Your most memorable, awesome quest in RPG?

[KalosKagathos]

I always thought that Arcanum side quest was an X-Files parody, nothing but silly lulz.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The Half-Ogre Island quest is definately the best one in Arcanum. My friend, after the first time he did it, embarked on a quest to murder the living shit out of every gnome in the game world.

Now you know why Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews.

Because of Half-Ogres?
:/

Sure. The gnomes were making ubermensch by racemixing. I bet Hitler woke up one night after dreaming of this scenario, cold drops of sweat running down his face and gathering on his moustache.

Blowing up Megaton in Fallout 3 was both memorable and fucking awesome

It was the most stupid quest ever. Blowing up a whole town for a few bottle caps...

Well, a few caps and a luxurious apartment in a land where people live in houses made up of mud and shit and drink toilet water.

 

[MicoSelva]

I liked the errands quests You were sent for in Torment in order to become a mage in the hive. A beautiful deconstruction of fedex quests in every RPG ever, together with a glorious reconstruction at the end when it turns out that every one of those quests was relevant to provide You with a spellbook, etc.
Extra points for wuxia film feel, where Your master teaches You while making You do his chores.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I liked the whole Adahn stuff in Torment. Also, I found an interesting site with some (un)usual info on Torment: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanescapeTorment

 

[felipepepe]

The Glow.

The Glow was really amazing...Bloodlines had that haunted mansion that was also creepy and memmorable, but sometimes it was just trying to hard. The Glow had the perfect atmosphere. You had to rush, but was too tense to do so. The unexplained alien bodies on lower levels was a great touch, without ever feeling fake.

Arcanum has the best game world ever, the side-quests are great, and hunting rumors is great fun. Even non-existant ones are interesting, as I always get amused by the Dragon at the museum on Tarant.

 

[laclongquan]

I must agree that the Midwife's apprentice quests in Torment is great. Though it look like and play like normal Fed-ex quests each tied neatly into the last quest. Very interesting!

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Sokal Keep in Pool of Radiance
The origins of the undead there and the way you have to piece together clues to learn a password so they wont fight you.

 

[Phelot]

As mentioned, PST had some great ones.

Just a lot of creative style that made otherwise mundane quests into something interesting.



I really liked Ultima 8's main quest simply because it ends up being so fucked up. Basically you screw over the entire population of Pagan all so you alone can escape. Certainly a lot was missing because of the whole fiasco with putting that game out, but it was still kind of shocking and actually a lot better that your actions are never really called out or mentioned specifically as bad. You have no choice, so there you go, do it.

I remember thinking the mummified dark elves were cool in that quest in Morrowind where you have to retrieve that one dark elf chief's bow or spear (forgot which one) The first time I did that one, I was pretty creeped out by that cave.

 

[mangsy]

The Glow probably takes the cake. Arcanum's half-ogre quest is really cool too though.

Outside of FO 1/2 and Arcanum, I really love the werewolf part of VtMB, although it gets less fun/intense on repeated plays (especially once you understand how the werewolf moves and how to kill it). I nearly had a heart attack the first time I played that.

Oblivion's Thieves' Guild quest sequence was pretty good.

 

[catfood]

Not sure if it has been mentioned already, but Gothic 1 and 2 had some pretty sweet quests, especially those in the early chapters of the game.

Who can forget the Old Camp quest where you're being tricked by a convict into thinking that together you're to find a missing amulet and bring it back to the ore barons for a reward? Or the one in the New Camp where you have to work as farm hand on the rice fields on the threat of death? And, of course, Gothic 2 had the "undergo 3 trials in order to become a fire magician" and the "earn the respect of the boys by not taking any shit from anyone" with the mercenaries.

The half-ogre-gnome quest in Arcanum was fucked up as hell. I had a WHAT THE FUCK moment when I completed it. I don't really remember any other quest from that game apart from the magic crystal ball business in Tarrant. I didn't see that one coming.

The one where you blow up an outhouse and cover a whole town in shit in Fallout 2 was pretty lulzy.

 

[Phage]

Main quest in PS:T. Am I the only one who literally got shivers from the conversations with Ravel, other nameless ones, and Transcendent One?

Also, almost every quest in Fallout 1 was memorable to me because I was so used to current gen "RPGs", lol.

 

[Johnny the Mule]

I was told to collect 5 different things. It was amazing. I nearly had a heart attack when I got all of them. Best memory ever.

 

[Phage]

I was told to collect 5 different things. It was amazing. I nearly had a heart attack when I got all of them. Best memory ever.

Sounds pretty awesome to me! What game?

 

[SCO]

Quests are another way of saying "narrative" so i'm just going to ignore the rpg part and say that the best "quest" i saw was in a Thief 2 fan mission, the seven sisters where i had to ghost a linear arranged tunnel/tomb full of patrolling haunts, without a sword and the only shadow was in the corners of tombs. The haunts turned around.
It was so intense (and the later sisters had custom sounds so nauseating) that i had to turn it of because my stress level was making my heart feel bad.

Btw, this mission is proof that female designers can be godly.

 

[SacredPath]

The entire quest, if you can call it that, of Silver Seed. All the babble about chaos and order finally took on meaning. There's a whole underworld that you only read about in fragments before. The teleportals you found everywhere finally make sense. Not to mention that it's an entirely new plotline that has nothing to do with what brought you to the Serpent Isle in the first place.

Talking about Serpent Isle, the entire Shamino quest was also pretty haunting and memorable.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, reuniting the shades. It was entirely optional, not complicated and didn't give any rewards except experience IIRC, but it added to the atmosphere.


Worst memorable quest: the main quest in BG. So there's this city that the game derives its name from, and you can't enter it at first. Because it's closed. Because they're afraid of bandits. That's right, they wouldn't allow in a lone person because they're afraid of bandits. There's also the fact that you already know who you're after, and since the level limit is 9 (7 in the original game IIRC) and D&D is predictable and linear, you know you won't confront this spell casting armored dude until the very end. There's also a little background info to be gathered as to why you're after him (or he's after you), but it's not like anyone ever needed a reason to kill someone in an RPG. Worst quest ever? Possibly.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Worst memorable quest: the main quest in BG. So there's this city that the game derives its name from, and you can't enter it at first. Because it's closed. Because they're afraid of bandits. That's right, they wouldn't allow in a lone person because they're afraid of bandits. There's also the fact that you already know who you're after, and since the level limit is 9 (7 in the original game IIRC) and D&D is predictable and linear, you know you won't confront this spell casting armored dude until the very end. There's also a little background info to be gathered as to why you're after him (or he's after you), but it's not like anyone ever needed a reason to kill someone in an RPG. Worst quest ever? Possibly.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Quests are another way of saying "narrative" so i'm just going to ignore the rpg part and say that the best "quest" i saw was in a Thief 2 fan mission, the seven sisters where i had to ghost a linear arranged tunnel/tomb full of patrolling haunts, without a sword and the only shadow was in the corners of tombs. The haunts turned around.
It was so intense (and the later sisters had custom sounds so nauseating) that i had to turn it of because my stress level was making my heart feel bad.

Btw, this mission is proof that female designers can be godly.

I admire your taste but still game design is not narrative.

 

[Esquilax]

Among the ones that have been mentioned already, I'd like to add the entire main quest of Mask of the Betrayer, but in particular the quests involving Okku/One of Many. A mutually exclusive companion, unique quests and branching for each companion (i.e. Hill Tribe with One of Many, Bear Spirits with Okku), special powers like Eternal Rest possibly available, and a constant physical reminder of the choices you've made surrounding you and urging you to either suppress the curse/give in to your newfound power. I'm hard-pressed to think of a more well-designed, enjoyable, and atmospheric quest.

This one might come under fire, but the Redcliffe questline in Dragon Age was very good, tho with the caveat that the devs pussed out at the end completely. You have a lot of options on how to deal with the demon taking control of the town (and you can also leave the town to its fate, surprising in a BioWare game), and it's quite an interesting and well-written scenario. It's cheap that there's an optimal way to complete it, but even then, this quest was good.

The worst quest is hard to narrow down, but a recent one I played that annoyed the shit out of me were the Chinatown Tong quests in Bloodlines. Goddamnit, was this crap. Being pushed around by the Prince I can sort of understand, but being pushed around by some random guy who's had his daughter kidnapped is fucking infuriating. Why can't I use Dominate/Dementation or simply threaten to tear this guy limb from limb? Why is his restaurant Elysium - he's not even a vampire or Kuei-jin? To make matters worse, when you eventually do rescue his daughter she's a stuck-up bitch who is immortal, so you can't fail it either and rub it in the dude's face. In my mind, this is just about the most irritating and unnecessary railroading I've seen in a game.

Furthermore, it's completely underwhelming. At this point in the game, I've battled Tzimisce monstrosities and disease-spreading Gehenna cultists, now I'm being forced into fighting some dickhead gangbangers for no fucking reason? This shit is beneath me; "Let the kine sink or swim, we got out own problems to deal with."

Also, it is just incredibly underwhelming to deal with dickhead gangbangers after having fought a Tzimisce in the sewers.

 

[octavius]

Another memorable "quest" for me was having to learn the Lizardman language in Ultima Underworld.

And I liked the rat quests in both Morrowind and Oblivion which made fun of the first quest in so many CRPGs - the kill the rats in the basement quest.

 

[RK47]

World of Warcraft : Stalvan Mistmantle

I read every clue...and it was a first time I paid much attention to the quest narration in MMORPG. My first serious MMO experience being Lineage 2, a true asian grindfest, I wasn't used to this...but it was well worth the adventure. I kept going through the clues...seeking people who might shed more clue on the nature of this person. It didn't feel like MMO at all while my guildmates were more interested in raiding dungeons.

Even if Blizzard sucked World of Warcraft dry, 5 years later, I still remember Stalvan Mistmantle.

 

[Suchy]

The one where you kill all the rats in the basement

In which game? This is important.


Anyway, I second the main quest from U8.

 

[Cabazone]

I admire your taste but still game design is not narrative.

Game design is not necessarily narrative, but what we call quest is narrative who use game design (among other things).

 

[felipepepe]

Even if Blizzard sucked World of Warcraft dry, 5 years later, I still remember Stalvan Mistmantle.

I second that. WoW had great quest's when launched, it was a huge unexplored world, filled with lore and some very text-heavy quest's, where you had to figure out where the hell things where and solve some puzzles. Now people just google everything or follow the huge arrow pointing to the quests, it's really what killed the game.

 

[SCO]

Quests are another way of saying "narrative" so i'm just going to ignore the rpg part and say that the best "quest" i saw was in a Thief 2 fan mission, the seven sisters where i had to ghost a linear arranged tunnel/tomb full of patrolling haunts, without a sword and the only shadow was in the corners of tombs. The haunts turned around.
It was so intense (and the later sisters had custom sounds so nauseating) that i had to turn it of because my stress level was making my heart feel bad.

Btw, this mission is proof that female designers can be godly.

I admire your taste but still game design is not narrative.

It is to me. The distinction is artificial and predicated on mechanics.

It's all about learning the world, quests are just one way (hopefully somewhat interactive) to learn the world.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

the Redcliffe questline in Dragon Age was very good

MARMALADE!

Also: no.