Today I thought I'd talk about how Side-quests are limited by their being side-quests.
As you probably know, I am currently making my way through Bravely Default, Square Enix's newest Spinoff RPG. I am enjoying it immensely (See previous post for details)
Minor spoilers up to Chapter 4!
Anyway, so in Bravely Default, there was a murder mystery type side story. It coincided with battling the Ninja Class boss. So this murder mystery involves Commander Goodman of the Shield bearers and his Wife, Mrs. Goodman. It also involves two new characters, a pair of Goodman's officers.
What bothered me about this side story is that, due to Goodman and his wife being major characters, there was no way they could die in a lowly sub-quest. Nor could either of them be responsible for the murders.
Knowing this caused the subquest to be unengaging, because I already knew that the ninja lady was the killer, and I only had to guess who she was disguised as, which was kind of obvious as well....
I felt like this really limited what could happen in the side story. This is especially terrible because of how freely people end up dying in the game. Thus far, it seems like 50% of the major characters die throughout the beginning of the game.
On the other hand, the sidequest does to something really right. If you figure out that the "dead" servant is really the killer quickly enough, you can actually check the servant repeatedly and fight her before she commits any murders. This kind of thing was unnecessary, but was really cool to find out about.
Well, that's it for now, see y'all next time,
Joseph
