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15 Video Games That Made Side Quests Better Than the Main Story

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The detours were the destination.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - November 2nd 2026, 17:00 GMT+1

Assassins Creed Odyssey — 15. Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)
Kassandra spends most of the Silver Islands arc watching Daphnae choose duty over love, twice, with no third option the writers let her force. Assassin's Creed Odyssey buries this whole thread in a side cluster most players stumble into by accident in 2018. The main plot gives you the Cult of Kosmos and a mother obsessed with a magic spear. Daphnae's goodbye hits harder than anything in that family tree. | © Ubisoft

Borderlands 2 — 14. Borderlands 2 (2012)
Tiny Tina's "Death Trap" sequence is a kid's birthday party built entirely around murdering orcs and mourning a dead boyfriend named Roland. Borderlands 2 lets you walk away without ever triggering it, which is exactly why so many players missed the game's best fifteen minutes. The writing stays goofy until it isn't, then snaps back before you can brace for it. Handsome Jack never gets a scene this honest about grief. | © 2K Games

Kingdom come deliverance — 13. Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)
Henry stumbles into a dead man and a locked room, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance suddenly turns into an actual detective game. The main campaign in this 2018 release is revenge and politics in 15th century Bohemia, competent but straightforward. The murder mystery side quest asks you to track lies across three separate testimonies with no quest marker doing the thinking for you. Warhorse Studios built one errand that trusts players more than the whole story around it does. | © Deep Silver

Fallout 4 — 12. Fallout 4 (2015)
A guy named Kent Connolly wants to be a radio superhero, and that premise alone should not work as well as it does. Fallout 4's Silver Shroud quest line has Sole Survivor running around Goodneighbor in a cape, talking in a voice actor's best noir growl. Bethesda released this in 2015 buried under a main story about synths and a missing son. Nobody quotes the main plot's dialogue from memory the way they quote the Shroud's. | © Bethesda Softworks

Hogwarts legacy — 11. Hogwarts Legacy (2023)
Sebastian Sallow starts as the charming Slytherin everyone wants as a friend, then asks you to help curse his uncle. Hogwarts Legacy sold over 30 million copies by 2024, and a huge chunk of that goodwill traces back to this one relationship. The main story has ancient magic and a dragon-riding finale that mostly plays it safe. Sebastian's ending forces an actual choice with consequences the castle plot never risks. | © Warner Bros. Games

Ghosts of Tsushima — 10. Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Six Mythic Tales in Ghost of Tsushima teach Jin Sakai sword stances no main quest ever offers. One of them, "Lady Masako's Revenge," ends with her burning down her own honor to kill the men who slaughtered her family. Sucker Punch gated real gameplay power behind these side stories, which tells you where the writers put their effort. Jin's confrontation with his uncle gets the marketing, but Masako earns the catharsis. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Cropped Yakuza 0 — 9. Yakuza 0 (2015)
Goro Majima runs a cabaret club in Sotenbori for one chapter, and somehow turns spreadsheet management into the most quoted arc in Yakuza 0. Players will tell you the main story, Makoto's land dispute and the Tojo Clan succession, barely survives one playthrough's memory. Nobody forgets hostess names like Yuzu or Mana though. A 2015 Sega game turned girl management sim mechanics into something people replay on purpose. | © Sega

Cropped The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion — 8. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)
Twenty three victims die across Cyrodiil before anyone figures out the killer in "Whodunit?", one of the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion. Bethesda hid the culprit among party guests at a count's mansion in 2006, and most players never saw it coming. The game's actual plot, Mehrunes Dagon invading through Oblivion gates, gets remembered mostly as backdrop. A murder mystery at a dinner party outlasted the end of the world in people's memory. | © Bethesda Softworks

Mass Effect 2 2010 — 7. Mass Effect 2 (2010)
Thane Krios gets exactly one loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2, and it still produces one of BioWare's most quoted death scenes in 2012's sequel. Shepard spends the main plot recruiting a crew to fight the Collectors, a threat most players can recite without feeling much. Mordin Solus singing Gilbert and Sullivan during his mission does more work in ten minutes. BioWare built a recruitment plot and then let the recruits outshine it completely. | © Electronic Arts

Fallout New Vegas — 6. Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
"Beyond the Beef" asks players to investigate cannibalism at a five star restaurant in the Mojave, and Obsidian never flinches from the answer. Philippe the chef turns out to be feeding guests actual human meat in Fallout: New Vegas, a 2010 release built on Hoover Dam politics most players finish for the ending slides alone. The dam fight decides factions and futures. A dinner party murder mystery in the desert is what people actually bring up first. | © Bethesda Softworks

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim — 5. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
Astrid recruits you into the Dark Brotherhood with a wedding night massacre in 2011, and the main quest line never recovers the tone from there. You kill a comedian for a traveling ghost, bodyguard a treasonous jester, and poison a family dinner one guest at a time. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim buried its best writing in an optional guild questline about professional murder. Dragons showing up to end the world feel tame by comparison. | © Bethesda Softworks

Red Dead Redemption 2 — 4. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
A dying gunslinger named Jim Milton spends his last mission riding beside Arthur Morgan, reliving old glory days from a past the game never shows directly. Red Dead Redemption 2 hides "The Veteran" deep in the optional stranger missions, easy to miss entirely on a first playthrough. Nothing about Jim affects the Van der Linde gang's collapse. People still bring up his death before they mention John Marston's. | © Rockstar Games

Cyberpunk 2077 — 3. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
V meets a serial killer calling himself Sinnerman and has to decide what justice even means in Night City. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't moralize about the choice, it just lets the consequences sit there uncomfortably after. CD Projekt Red wrote Sinnerman with no clean outcome available, which is rare for a side quest built around a villain. Saving Night City from Arasaka never asks this much of the player. | © CD Projekt

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt — 2. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
The Bloody Baron quest in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt opens on a drunk warlord and ends on a dead wife, a cursed child, and a tree spirit with her own agenda. CD Projekt Red shipped this storyline in 2015 as an early-area side quest, not a late-game payoff. Geralt is just looking for Ciri's trail through Velen. He finds a family that destroyed itself instead, and it outlasts most of what the main hunt offers. | © CD Projekt

Baldurs gate 3 — 1. Baldur's Gate 3 (2023)
Astarion's three centuries of servitude get more screen time in Baldur's Gate 3 than some entire campaigns manage. Larian Studios gave every companion a personal arc that can end in betrayal, redemption, or death depending entirely on dialogue choices. Karlach's engine slowly killing her matters more to most players than the Absolute's plan for the Sword Coast. A 2023 release built its companions to be the actual reason people finish the game twice. | © Larian Studios

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In these games, wandering off the critical path wasn’t a distraction, it was the best part, with side content so rich it made the main story feel like the afterthought. Here are 15 video games that made side quests better than the main story.

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In these games, wandering off the critical path wasn’t a distraction, it was the best part, with side content so rich it made the main story feel like the afterthought. Here are 15 video games that made side quests better than the main story.