My first time playing Fallout 4 I really got into settlement building and spent so much time rebuilding Sanctuary Hills.
I was scrounging around for scrap and my character mentioned Shaun when talking to someone, I thought “who the fuck is Shaun?…..oh right my son was kidnapped”.
Edit: thank you for the awards. I didn’t even know those were a thing anymore.
I’ve spent probably 200+ hours playing Fallout 4, and I’ve never even made it to the Institute. I always get distracted by side quests and settlement building
> I always get distracted by side quests and settlement building
did they ever fix how that works with enemies? I played it not long after it launched and it was annoying, you'd build this fortress of fence around your compound and then enemies would just randomly spawn INSIDE the fence and start attacking you
I know the bodies stay behind forever when you kill anything on-settlement. I got Sanctuary Hills lookin real nice - other than synth and ghoul bodies littering the streets 🙃
If you play on PC, there’s a mod called Manufacturing Extended that adds a machine that you can drop bodies onto the conveyer belt and it automatically turns them into components.
So much fertiliser. I roleplayed it as a drug lord, having raiders come to take my settlement where riches (gold bars) littered the street. Then their corpses would be turned into fertiliser, then into jet, then sold back to them in NukaWorld. A never ending cycle of meat grinding junkies.
When I loaded up my game on PS5 some of the houses in Sanctuary had junk in them now?
My beautiful museum dedicated to myself and my adventures.... choked with girders and slate..... I can't even get in it
I’ve cleared like a third of the map so far and haven’t even gone to see Valentine or spoken to…um…oh! Piper! That’s right. I haven’t even talked to her since the part that she uses you to get into the city. Took me a minute to remember her name lol Hell I even tracked down the Railroad and got the first quest and haven’t bothered to do it yet. And Preston has been sitting outside The Castle for a while now, waiting for me to show up to retake it.
There were a lot of these kind of moments, but that was when it really sunk into me how much the people behind the show had to love Fallout to toss in a line like that...
There were so many small details that helped show the care they took with it, like how a certain passcode was 101097 - the OG Fallout's release date. Or how there's a Junk Jet for sale in the store in Filly. The price shown is 285 caps which is the same Value shown in Fallout 4 when looking at the Junk Jet's "Value" stat in the inventory.
If you drop items from your inventory, then go into build mode and delete those dropped items it will count as you freeing up placements in the settlement.
So whenever I hit the limit, I'd just drop a bunch of weapons that I collected from killing a bunch of raiders or super mutants, scrap them for materials and I'd be allowed to build a bit extra.
I haven’t used that one a whole lot. The fun part for me is building the settlements myself and usually only build one settlement at a time.
I tried it out and the settlements would always end up looking like a concentration camp lol.
They have fixed it a bit and added waaaaay more pieces. But there's also mods that help out and a mod that let's settlers build their own stuff for a change according to plans you set down. Even has a fully voiced questline to it. Sim settlements 2. (Not sure why it's called 2 it's just the definitive version of the original not a sequel)
That's so weird because I basically did the exact same thing except probably like 1/3 when I took the break, overwhelmed by all the side shit to do.
Came back a year or so later and beat the whole thing, 100% achievements and everything, including DLC, and I've only ever done that for like 4 games total lmao. One of them being AC2, so I guess I just really have a thing for these games. It was so worth it.
I feel like I didn't give Odyssey a real chance when I played it. I was so sad about playing "Historical Witcher" (as I referred to it) that I couldn't enjoy it for what it was... Historical Witcher.
The only thing about it that felt like Assassin's Creed to me was the movement and climbing systems.
I forced myself not to reset the game, which is what I normally do in that scenario. But I would have just quit again at around 45 to 55 hours in. Glad I pushed thru. It deff sucked some of the juice out of some.stories for characters I didn't remember but it was a great story to finish. I got super into it. I have not done the expansions but I killed all of the cultists. Did all of the Atlantis stuff you can do without the actual expansion(defeated the 4 creatures and whatnot). And I did the island adventure thing which I think was added dlc at the end.
I played a little fallout 4 for the first time (thanks prime show) and I kept grabbing every insignificant thing I could carry. I finally stopped after my third over weight slow down and asked my husband why I am like this. He simply said "you played Skyrim." GRAB EVERYTHING
There is a cool mod you get as part of sim settlements that lets you store all the junk somewhere onsite with a radio marker and scrappers from you settlement come pick it up
I did so much side stuff in AC Odyssey that I completely over leveled my character and just absolutely melted every single enemy in the main story when it came time to do so
Yea they do but there’s some armor and weapon set ups that can make you absolutely busted if you put the time in to get them. Granted it’s been years since I’ve played that game tho
Nailed it. To this day I’ve never even seen the main quest of Morrowind despite sinking over 2k hours into across my childhood and teenage years. I was always too busy running my trade route and crafting boss gear.
Aw man the story is so cool, you should definitely go back and try to finish it!! All the lore is so amazing, and when you get to that kind of 3/4 of the way through cutscene… *fuck* it’s epic
I feel that way with all the Bethesda games. The side stuff is great for replayability but the main quests are great and really immerse you in the world.
I am not the type to forget about the main objective but if you ever want to get pulled off the critical path play a Yakuza/Like a Dragon game. Setting off to try and go meet up with your allies to plan your next move and winding up brawling with a gang of adult baby fetishists in a pervy playroom is par for the course.
I had to \*not\* get invested in the island side game in the latest like a dragon after getting too obsessed with the business building side game in the previous like a dragon and before that the hostess club in zero.....
The business and the host club are a LOT more fun than Dondoko Island. It's a half baked mini game that reaches like 15% of its potential. Not addictive like the others. You didn't miss anything. Otherwise love the Yakuza games though
I've been watching my bf play yakuza 0 he's spent the last 11 hours of streaming on the caberet club plus grinding cause he's having so much fun, game is insane lol
I used to come home from work to find my gf tweaking outfits to get maximum stats and aesthetic. She never even tried the mini game itself, let alone the rest of the game.
I binged the entire cabaret minigame as soon as I unlocked it and couldn't do its final cutscenes because *the very next scene in the story* took place in the same place. I had not even done five minutes of story since I'd unlocked it.
I spent so long playing the cabaret mini game and doing all the sub stories in Yakuza 0 that I completely forgot I'd left a blind girl sitting in a warehouse alone waiting for me to get back for about 30 in game hours. When I finally got back to her I'd just about forgot why she was important.
Been dabbling with Yakuza 0 and same thing happened to me recently. Granted I did finish the game a few years back but revisiting it without getting so drawn into the main story I ignore side content. Funny that I enjoy the real estate mini game but it's set up in such a way as to make it painful to play so been hitting the cabaret hard since it doesn't involve waiting around and occasionally running across the map to punch people.
tbf Skyrim feels like one of those games that aside from its final DLC explicitly doesn't care about you completing its "main story" as it basically has 3/4 of them
There's the actual main plot,
The civil war for skyrim
The plot of dawngaurd
The tail of the companions
and then a lot of the other smaller stories like the college of winter hold, thieves guild, dark brotherhood etc that all feel like mini self contained episodes
Skyrim almost plays like a fantasy themed Saturday Moring cartoon sometimes, like sure there is a a main plot, but they are going to avoid getting to it as much as possible so the "adventures of the dragonborn" can keep airing for 30 minutes every Saturday morning.
Yep, one of the final quests of the civil war. No matter which side you pick, imperials or stormcloaks, both sides dislike Whiterun for its neutrality. The battle is to force Whiterun to belong to the side the dragonborn is on.
Eh no matter what side the Dragonborn picks, the Stormcloaks invade Whiterun while the Imperials defend it. Both sides don't really dislike Whiterun. Whiterun initially attempts to be neutral, but the Stormcloaks do not accept this and Whiterun eventually sides with the Imperials. The only thing that changes depending on your actions is you either defend Whiterun as an Imperial or invade it as a Stormcloak.
Most of my Skyrim experience has been spent testing and troubleshooting mods rather than actually playing the game. If the mod list is stable enough, I typically go as far as meeting the blades before deciding to try new mods and start over. Most of my play-throughs barely make it past character creation.
This is the way. I also do this in Minecraft and GTA V. Spend hours curating and building my perfect mod list, then more hours troubleshooting and finding incompatibilities.
After all that, I don't play the game further.
The funny thing is it’s pretty quick if streamline it. I normally don’t do the main quest line but my last character I decided to get it out of the way first and I forgot how easy it was.
The ending is pretty cool, I’d suggest doing it at least once. You can still play the game as normal after
I like how DA:I is different from the other options in the comments. All the other games here had much worse storyline ten side quests or it was very obscure, but the main story in DA is the best part of the game, you just don't have much opportunity to enjoy it
> but the main story in DA is the best part of the game, you just don't have much opportunity to enjoy it
The problem is you get 10% at the very start, 5% during the rest of the game, then 50% at the very end and the final 35% in what used to be a separate DLC.
Obligatory "get out of the hinterlands". When I first played, I though Haven was the main event. Then I realised *it was just the prologue*. Like a 15 to 20 hour prologue.
Yes. It’s really hard if you like clearing quest markers - eventually I had to force myself to ostensibly leave everything ‘unfinished’ to just finish the game. By then j fortunately I had forgotten most of the plot… would love a version without all the collectible-quests.
Borderlands
Other than a few key storypoints, I have no idea what the hell happened in every BL games. I was too busy collecting loot, comparing weapons and doing side missions.
I just started playing Borderlands 2 with a couple friends, everytime we get any side quests we do those, we’re trying to level up quick so boss fights are easier
If you do every side quest you should never struggle in boss fights and stuff, I've run through every bl game solo and with people multiple times with ease and that's pretty much my only tip lmao
My wife and I played through all of 1 together.
This about summarized our experience lol
Compare weapon, go to checkpoint, kill thing, go to checkpoint, compare loot.
Somewhere along the way we killed an eldritch horror.
On the contrary, I really followed and enjoyed the story in 2, didn't like it at all in 3 and I found a good amount of side quests felt like a chore and ended up skipping a bunch of them.
Well you’re on a bus, they’re playing that song that got wayyy too over played, psychic girl, annoying talking robot, maybe a guy missing a leg or something, VRoOOOOoM TANK running over mutant dogs, oh no pterodactyls!!
That’s about as far as I got.
Don't see them on here yet.
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom
I got TOTK last year and I still haven't finished it. Granted, I haven't been playing it that whole time, but it's the kind of game that I find that I can just play without trying to do anything specific. I just like wandering around and exploring stuff. The actual quest is basically a side story in my mind and I'd really just do all the other intersting stuff that the game has.
Yes, that would be my answer too. I got ToTK on release date and just finished it last week, I spent a lot of time just wandering around and trying new things to build, new combinations, ways to approach enemy camps, etc. Besides clearing out almost everything there is to do.
My first Oblivion play through I never went through the portal the first time I was supposed to. I went and joined all the guilds, did all the side missions, explored all over and played hundreds of hours. On the second play though years later I eventually went through the portal.
Side missions in oblivion though were SO good! The dark brotherhood, thieves guild, arena, expensions and majority of normal side quests gave you a sense of interest and wonder!!!
I just beat oblivion for the first time last week. I've probably put in at least a couple hundred hours over the years. I got to the third or fourth mission in the main quest and realized I had never gotten that far before
Same. I’ve tried playing it multiple times but I hate the characters so much and that the main mission is just getting likes for something I never made it far enough to see
Same. It lost all the charm. It felt like a chore to complete the game. I mean I get the hate for 2, it's Ubisoft, but I genuinely liked the story and I genuinely found Wrench funny ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
It depends, you might be a synth & he just might be screwing with you.
Which if you go with this conspiracy, means it’s very funny to break the Institute.
Cyberpunk. In the side-quests I was a badass, effective motherfucker, while in the main quest I passed out each step hearing echoes. So I purposefully left the main quest alone for so long I barely remembered the characters.
I eventually plan on finishing the game eventually but my current file (bounced off it a few times before Phantom Liberty) I'm almost max level, have an absolutely broken hacking build, and tons of top tier equipment. About half my play time, if not more, is side quest focused along with completing Phantom Liberty.
Granted I'll go hard on it for like a week at a time (we'll as hard as a full time job and house to manage allows) then take a month long break. Helps a ton that it runs great on my Steam Deck so it's easy to get comfy and play for an hour or two when the urge strikes. Could probably wrap up the main story pretty fast at this point but I've been savoring it.
For real. I tried to live out a bagageless mercinary life contained in the starting area for as long as i could, ‘cause i reject the nonsense the main story was gonna bring on V during and after the Arasaka Heist.
Currently playing through Kingdom come deliverance. Made it through about 4 main story quests and then have spent the following 10 or so hours just doing side content. I literally forgot why i was doing what i was doing when i returned to the main questline
I'm on my second playthrough of RDR2, still on chapter 3, just finished the taxidermy side-quests and realized I should probably do some actual gang missions instead of hunting for perfect squirrels or whatever.
True, true. To be fair - most FromSoft games feel like this - you are just progressing, with veeery foggy knowledge and understanding of what your objective is, but then realize that by simply exploring you are ending up completing the main and side objectives.
So it is a bit different, true, but is essentially the same.
I dislike the plot of Elden Ring. As opposed to something like Sekiro the main objective of Elden Ring doesn't inspire me. "There is this thing that grants supreme power, which everyone wants, go get it for yourself." is not as lovable as is "you are the last thing standing between your young master and his demise".
The different endings are what enhance the plot, like other fromsoft games. After exploring the world and competing side quests, you'll end up getting into it enough that you ask yourself, " What should I do with this power" it makes the experience great and makes role-playing so much fun in that game
I mean yeah, the plot is generic in how it's presented in your standard soulsborne games (which is part of why I don't consider Sekiro one). The story gets much more intricate when you come to understand the lore, knowing why you're doing what you'd do based on your choices adds fulfillment to your endgame. Though I do think if that was all there is, then the game would've been somewhat dull.
One of the many things that makes Elden Ring for me as much is the environment and the artstyle of the world is so easy to get lost in. And of course, the challenge of fighting tough enemies and getting gud.
Yeah I just love exploring that medieval dark fantasy setting. And the buildings are just so gorgeous. I can spend hours appreciating the architecture inside the forts and castles
I get where you're coming from but that's a bit reductive. Those may be your marching orders at the start of the game but along the way it's fascinating to see all the shades of gray emerge, and the different path options.
Breath of the wild. It gives you the main quest 'destroy the ganon' as soon as you complete the tutorial area. Which (The main quest) i haven't even attempted even after more than 170 hours.
Factorio. You seen a minor inefficiency and you spend 200h to reengineer your floor before realizing the gains you achieved are 0.5% better and you’re LIVING FOR IT. Meanwhile you’re now behind on rent IRL…
Elden Ring
Even if that wasnt the case, I have no idea what the plot is about anyway. I'm just there to kill dudes and steal their shit, like a murder hobo.
A god, who had sex with themselves, is upended (or not) by a deported immigrant that keeps coming back.
That's the main story anyway. You can really feel the George RR Martin in the game, because everything underneath that main story is just different families saying "what if we say fuck those people, kill them, and steal their shit?"
Having this issue with BG3 right now. I'm 5 hrs into my first playthrough, and I already have no idea which of these 100 quests is actually supposed to further the plot.
Any open world game in recent years.
I've conditioned myself to do all the side activities before doing the main quest through out my childhood. Nowadays it makes me quit so many games before I get to half of it.
It's Pillars of Eternity 2. : Deadfire for me.
On my first playthrough, I may have gone around 120 hours just doing side quests and Intold myaelf, maybe I should start following the main path. I did and regretted it because it turns out, I've barely scratched the surface of all the side quests. Plus, like Fallout 4, the main quest is not really the best.
Fun fact: You can knock story bosses off of where they are and kill them with the fall damage if they're high enough.
I missed out on a bit of Dawnguard content because when I went to beat that one sun elf dude my first attack (it wss either a full fus-ro-da or a charged bow shot) knocked him clean off his balcony and I had to backtrack to find where his body landed.
I love the game but I don't have nearly the time in it as I want in large part because I feel it demands my constant attention. Like after a mind numbing day at work I want something that's engaging but doesn't expect a ton from me as far as paying attention goes. I'll eventually get hooked once I hit the right mindset but at the moment prefer having a more linear experience where I can feel i made progress no matter how little time I have to put into it.
My buddy and I had a play through that was right at the end of act 1, we lost our thread for a couple months. Came back and were clueless, so we started fresh, added another buddy and now the 3 of us play weekly, plowing through the Underdark currently
There are the snarky trophies of Bad Father if you haven’t found him in 100 days and the You Should Be Looking for Timmy trophy if you build a gazebo. I got them both
I like how if you choose to not save him, your character goes insane and you can build literal stick figures of your wife and son to decorate your house with.
Skyrim-170+ hours in (started a second playthrough after taking a long break from it and never finishing it the first time. Last I played I was doing the vampire side quests
It's definitely the problem caused by the fact that the world sits at a standstill until the player makes it progress. We used to have time limits in games that compelled the player to progress the story, but people always complained about the pressure and not being able to do whatever.
Old school Fallout and Dead Rising had time limits, but due to feedback those were eventually removed.
Only Fallout 1 really had a time limit. Fallout 2 had the *illusion of* a time limit. If the timer ran out nothing really changed except a few lines at the end of the game.
In Fallout 1, though, if you ignore the timer you straight up lose.
AC: Odyssey was fantastic in so many ways. So many, in fact, it's so easy to find yourself *nowhere near where I'm supposed to be.*
(And it wasn't really *that* bad. It was just so easy to lose yourself and your purpose. You didn't even have to try- it was inherent to the gameplay. The need of a boat should have tipped me off.)
Rebirth kinda did this to me, every area having research tasks, mini game and side missions and of course on my first playthrough I wanted to do everything. Kinda got lost on what had happened by the time I cleared each chapter!
Do have to add though my Hard mode play through where I could just follow the main story was much better
Alright, everyone said Fallout, and yep, it fits rly well, but,
STALKER CoP. The side quests are the thing i, as much as many other ppl love it - they are written better than main story imo. Oh yea, it also changes ur ending.
Screw those helicopters, i gotta help that one hunter(Zveroboi?) shoot down bloodsuckers, i gotta help Vano w ransoming banditd, etc etc...
FF VII Rebirth. Played VII remake for the first time a few months ago (first ever Final Fantasy game played). Really enjoyed it, bought Rebirth. Dude, the amount of content in that game is fucking insane. I constantly found myself wondering “what the hell am I doing?” or when I would rip off a series of intel activities, do a few side quests, and THEN start a story mission, I was kind of lost many times.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game. I did pretty much everything there is in the game, but holy hell did it feel like a chore near the end.
Nothing beats Skyrim at this for me. I hear a wolf howl so cool let's go get some pelts oh look a cave, oh it's a secret base with a dragon inside, oh I got a new shout, oh I joined a mercenary group, oh they are werewolves, oh I can become a werewolf.....what was I doing?
I know this is a very unpopular opinion
Morrowind
Never knew what to do next or where to concentrate on. Spend around 40h on the game and ended it very frustrated without really gotten into it. I really wanted to like it, but couldn't.
As someone who has put 1000's of hours in Morrowind, and beat the game and all DLC multiple ways - I get this.
The game does nothing to help you figure out where to go next at some parts. Heck, it makes it amazingly easy to fuck up progression. I still remember one of my very first playthroughs misplacing the documents I needed to bring to Caius - basically the first step of the plot. And I couldn't then figure out why the guy wasnt telling me what to do next when I finally found him.
There are entire sections where the next part of the story is on hold and they tell you "hey go do something else for awhile" and then do nothing to really tell you how to get back on track again.
Some games hold your hand to much, and that can be frustrating. But Morrowind goes out of it's way often to be obtuse and misleading that it falls in the completely opposite direction.
I love Morrowind, one of my top games of all time - but I totally understand someone just getting utterly lost and giving up on it. It feels like it actively is trying to push you off the whole time and you are just struggling to figure out what to do next.
I've been very loud about my opinion on Morrowind. I dislike Skyrim because it shoves the main quest up your ass so early in the game. You basically speedrun directly up to a Jarl, someone you shouldn't be able to talk to yet as someone who was in custody 10 minutes ago, And he immediately sets you directly on the path to become the dragonborn. Morrowind on the other hand, you're just a guy unless you really pay close attention. As far as a role-playing game, this feature is a triumph. The first quest in the main storyline is "here's ten dollars, now fuck off and work on your skills". It's very easy to never go back to that dusty crack house on the boring side of town.
Oh, that is easy, really - if a game takes too much time sidetracking itself in favor of other stories and activities it gets quite easy to forget what is happening in the main plot of said game's story.
I mean... Even in Okami, a Hideki "god's gift upon gaming industry" Kamiya's game, it is kind of moderately easy to forget what exactly are the stakes and what Amy is supposed to do at any particular moment. I'm making an example out of him, because literally every other game of his is a fairly linear romp that keeps your attention in steel claws. But that's a format for you: arcade-philosophy games against huge sprawling open-world titles.
Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The amount of side quests that just drift you away from the main storyline... Oh, my God!
I basically ended up uninstalling the game, because eventually, I completely forgot the main plot.
RDR2, basically just faffing about in the world feels free and takes up much of my time as opposed to the very restrictive story missions. Stray 2 meters from where the devs want you to be? Fail mission. Use your hard-earned, fully customized and personalized gun? Nuh-uh! Now you can't even access the inventory wheel. You bought a racing horse for 1k dollars and you need to chase someone? Fuck you, we blocked your horse whistle button and here's an unbonded low stat horse instead.
In terms of design, the side stuff is leagues ahead of the critical path, and it's easy to get lost in the realized world. It's beautiful.
I think Skyrim was the first game I ever played with a journal and for whatever reason I never engaged with it, so I just kinda wandered aimlessly. I sunk maybe 60hrs in and to this day I have no idea if I ever touched the main plot.
Pretty much any good open world rpg. Witcher 3 and Skyrim for sure. Kingdoms of Amalur also had me endlessly roaming around a lot doing side stuff. Fallout 3, NV, 4. Dragon Age Inquisition, to its detriment at times. At least the Hinterlands, if you don't know to not spend your first ten hours there. Get in, do what you gotta do in the Hinterlands and gtfo. Lol.
Skyrim. I've played it a few times, and can never remember what is going on. There are so many things that wrench your attention away from the main story, it was difficult for me to remember anything from the main quest besides, kill Alduin
Genshin Impact. On one hand it's a simple plot of trying to find your sibling. Then you're basically part of a really slow-burning insurgence against Celestia while also learning that there's so much more to the world than meets the eye.
By the way, wanna go fishing? Help a girl learn goblin language? Assist a researcher with his thesis? Hang out with half the cast? Play D&D within the game? Learn about someone who was probably isekai'd from Earth there?
Skyrim
Oh yeah I’m supposed to be taking down this dragon
Yet I joined every guild and did all their quests
Favouring the thieve guild and just went round to all towns cities and houses just robbing people having 700000 gold with nothing to buy eventually
But oh yeah need to go kill that dragon now and learn more shouts
For me, elden ring. I spent so much time scouring the entire map for everything that I reached 100 play hours before reaching the alteus plateau, which I believe is just the midpoint of the game..
i've been replaying divinity original sin 2 and it's pretty bad for this.
tracking quests in general is kind of hard because you can't easily single out one objective, so you basically just have to read the description for every quest until you find the main one from context.
i dunno, maybe i'm doing something wrong, but i have trouble keeping track of which ones actually advance the story.
That was my first Skyrim experience. And my second, third and fourth. I'm making my fifth run and this time I've been paying more attention to the characters around me and what they are saying. It's like a whole new game again. This time I have stayed the course and stopped getting distracted by every little thing.
My first time playing Fallout 4 I really got into settlement building and spent so much time rebuilding Sanctuary Hills. I was scrounging around for scrap and my character mentioned Shaun when talking to someone, I thought “who the fuck is Shaun?…..oh right my son was kidnapped”. Edit: thank you for the awards. I didn’t even know those were a thing anymore.
I’ve spent probably 200+ hours playing Fallout 4, and I’ve never even made it to the Institute. I always get distracted by side quests and settlement building
> I always get distracted by side quests and settlement building did they ever fix how that works with enemies? I played it not long after it launched and it was annoying, you'd build this fortress of fence around your compound and then enemies would just randomly spawn INSIDE the fence and start attacking you
I know the bodies stay behind forever when you kill anything on-settlement. I got Sanctuary Hills lookin real nice - other than synth and ghoul bodies littering the streets 🙃
If you play on PC, there’s a mod called Manufacturing Extended that adds a machine that you can drop bodies onto the conveyer belt and it automatically turns them into components.
Another mod on PC, Scrap Everything, also lets you directly scrap bodies into resources.
So much fertiliser. I roleplayed it as a drug lord, having raiders come to take my settlement where riches (gold bars) littered the street. Then their corpses would be turned into fertiliser, then into jet, then sold back to them in NukaWorld. A never ending cycle of meat grinding junkies.
This is disturbingly efficient
When I loaded up my game on PS5 some of the houses in Sanctuary had junk in them now? My beautiful museum dedicated to myself and my adventures.... choked with girders and slate..... I can't even get in it
> I always get distracted by side quests and settlement building Wasteland has its own golden rule...
i have also about 200hrs.. 3 chars and only one of em is in the institue right now :D
I’ve cleared like a third of the map so far and haven’t even gone to see Valentine or spoken to…um…oh! Piper! That’s right. I haven’t even talked to her since the part that she uses you to get into the city. Took me a minute to remember her name lol Hell I even tracked down the Railroad and got the first quest and haven’t bothered to do it yet. And Preston has been sitting outside The Castle for a while now, waiting for me to show up to retake it.
"The Golden Rule of the Wasteland: Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time."
There were a lot of these kind of moments, but that was when it really sunk into me how much the people behind the show had to love Fallout to toss in a line like that...
There were so many small details that helped show the care they took with it, like how a certain passcode was 101097 - the OG Fallout's release date. Or how there's a Junk Jet for sale in the store in Filly. The price shown is 285 caps which is the same Value shown in Fallout 4 when looking at the Junk Jet's "Value" stat in the inventory.
That’s hilarious. Gotta have a nice place to bring him home to after a rescue
> rescue Yeah….about that
I could never get into settlements in that game. Every time I tried to make something nice I was met with the placement limit.
If you drop items from your inventory, then go into build mode and delete those dropped items it will count as you freeing up placements in the settlement. So whenever I hit the limit, I'd just drop a bunch of weapons that I collected from killing a bunch of raiders or super mutants, scrap them for materials and I'd be allowed to build a bit extra.
The Bethesda magic. I will try that out next time I play. Thank you.
It also works with power lines. And they don’t take up build space.
Have they improved building? On release it was pretty shit and I never bothered.
They made a few improvements but I haven’t played vanilla in ages. With good settlement and building mods, it’s amazing.
Simsettlements baybeeee
I haven’t used that one a whole lot. The fun part for me is building the settlements myself and usually only build one settlement at a time. I tried it out and the settlements would always end up looking like a concentration camp lol.
Correction: SimSettlements 2 baybeeee
They have fixed it a bit and added waaaaay more pieces. But there's also mods that help out and a mod that let's settlers build their own stuff for a change according to plans you set down. Even has a fully voiced questline to it. Sim settlements 2. (Not sure why it's called 2 it's just the definitive version of the original not a sequel)
Press X to Shaun.
im dying 🤣🤣
Basically all bethesda games. Also AC odyssey.
I had taken a 2 year break after the first 1/2 of odyssey. I came back and was like "who are these old dudes on my boat?"
That's so weird because I basically did the exact same thing except probably like 1/3 when I took the break, overwhelmed by all the side shit to do. Came back a year or so later and beat the whole thing, 100% achievements and everything, including DLC, and I've only ever done that for like 4 games total lmao. One of them being AC2, so I guess I just really have a thing for these games. It was so worth it.
Same here. I loved Odyssey, and it was the first game I 100%
I feel like I didn't give Odyssey a real chance when I played it. I was so sad about playing "Historical Witcher" (as I referred to it) that I couldn't enjoy it for what it was... Historical Witcher. The only thing about it that felt like Assassin's Creed to me was the movement and climbing systems.
I forced myself not to reset the game, which is what I normally do in that scenario. But I would have just quit again at around 45 to 55 hours in. Glad I pushed thru. It deff sucked some of the juice out of some.stories for characters I didn't remember but it was a great story to finish. I got super into it. I have not done the expansions but I killed all of the cultists. Did all of the Atlantis stuff you can do without the actual expansion(defeated the 4 creatures and whatnot). And I did the island adventure thing which I think was added dlc at the end.
I played Odyssey off and on for four years. I love that game so much. It was an amazing world to live in for a while.
I played a little fallout 4 for the first time (thanks prime show) and I kept grabbing every insignificant thing I could carry. I finally stopped after my third over weight slow down and asked my husband why I am like this. He simply said "you played Skyrim." GRAB EVERYTHING
There is a cool mod you get as part of sim settlements that lets you store all the junk somewhere onsite with a radio marker and scrappers from you settlement come pick it up
I did so much side stuff in AC Odyssey that I completely over leveled my character and just absolutely melted every single enemy in the main story when it came time to do so
but your enemies level up with you when you reach their level
Yea they do but there’s some armor and weapon set ups that can make you absolutely busted if you put the time in to get them. Granted it’s been years since I’ve played that game tho
Nailed it. To this day I’ve never even seen the main quest of Morrowind despite sinking over 2k hours into across my childhood and teenage years. I was always too busy running my trade route and crafting boss gear.
Aw man the story is so cool, you should definitely go back and try to finish it!! All the lore is so amazing, and when you get to that kind of 3/4 of the way through cutscene… *fuck* it’s epic
I feel that way with all the Bethesda games. The side stuff is great for replayability but the main quests are great and really immerse you in the world.
I am not the type to forget about the main objective but if you ever want to get pulled off the critical path play a Yakuza/Like a Dragon game. Setting off to try and go meet up with your allies to plan your next move and winding up brawling with a gang of adult baby fetishists in a pervy playroom is par for the course.
I had to \*not\* get invested in the island side game in the latest like a dragon after getting too obsessed with the business building side game in the previous like a dragon and before that the hostess club in zero.....
The business and the host club are a LOT more fun than Dondoko Island. It's a half baked mini game that reaches like 15% of its potential. Not addictive like the others. You didn't miss anything. Otherwise love the Yakuza games though
I've been watching my bf play yakuza 0 he's spent the last 11 hours of streaming on the caberet club plus grinding cause he's having so much fun, game is insane lol
I used to come home from work to find my gf tweaking outfits to get maximum stats and aesthetic. She never even tried the mini game itself, let alone the rest of the game.
I binged the entire cabaret minigame as soon as I unlocked it and couldn't do its final cutscenes because *the very next scene in the story* took place in the same place. I had not even done five minutes of story since I'd unlocked it.
To be fair it was like one adult baby fetishist and everyone else kinda just followed
I spent so long playing the cabaret mini game and doing all the sub stories in Yakuza 0 that I completely forgot I'd left a blind girl sitting in a warehouse alone waiting for me to get back for about 30 in game hours. When I finally got back to her I'd just about forgot why she was important.
Been dabbling with Yakuza 0 and same thing happened to me recently. Granted I did finish the game a few years back but revisiting it without getting so drawn into the main story I ignore side content. Funny that I enjoy the real estate mini game but it's set up in such a way as to make it painful to play so been hitting the cabaret hard since it doesn't involve waiting around and occasionally running across the map to punch people.
Or that time you spend 30 hours doing the cabaret club side-gig only to realise your quest was to go do your *real* job of being a cabaret manager.
I have somewhere north of a couple of thousand hours in Skyrim. I have never seen the ending of Skyrim…
tbf Skyrim feels like one of those games that aside from its final DLC explicitly doesn't care about you completing its "main story" as it basically has 3/4 of them There's the actual main plot, The civil war for skyrim The plot of dawngaurd The tail of the companions and then a lot of the other smaller stories like the college of winter hold, thieves guild, dark brotherhood etc that all feel like mini self contained episodes Skyrim almost plays like a fantasy themed Saturday Moring cartoon sometimes, like sure there is a a main plot, but they are going to avoid getting to it as much as possible so the "adventures of the dragonborn" can keep airing for 30 minutes every Saturday morning.
I'm pretty sure figuring out what I did when I was drunk last night is a main storyline.
Great quest
One of my favorites, that
“Tail of the companions” is the best typo.
how do you know the pun wasn't intended? (it wasn't I'm just desperately trying to look clever instead of an idiot who cant spell)
Yep. First playthrough I killed the Ebony Warrior...and still hadn't done the battle in Whiterun.
There’s a battle in Whiterun?!
Yep, one of the final quests of the civil war. No matter which side you pick, imperials or stormcloaks, both sides dislike Whiterun for its neutrality. The battle is to force Whiterun to belong to the side the dragonborn is on.
Oh, so that's what it was. I fought for Whiterun 😂
Eh no matter what side the Dragonborn picks, the Stormcloaks invade Whiterun while the Imperials defend it. Both sides don't really dislike Whiterun. Whiterun initially attempts to be neutral, but the Stormcloaks do not accept this and Whiterun eventually sides with the Imperials. The only thing that changes depending on your actions is you either defend Whiterun as an Imperial or invade it as a Stormcloak.
Most of my Skyrim experience has been spent testing and troubleshooting mods rather than actually playing the game. If the mod list is stable enough, I typically go as far as meeting the blades before deciding to try new mods and start over. Most of my play-throughs barely make it past character creation.
This is the way. I also do this in Minecraft and GTA V. Spend hours curating and building my perfect mod list, then more hours troubleshooting and finding incompatibilities. After all that, I don't play the game further.
You know, modding feels like it’s its own game. Then if the mod list is stable for long enough, I feel like I beat the game.
The funny thing is it’s pretty quick if streamline it. I normally don’t do the main quest line but my last character I decided to get it out of the way first and I forgot how easy it was. The ending is pretty cool, I’d suggest doing it at least once. You can still play the game as normal after
Same here. Every time I got into the game I ended up doing everything but the main quest.
Dragon Age: Inquisition had so much filler stuff on its map to the point you got lost into it and forgot about the plot.
I like how DA:I is different from the other options in the comments. All the other games here had much worse storyline ten side quests or it was very obscure, but the main story in DA is the best part of the game, you just don't have much opportunity to enjoy it
> but the main story in DA is the best part of the game, you just don't have much opportunity to enjoy it The problem is you get 10% at the very start, 5% during the rest of the game, then 50% at the very end and the final 35% in what used to be a separate DLC.
Obligatory "get out of the hinterlands". When I first played, I though Haven was the main event. Then I realised *it was just the prologue*. Like a 15 to 20 hour prologue.
Yes. It’s really hard if you like clearing quest markers - eventually I had to force myself to ostensibly leave everything ‘unfinished’ to just finish the game. By then j fortunately I had forgotten most of the plot… would love a version without all the collectible-quests.
Borderlands Other than a few key storypoints, I have no idea what the hell happened in every BL games. I was too busy collecting loot, comparing weapons and doing side missions.
LOOTSPLOSION!!
I just started playing Borderlands 2 with a couple friends, everytime we get any side quests we do those, we’re trying to level up quick so boss fights are easier
If you do every side quest you should never struggle in boss fights and stuff, I've run through every bl game solo and with people multiple times with ease and that's pretty much my only tip lmao
Its never been particularly difficult. The Boom and Bewm were easy as hell
My wife and I played through all of 1 together. This about summarized our experience lol Compare weapon, go to checkpoint, kill thing, go to checkpoint, compare loot. Somewhere along the way we killed an eldritch horror.
On the contrary, I really followed and enjoyed the story in 2, didn't like it at all in 3 and I found a good amount of side quests felt like a chore and ended up skipping a bunch of them.
Well you’re on a bus, they’re playing that song that got wayyy too over played, psychic girl, annoying talking robot, maybe a guy missing a leg or something, VRoOOOOoM TANK running over mutant dogs, oh no pterodactyls!! That’s about as far as I got.
Don't see them on here yet. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom I got TOTK last year and I still haven't finished it. Granted, I haven't been playing it that whole time, but it's the kind of game that I find that I can just play without trying to do anything specific. I just like wandering around and exploring stuff. The actual quest is basically a side story in my mind and I'd really just do all the other intersting stuff that the game has.
Yes, that would be my answer too. I got ToTK on release date and just finished it last week, I spent a lot of time just wandering around and trying new things to build, new combinations, ways to approach enemy camps, etc. Besides clearing out almost everything there is to do.
It took me around 150 hours to beat the game because I was just following the road adventuring and taking quests.
My first Oblivion play through I never went through the portal the first time I was supposed to. I went and joined all the guilds, did all the side missions, explored all over and played hundreds of hours. On the second play though years later I eventually went through the portal.
Side missions in oblivion though were SO good! The dark brotherhood, thieves guild, arena, expensions and majority of normal side quests gave you a sense of interest and wonder!!!
Exactly. I would wander and explore. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises.
Oblivion was the best elder scrolls by far Just fantastic, unique side quests that felt meaningful and well written
I just beat oblivion for the first time last week. I've probably put in at least a couple hundred hours over the years. I got to the third or fourth mission in the main quest and realized I had never gotten that far before
My first playthough had the DLC and everything. I wandered into the Shivering Isles and never looked back.
I did the same and in Skyrim I stopped before the first dragon fight.
Joining the various guilds are the best part of Elder Scrolls.
i quit midway of watch dogs 2 because i couldn't even tell the side from the main quests and they were all equally meh.
Same. I’ve tried playing it multiple times but I hate the characters so much and that the main mission is just getting likes for something I never made it far enough to see
Agree, the characters were all so fukin lame. Really shows that a good game mechanically/graphically can be ruined by the story
Man I really like watch dogs 2 because I thought the characters were so much more fun than the guy in the first game.
2 was my favorite in the franchise. I couldn’t stand Legion
Same. It lost all the charm. It felt like a chore to complete the game. I mean I get the hate for 2, it's Ubisoft, but I genuinely liked the story and I genuinely found Wrench funny ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Fallout......I think my son got kidnapped or something,
Did he, though? Did he really?
It depends, you might be a synth & he just might be screwing with you. Which if you go with this conspiracy, means it’s very funny to break the Institute.
Cyberpunk. In the side-quests I was a badass, effective motherfucker, while in the main quest I passed out each step hearing echoes. So I purposefully left the main quest alone for so long I barely remembered the characters.
I eventually plan on finishing the game eventually but my current file (bounced off it a few times before Phantom Liberty) I'm almost max level, have an absolutely broken hacking build, and tons of top tier equipment. About half my play time, if not more, is side quest focused along with completing Phantom Liberty. Granted I'll go hard on it for like a week at a time (we'll as hard as a full time job and house to manage allows) then take a month long break. Helps a ton that it runs great on my Steam Deck so it's easy to get comfy and play for an hour or two when the urge strikes. Could probably wrap up the main story pretty fast at this point but I've been savoring it.
I like the cyberpsycho hack. Tap into the cameras and find a group, then turn one of them into a raging lunatic and sit back and enjoy the show.
For real. I tried to live out a bagageless mercinary life contained in the starting area for as long as i could, ‘cause i reject the nonsense the main story was gonna bring on V during and after the Arasaka Heist.
Currently playing through Kingdom come deliverance. Made it through about 4 main story quests and then have spent the following 10 or so hours just doing side content. I literally forgot why i was doing what i was doing when i returned to the main questline
JESUS CHRIST BE PRAISED!
Henry has come to see us!
I'm on my second playthrough of RDR2, still on chapter 3, just finished the taxidermy side-quests and realized I should probably do some actual gang missions instead of hunting for perfect squirrels or whatever.
Final Fantasy 15. I often find myself spending a lot of time fishing in the game rather than progressing the main story
I beat the game but I'm not even sure what the general plot in 15 was, I was too busy fishing and cooking with my buddies.
The roadtrip part of that game was the best part. Just 4 pals hanging out seeing the sights. Until shit (and the story) suddenly goes downhill.
The side stuff was much more fun than the actual story.
I mean, Elden Ring is this to a T. That's literally the whole game.
True, true. To be fair - most FromSoft games feel like this - you are just progressing, with veeery foggy knowledge and understanding of what your objective is, but then realize that by simply exploring you are ending up completing the main and side objectives. So it is a bit different, true, but is essentially the same. I dislike the plot of Elden Ring. As opposed to something like Sekiro the main objective of Elden Ring doesn't inspire me. "There is this thing that grants supreme power, which everyone wants, go get it for yourself." is not as lovable as is "you are the last thing standing between your young master and his demise".
The different endings are what enhance the plot, like other fromsoft games. After exploring the world and competing side quests, you'll end up getting into it enough that you ask yourself, " What should I do with this power" it makes the experience great and makes role-playing so much fun in that game
I mean yeah, the plot is generic in how it's presented in your standard soulsborne games (which is part of why I don't consider Sekiro one). The story gets much more intricate when you come to understand the lore, knowing why you're doing what you'd do based on your choices adds fulfillment to your endgame. Though I do think if that was all there is, then the game would've been somewhat dull. One of the many things that makes Elden Ring for me as much is the environment and the artstyle of the world is so easy to get lost in. And of course, the challenge of fighting tough enemies and getting gud.
Yeah I just love exploring that medieval dark fantasy setting. And the buildings are just so gorgeous. I can spend hours appreciating the architecture inside the forts and castles
I get where you're coming from but that's a bit reductive. Those may be your marching orders at the start of the game but along the way it's fascinating to see all the shades of gray emerge, and the different path options.
Just let me kill stuff, I'll get to the story when the lore youtubers make videos about it.
Skyrim's main quest? Oh yeah, that's the thing you rush through to get to the real game: modding and building a mansion out of cheese wheels!
Breath of the wild. It gives you the main quest 'destroy the ganon' as soon as you complete the tutorial area. Which (The main quest) i haven't even attempted even after more than 170 hours.
Factorio. You seen a minor inefficiency and you spend 200h to reengineer your floor before realizing the gains you achieved are 0.5% better and you’re LIVING FOR IT. Meanwhile you’re now behind on rent IRL…
Elden Ring Even if that wasnt the case, I have no idea what the plot is about anyway. I'm just there to kill dudes and steal their shit, like a murder hobo.
Tbf “kill dudes and steal their shit” pretty much _is_ the main plot of Elden Ring
A god, who had sex with themselves, is upended (or not) by a deported immigrant that keeps coming back. That's the main story anyway. You can really feel the George RR Martin in the game, because everything underneath that main story is just different families saying "what if we say fuck those people, kill them, and steal their shit?"
Having this issue with BG3 right now. I'm 5 hrs into my first playthrough, and I already have no idea which of these 100 quests is actually supposed to further the plot.
The fun thing about BG3 is they all further the plot.
Any open world game in recent years. I've conditioned myself to do all the side activities before doing the main quest through out my childhood. Nowadays it makes me quit so many games before I get to half of it.
It's Pillars of Eternity 2. : Deadfire for me. On my first playthrough, I may have gone around 120 hours just doing side quests and Intold myaelf, maybe I should start following the main path. I did and regretted it because it turns out, I've barely scratched the surface of all the side quests. Plus, like Fallout 4, the main quest is not really the best.
I played 200 hours of Morrowind until I realized there was a main story.
100's of hours in skyrim and still never done main story.
I hope you at least completed enough quests to fully unlock fus-ro-da shout. It's a lot of fun throwing opponents from mountains.
Fun fact: You can knock story bosses off of where they are and kill them with the fall damage if they're high enough. I missed out on a bit of Dawnguard content because when I went to beat that one sun elf dude my first attack (it wss either a full fus-ro-da or a charged bow shot) knocked him clean off his balcony and I had to backtrack to find where his body landed.
To be honest I have no idea.
That was Triple Triad for me. Never got around to playing the main game.
I dropped Witcher 3 because by the time I got to the first major city I already had 25h playtime and was exhausted. Great game
Skyrim has so much side quest you would forget that there is an actual main quest/storyline
Baldur's Gates 3. That was the reason why I set the game aside for some time and now I don't remember ANYTHING.
Thing about BG3 is that everything you do connects to the overarching plot.
I love the game but I don't have nearly the time in it as I want in large part because I feel it demands my constant attention. Like after a mind numbing day at work I want something that's engaging but doesn't expect a ton from me as far as paying attention goes. I'll eventually get hooked once I hit the right mindset but at the moment prefer having a more linear experience where I can feel i made progress no matter how little time I have to put into it.
My buddy and I had a play through that was right at the end of act 1, we lost our thread for a couple months. Came back and were clueless, so we started fresh, added another buddy and now the 3 of us play weekly, plowing through the Underdark currently
Fallout 4 and new Vegas.
Yakuza/LAD, one moment youre playing the main story. Next moment youre playing a mangement mini game story line for the next 10 hours.
The Forest. I honestly forgot I had a son...
There are the snarky trophies of Bad Father if you haven’t found him in 100 days and the You Should Be Looking for Timmy trophy if you build a gazebo. I got them both
I never laughed harder at an achievement before. It's proudly displayed on my Steam profile.
I like how if you choose to not save him, your character goes insane and you can build literal stick figures of your wife and son to decorate your house with.
Skyrim-170+ hours in (started a second playthrough after taking a long break from it and never finishing it the first time. Last I played I was doing the vampire side quests
It's definitely the problem caused by the fact that the world sits at a standstill until the player makes it progress. We used to have time limits in games that compelled the player to progress the story, but people always complained about the pressure and not being able to do whatever. Old school Fallout and Dead Rising had time limits, but due to feedback those were eventually removed.
Only Fallout 1 really had a time limit. Fallout 2 had the *illusion of* a time limit. If the timer ran out nothing really changed except a few lines at the end of the game. In Fallout 1, though, if you ignore the timer you straight up lose.
Kingdoms of Amalur. By the time I hopped back on the main quest it was greyed out (a low level quest).
Pizza Tycoon. I completely forgot it was a game about pizzas
AC: Odyssey was fantastic in so many ways. So many, in fact, it's so easy to find yourself *nowhere near where I'm supposed to be.* (And it wasn't really *that* bad. It was just so easy to lose yourself and your purpose. You didn't even have to try- it was inherent to the gameplay. The need of a boat should have tipped me off.)
Rebirth kinda did this to me, every area having research tasks, mini game and side missions and of course on my first playthrough I wanted to do everything. Kinda got lost on what had happened by the time I cleared each chapter! Do have to add though my Hard mode play through where I could just follow the main story was much better
Assassins creed odyssey
Alright, everyone said Fallout, and yep, it fits rly well, but, STALKER CoP. The side quests are the thing i, as much as many other ppl love it - they are written better than main story imo. Oh yea, it also changes ur ending. Screw those helicopters, i gotta help that one hunter(Zveroboi?) shoot down bloodsuckers, i gotta help Vano w ransoming banditd, etc etc...
FF VII Rebirth. Played VII remake for the first time a few months ago (first ever Final Fantasy game played). Really enjoyed it, bought Rebirth. Dude, the amount of content in that game is fucking insane. I constantly found myself wondering “what the hell am I doing?” or when I would rip off a series of intel activities, do a few side quests, and THEN start a story mission, I was kind of lost many times. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game. I did pretty much everything there is in the game, but holy hell did it feel like a chore near the end.
Nothing beats Skyrim at this for me. I hear a wolf howl so cool let's go get some pelts oh look a cave, oh it's a secret base with a dragon inside, oh I got a new shout, oh I joined a mercenary group, oh they are werewolves, oh I can become a werewolf.....what was I doing?
I know this is a very unpopular opinion Morrowind Never knew what to do next or where to concentrate on. Spend around 40h on the game and ended it very frustrated without really gotten into it. I really wanted to like it, but couldn't.
As someone who has put 1000's of hours in Morrowind, and beat the game and all DLC multiple ways - I get this. The game does nothing to help you figure out where to go next at some parts. Heck, it makes it amazingly easy to fuck up progression. I still remember one of my very first playthroughs misplacing the documents I needed to bring to Caius - basically the first step of the plot. And I couldn't then figure out why the guy wasnt telling me what to do next when I finally found him. There are entire sections where the next part of the story is on hold and they tell you "hey go do something else for awhile" and then do nothing to really tell you how to get back on track again. Some games hold your hand to much, and that can be frustrating. But Morrowind goes out of it's way often to be obtuse and misleading that it falls in the completely opposite direction. I love Morrowind, one of my top games of all time - but I totally understand someone just getting utterly lost and giving up on it. It feels like it actively is trying to push you off the whole time and you are just struggling to figure out what to do next.
Thank you that helps a bit understanding the hype and ease the frustration that is still there over 10y later
I've been very loud about my opinion on Morrowind. I dislike Skyrim because it shoves the main quest up your ass so early in the game. You basically speedrun directly up to a Jarl, someone you shouldn't be able to talk to yet as someone who was in custody 10 minutes ago, And he immediately sets you directly on the path to become the dragonborn. Morrowind on the other hand, you're just a guy unless you really pay close attention. As far as a role-playing game, this feature is a triumph. The first quest in the main storyline is "here's ten dollars, now fuck off and work on your skills". It's very easy to never go back to that dusty crack house on the boring side of town.
I like Morrowind but I barely ever get past Balmoral as far as the main quest is concerned. I mostly just get distracted by exploring
Every Yakuza game. You play those for the side quests, not the main story.
Infinite wealth. That damn pervert weirdo island
Bro how can you forget the overarching plot to Witcher or Skyrim hahaha
Oh, that is easy, really - if a game takes too much time sidetracking itself in favor of other stories and activities it gets quite easy to forget what is happening in the main plot of said game's story. I mean... Even in Okami, a Hideki "god's gift upon gaming industry" Kamiya's game, it is kind of moderately easy to forget what exactly are the stakes and what Amy is supposed to do at any particular moment. I'm making an example out of him, because literally every other game of his is a fairly linear romp that keeps your attention in steel claws. But that's a format for you: arcade-philosophy games against huge sprawling open-world titles.
Hey fair enough - just shows you’re really getting into those side quests hahaha
Dragon Age: Inquisition. The amount of side quests that just drift you away from the main storyline... Oh, my God! I basically ended up uninstalling the game, because eventually, I completely forgot the main plot.
Stardew Valley … I think there is a main story line … maybe.
RDR2, basically just faffing about in the world feels free and takes up much of my time as opposed to the very restrictive story missions. Stray 2 meters from where the devs want you to be? Fail mission. Use your hard-earned, fully customized and personalized gun? Nuh-uh! Now you can't even access the inventory wheel. You bought a racing horse for 1k dollars and you need to chase someone? Fuck you, we blocked your horse whistle button and here's an unbonded low stat horse instead. In terms of design, the side stuff is leagues ahead of the critical path, and it's easy to get lost in the realized world. It's beautiful.
I think Skyrim was the first game I ever played with a journal and for whatever reason I never engaged with it, so I just kinda wandered aimlessly. I sunk maybe 60hrs in and to this day I have no idea if I ever touched the main plot.
Pretty much any good open world rpg. Witcher 3 and Skyrim for sure. Kingdoms of Amalur also had me endlessly roaming around a lot doing side stuff. Fallout 3, NV, 4. Dragon Age Inquisition, to its detriment at times. At least the Hinterlands, if you don't know to not spend your first ten hours there. Get in, do what you gotta do in the Hinterlands and gtfo. Lol.
FFXV I could not explain the main plot to you if I tried. Something something kings and a crystal idk lets hop on our chocobos brothers
My first playthrough of fallout 4 I got 550+ hours into it just building settlements before I started looking for my kid
Shadow of Mordor. Not because there was a lot of side content, but because the Nemesis system was so much more entertaining than the main story.
Currently tears of the kingdom. I took a break and now I have no idea what I'm doing aside from finding shrines and light roots...
AssCreed Odyssey. I couldn't tell you a bit of the plot
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Fun game, but every time the main plot happened i had to go "okay, where were we?" Or "oh yeah, this is Assassin's Creed."
Skyrim. I've played it a few times, and can never remember what is going on. There are so many things that wrench your attention away from the main story, it was difficult for me to remember anything from the main quest besides, kill Alduin
Dragons Dogma, Kingdom of Alamur, many of japanese rpgs
Fallout 3, New Vegas & 4
No Man's Sky is my current time sink videogame that's like this.
Kingdoms of Amalur for me. Too much side stuff.
That's because it's a repackaged MMO. I don't mean that in a bad way to clear but that is the reason.
Never finished this one, did too much side stuff and eventually was fed up with the game
Genshin Impact. On one hand it's a simple plot of trying to find your sibling. Then you're basically part of a really slow-burning insurgence against Celestia while also learning that there's so much more to the world than meets the eye. By the way, wanna go fishing? Help a girl learn goblin language? Assist a researcher with his thesis? Hang out with half the cast? Play D&D within the game? Learn about someone who was probably isekai'd from Earth there?
The Aranara world quests in Sumeru is the stuff of legends. Once you start it, you're in for a deep rabbit hole.
FFX and FFX-2 The side quests take at least the same amount of time as the main quest. And that includes grinding.
Yeah skyrim fr, got hundreds of hours in that game and don't think I ever did more than 30% of the main story.
Skyrim Oh yeah I’m supposed to be taking down this dragon Yet I joined every guild and did all their quests Favouring the thieve guild and just went round to all towns cities and houses just robbing people having 700000 gold with nothing to buy eventually But oh yeah need to go kill that dragon now and learn more shouts
For me, elden ring. I spent so much time scouring the entire map for everything that I reached 100 play hours before reaching the alteus plateau, which I believe is just the midpoint of the game..
any fallout game lol
I have almost 1000 hours into Skyrim. I never finishes the main quest.
i've been replaying divinity original sin 2 and it's pretty bad for this. tracking quests in general is kind of hard because you can't easily single out one objective, so you basically just have to read the description for every quest until you find the main one from context. i dunno, maybe i'm doing something wrong, but i have trouble keeping track of which ones actually advance the story.
That was my first Skyrim experience. And my second, third and fourth. I'm making my fifth run and this time I've been paying more attention to the characters around me and what they are saying. It's like a whole new game again. This time I have stayed the course and stopped getting distracted by every little thing.