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Worst, most illogical quests

Jacob

Pronouns: Nick/Her
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
It's been a long time since I last played FO1, but does it even explains why Vault Dweller was selected for that mission?
The pre-made characters had explanations for why they're chosen in the character description. So basically if you use your own character it's "up to your imagination."
 

King Crispy

Too bad I have no queen.
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Strap Yourselves In
"We need a main quest for this game."

"Hey, I've got an idea! How about we make a god come to life that stomps around in his 200' tall body then enters the ocean trying to find something and the players have to chase after it on a ship and we can put in a bunch of PIRATE SHIT!!!"

"Sounds great. Meeting adjourned."
 

Falksi

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The main quest in The Witcher 3. Travel around half the world instead of heading straight to the biggest city where all you're mates & contacts who can point you in the right direction reside.
 

AW8

Arcane
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Mar 1, 2013
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North of Poland
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
"Hey, I've got an idea! How about we make a god come to life that stomps around in his 200' tall body then enters the ocean trying to find something and the players have to chase after it on a ship and we can put in a bunch of PIRATE SHIT!!!"
Sailing after a gigantic Dr. Manhattan that's walking across the ocean is actually a great idea with lots of potential for memorable moments. It's just the execution of the idea that's criminally dull.
 

Dr Skeleton

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Joined
Nov 9, 2014
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811
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It's also not explained why and to whom the villagers are paying taxes to, and there is also the little problem that there is basically nothing to buy or spend tax money on in this post-apocalyptic world where only this one village exists
I always thought it might be a tribute to the orc clans or bandits. Beside, the player never gets to buy anything from other races, but there are few examples where humans deal with orcs and goblins, like the exchange with Gogo, bandit alliance with the orcs, and that girl that even joined the orcs, so there might be some trade between the village and other races with gold. But yeah, it's never stated in the game so it's all just me filling in the blanks.
I mean, maybe? The tax is paid to the elder, so he's doing something with it, maybe he's defrauding it, because we know he doesn't give a shit about the village. Is he buying stuff from Barbur and distributing it back to his cronies? Where does Barbur spend his money anyway, he's the only man in the village who isn't poor as dirt, I think it's mentioned that he trades with the witch and the lizardmen, but what for? Orcs and goblin also have gold so they use it for something, maybe there is some trading going on we don't get to see. Where do they even get the coins, with that level of technology it's gotta be salvaged from the ruins. The whole tax money thing kinda makes sense but it's very out there in that setting
especially because it's also an excuse to get the player killed but the tax collection must've been going on for much longer. Barbur is not in on it and as far as we know his apprentice really gets away with the money, even if the Elder helped him to then send the player to be killed during the quest. Or does he get away? Where could he even go, bandits or orcs would just kill him and take the money. That whole quest never quite made sense to me.
 

Dr Skeleton

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811
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I just remembered another one.

In Spellforce 1, you can find a locked chest with some knobs that can be manipulated on one of the islands, so it looks like a puzzle to unlock it. You can either learn the combination from someone or guess it and get the items that way, right? Wrong. On the same island there is a merchant who will give you the combination (for some item or doing a quest, I can't remember) step by step, and then finally he gives you... a key that is also required to unlock the chest after you pull the knobs. So what's the point of even having that puzzle if you can't unlock the chest without also having a key you can only get from the same guy who gives you the combination?
 

Daemongar

Arcane
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Nov 21, 2010
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Wisconsin
Codex Year of the Donut
I think almost every quest in the second half of Lands of Lore II.
10% of the quests in Legend of Grimrock II. Come on. Those pillars - just random shuffling for a quest that halts all progress!

But to be specific, the most annoying quest for me ever was the "Hound of Doskar" quest in U7:SI - they used flags for everything. You had to use the damn dog whistle, summon the dog, then *use* the dog on Cantra's old panties. If you just summoned the dog, without having it sniff those panties, you couldn't proceed. But it was the same throughout the game - played it several times - but you had to perform certain events to set flags. This quest led to a 6 month hiatus in that game. The same thing happened to me when trying to find "The Trapper."

Probably not bugs, but doing events out of order led to problems, and playing a game where folks may save and reload frequently made for madness.
 

Master

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Example:
New Vegas's "Contain the Virus" quest or how was it called, in the BoS bunker.
I cant remember the exact details.
There are 10 or so terminals positioned around a room. You have to access each one at a time and press some button on it, in order to by a process of elimination ultimately isolate a computer virus on just one terminal. You have 60 seconds to do it, you have to run between them as fast as you can. The BoS are completely stumped. They dont know what to do. They cant run fast enough, and unless you help them they are completely fucked.
The virus is also preventing them from accessing some important data, or can bring down their entire network, i cant remember. In any case, my head hurt really bad after that.

Even worse, if you have a high enough computer skill (at least I think it is computer skill), you can tell the person responsible for giving you the quest the "obvious" solution. He then says something like "You are right, how did I not think of that?", but for some reason that does not bring about the conclusion of the quest but instead you are supposed to do it the idiotic way anyway. And assuming that the "virus isolation" procedure was somehow logical, considering that we're speaking about a bunker with a lot of people, it's obvious how this quest is totally stupid as there are more than enough people to devote 60 seconds of their time monitoring each of the computer terminals in order to "lock" the virus.

Needless to say I did not complete this quest.
:deathclaw:
Wow. I didnt know about that skill check. That quest has to be an intentional joke, it has to. It just cant be that stupid.

In Evil Islands there is a quest where a craftsman's apprentice steals villagers' tax money and you are sent to a remote valley to get a different bag of money to replace the stolen one. The reason that money is still there is because the valley is infested with angry skeletons that kill everyone on sight. There is no option to chase the thief. It's also not explained why and to whom the villagers are paying taxes to, and there is also the little problem that there is basically nothing to buy or spend tax money on in this post-apocalyptic world where only this one village exists, and people there dress in furs and use stone tools and weapons. The only merchants in the world are the craftsman whose apprentice stole the gold, and a witch who lives in a swamp and doesn't let the villagers into her territory anyway. What did the thief want to do with the gold after he run away from the only place that he could spend it is also a mystery.

the truth is the quest is one of many attempts by the village's chief to have the hero killed but still the premise is really weird, and the apprentice does steal the gold and disappears from the game, so it's not like that part was faked
Thats the kind of thing that grieves me the most. When its at the core of a setting... and its fucking stupid.

It reminds me of Dragon Age, when you find the Wood Elves and they still sell you stuff just like in the city, and for the same currency, even though they live in a forest. They talk about their ancient ways, grandfathers ancient bow and such but when we open the trade screen you can hear the slurping sounds of pure greed as we barter for a few arrows.
It would've been cool if i came there with a lot of money, but it suddenly meant nothing and i had to earn their trust and stuff in some other way...
 
Last edited:

PulsatingBrain

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
PoE 2 Deadfire. I forget the name of the quest but it went like:
-Crime boss wants cornett artifact. It was once part of a set. Very important that the remaining cornett is recovered
-I actually locate both cornetts, but in the process find a mural with indents for the cornett artifacts
-Crime boss is satisfied with news of the mural's existance
-Doesn't even ask for the cornett he wanted originally. No option to offer it to him, even though I actually have both of these supposedly rare artifacts on me during this conversation
-Confused, I go and use them on the mural myself
-Low level unique and a bunch of shit I could find anywhere
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
New Vegas's "Contain the Virus" quest or how was it called, in the BoS bunker.

This wasn't a serious virus, it was made by a prankster (the scientist tell something like that and see the messages that it writes when you "catch" it). Nowadays malware is 99% of the time serious (and often unnoticed) but viruses in old computers were mainly pranks (e.g. the Stoned virus that modified your boot drive to say "Your pc is now stoned!") - though some would destroy data while being trollish about it (i remember my father's computer having a variation of the - otherwise harmless - ping-pong virus that was deleting a random FAT file entry every time the ball bounced on the screen).

Considering the game's themes (and the messages it displays) i think they modeled the "virus" after these prankster viruses and not serious ones.

Even worse, if you have a high enough computer skill (at least I think it is computer skill), you can tell the person responsible for giving you the quest the "obvious" solution. He then says something like "You are right, how did I not think of that?", but for some reason that does not bring about the conclusion of the quest but instead you are supposed to do it the idiotic way anyway.

You need to find the two instances of the virus in the terminals and those instances jump between terminals every cycle. The difference with the high skill option is that if you find an instance it gets "locked" to that terminal so even if you fail and the cycle restarts, the instance remains on that terminal (without the skill both instances jump to a random terminal).

I just looked into this and apparently it was inspired by a real virus from 1971 called Creeper that was moving between ARPANET computers. Funny enough another worm was also made (called Reaper) that was deleting Creeper instances :-P.
 

zurek

Literate
Joined
Apr 28, 2019
Messages
6
Or does he get away? Where could he even go, bandits or orcs would just kill him and take the money. That whole quest never quite made sense to me.

The alliance of bandits and Erfar is evident, but he also must have had very close relations with orcs based on the fact he could dispatch squads of orc warriors to locations where he sent the Chosen One.

Assuming Babur's apprentice was collaborating with The Elder, I think it's possible he could be granted refuge in the some orc tribe or more likely with the bandits, on behalf of The Elder. The other possibility is that since the bandits really did beat the living shit out of the apprentice, maybe he wasn't collaborating with the Erfar and was simply murdered and used as a scapegoat for defrauded money to further hurt Babur and his reputation?

Where do they even get the coins, with that level of technology it's gotta be salvaged from the ruins.
I think the Elder says that the money, in the valley in Dead City area comes from the time of the past empires, probably all other coins were also made in the past. The thing I find hard to believe is that stone age tribes would care about money as a means of trade. But I guess it's used just for the sake of gameplay.

The point I want to make is the scraps of world building we get from dialogue are small but enough to suggest, the relationship of villagers and other races is more nuanced then "everyone wants to kill humans" and all this cloak and dagger stuff is not baseless.
 

zapotec

Liturgist
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Feb 7, 2018
Messages
1,495
The terrible linxia quest in kingmaker wasn't made by a kickstarter guy that gave a lot of money?
 

Wyatt_Derp

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Okie Land
'For the advancement of Learning' in Witcher 3. I appreciate the choice in being able to kill a semi-important story character, but the fact that Keira holds onto to those research papers at the risk of losing her own head, it's just... a head scratcher. It would be like if Yen or Triss summoned a rock troll to kill you because you wore your boots to bed. The risk/reward system should be a little more clear when the person you're negotiating with is a jacked up witcher with magic powers and a really sharp steel sword on his back.

And every single thing in Mothership Zeta in Fallout 3. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but my brain stops at being abducted by aliens and escaping with the help of wasteland troopers, a cowboy, and a Feudal era samurai warrior. It would be like traveling around in Skyrim, searching for a dragon to kill, then suddenly a Delorean zaps into the world and Marty Mcfly jumps out with a map highlighting where all the dragons are. I mean, why the fuck not.
 

deuxhero

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Flowery Land
Kingmaker has a quest to save a child possessed by an evil spirit. The required spell for this is... Glitterdust. Not Protection From Evil which stops posession.
 

The_Mask

Just like Yves, I chase tales.
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Kingmaker has a quest to save a child possessed by an evil spirit. The required spell for this is... Glitterdust. Not Protection From Evil which stops posession.

The description of the situation does say that the entity in question is very likely next to the child, being invisible and controlling him telepathically, but you're so right - very unintuitive gameplay-wise. LOL
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Kingmaker has a quest to save a child possessed by an evil spirit. The required spell for this is... Glitterdust. Not Protection From Evil which stops posession.
I don't think I needed to use glitterdust when playing as a Wizard. IIRC, I was able to easily detect what was going on.
 

deuxhero

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It's invisible instead of inside? That just raises further questions! There's half a dozen spells (at least) that will stop invisibility. Restricting it to one (albeit the best) makes no sense.
 

Shadenuat

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Dec 9, 2011
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It's invisible instead of inside? That just raises further questions! There's half a dozen spells (at least) that will stop invisibility. Restricting it to one (albeit the best) makes no sense.
True, but there are already multiple ways of solving the problem, for every alignment out there.

Also do you even read the goddamn dialogue?
 

Master

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Messages
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New Vegas's "Contain the Virus" quest or how was it called, in the BoS bunker.

This wasn't a serious virus, it was made by a prankster (the scientist tell something like that and see the messages that it writes when you "catch" it). Nowadays malware is 99% of the time serious (and often unnoticed) but viruses in old computers were mainly pranks (e.g. the Stoned virus that modified your boot drive to say "Your pc is now stoned!") - though some would destroy data while being trollish about it (i remember my father's computer having a variation of the - otherwise harmless - ping-pong virus that was deleting a random FAT file entry every time the ball bounced on the screen).

Considering the game's themes (and the messages it displays) i think they modeled the "virus" after these prankster viruses and not serious ones.

Even worse, if you have a high enough computer skill (at least I think it is computer skill), you can tell the person responsible for giving you the quest the "obvious" solution. He then says something like "You are right, how did I not think of that?", but for some reason that does not bring about the conclusion of the quest but instead you are supposed to do it the idiotic way anyway.

You need to find the two instances of the virus in the terminals and those instances jump between terminals every cycle. The difference with the high skill option is that if you find an instance it gets "locked" to that terminal so even if you fail and the cycle restarts, the instance remains on that terminal (without the skill both instances jump to a random terminal).

I just looked into this and apparently it was inspired by a real virus from 1971 called Creeper that was moving between ARPANET computers. Funny enough another worm was also made (called Reaper) that was deleting Creeper instances :-P.
That doesnt make it better. They sacrificed logic and consistency and made fools of BoS for what, a banal reference?
 

Incendax

Augur
Joined
Jul 4, 2010
Messages
892
As for my own entry, definitely King’s Quest. I cannot even do it justice, so I’m just going to cite Richard Corbett.

There's at least three contenders for a slot in King's Quest V alone; a game in which you spend half the game blocked by a snake ("A pooooooisnous snake!" no less) that you could simply walk past if not for the fact that the won't let you, at one point capture an elf by pouring honey onto the ground to trap it and then making it help before freeing it ("Hero!") and everyone's favourite puzzle of that game, defeating a yeti with a custard pie. Yes, really. That happened.

But there's so many more to choose from. How about in King's Quest II, defeating another snake by throwing a bridle on it, which magically and pretty randomly turns it into a horse? You know you're dealing with a dumb puzzle when even the official companion book has to pass a solution off as a lucky accident! (It's nominally a Greek mythology reference, but one so cack-handed that an entire crate of soap wouldn't get rid of the appalling stench.)

Still too fair? In King's Quest IV there's another bridle that you need, this time to mount a unicorn. (Thankfully, not in the DeviantArt sense.) The twist this time is that it's hidden behind the game scenery, wasn't drawn to the player's attention and can lead to a dead-man-walking situation if missed. And you have to be standing in the right place, or you just miss it entirely.

Probably the most infamous King's Quest bad puzzle though is from the first game, so also in fairness the easiest to forgive. It's a variant on the Rumplestiltskin tale, where you have to guess a gnome's name - the trick, since that one should be obvious, being to give it to him backwards. So, Nikstlitselpmur, right? Haha, no. Instead, designer Roberta Williams decided that 'backwards' meant reversing the alphabet, making the actual solution the completely unpronounceable 'Ifnkovhgroghprm'. Player response to this declared it such complete and utter bullshit even in an era where designers hadn't learned the art of good puzzles that it was later changed to the more sensible version.
 

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