On sidequests

I am a big fan of sidequests. Give me a lot of them, I say. The more the merrier! Well, up until a point. When it gets to the point at which the sidequests become the main quest because of the sheer amount of them (that is, when significantly more time is spent doing sidequests than the main one), or it gets to the point where you have difficulty following the main quest without first doing sidequests or even a specific one, you have a problem.

This is mainly an RPG thing. Other genres don't have nearly the amount of scope for sidequests that RPGs do. An RPG gives you an entire world to mess around in, pretty much all others don't. The developers are allowed to run wild with possibilities.

Take Final Fantasy XII, one of my latest plays, for example. The game is set in the continent of Ivalice. Continents are massive, especially when they have time and effort put into them. FF12 has approximately 50 hours of story without sidequests. According to my guidebook, there are 21 sidequests. Of these, 10 are of little consequence and don't add much time to the clock. That leaves 11 which are pretty damn big. The Rare Game hunt, hidden Espers, and the Marks Hunt especially take up at least as much as the main quest, but more likely, more. There are 45 Marks, many of which are difficult to get to and even more difficult to kill. There are 8 hidden Espers, all of which are pains to get to and take an age to defeat. And there are 89 Rare Game, of which most only appear in one area and only have a chance to show up once you fulfil certain conditions.

If you want to do the sidequests, then it'll almost definitely take you more than triple the storyline play to finish. Which falls into the first category of problematic sidequests. What about the second? Well, hardcore RPGers would tell you that if you find it hard then you're doing it wrong. But those are the people who in FF10 think that a No-Sphere Grid challenge isn't worth doing unless you add No Summons or No Blitzball or No Mix or something to it. Or something like that. But Final Fantasy 12 is hard. If you don't go on several hunts then you won't have the levels to beat stuff or the cash to buy equipment to beat stuff. Which leads to the Game Over screen. So it fulfils the second category too.

I could go on and on about sidequests in other games, but lets just say that for a genre of games that aren't known for their gameplay, it certainly puts a lot of effort into prolonging said gameplay. Which makes me think, 'What's the point?'.