This is why fetch quests need to die.
I recently re-installed Fallout 76 to check out the “Wastelanders” update – which finally added human NPCs, among other stuff. And I have to say it’s quite allright.
It’s far from perfect, but it’s a big improvement. It definitely feels more like Fallout.
Being a Bethesda RPG, it has its share of fetch quests. That’s mostly fine but a particular fetch quest threw me into a raging frenzy – because it’s a textbook example of how not to design a side quest.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
The particular quest involves tracking down a potential companion – an astronaut who fell to earth and needs your help to do… some thing. Can’t remember what. Early on she tells you to go to her crash site to retrieve an item.
So I did. Had to stick around the wreck for a couple of minutes, waiting for some data to download. I was interrupted by a super mutant attack but because they spawned on top of a hill I just hid and kicked my feet behind the wreck until I had the data.
I took the data back to the astronaut and she immediately tells me to go back to the same exact area to get another piece of something from a robot.
This was an entirely unnecessary back-and-forth that wasted precious time and bottlecaps – the are wasn’t particularly interesting (it was a literal forest), so of course I tried to fast travel through most of the quest.
All in all, I spent a fair amount of time and half a wine bottle on loading in and out of a bunker and map markers just to wander around a forest fetching data.
The game design lesson here is this – never send a player to the same area to do the same thing more than once. Nobody liked that ever.