-style system is a bit more black and white. Even if you ask questions to which you may or may not get an answer (the ones highlighted yellow or orange), you have nothing to lose in giving it a shot, and that just feels too simplistic.

Both games have an excellent sense of spontaneity about their side-quests, and are packed with intriguing locations that pull you in and encourage you to investigate them. From my experience, side-quests feel easier to just stumble upon in Fallout 4, and there seem to be more random encounters in the wilderness that act as springboards for further questing. Many of the quests in Witcher 3 originate on notice boards in towns, which just doesn't feel quite as organic as Fallout's system. And, of course, we shouldn't forget settlement-building in Fallout 4, which is not so much a side-quest but an entire game unto itself. It doesn't actually serve a massive mechanical purpose apart from giving you extra places to trade your items and do some crafting, but boy does it make you feel involved in shaping the game world - or rather, 'playing a role' in its future, yeah?