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| Can we please just let her die? |
The worst part is when these missions fall into categories that no longer have a place in modern games, and developers should know to avoid by now.
We're sure there's a way to present each of these archetypes in a fun and refreshing manner but, more often than not, players are simply stuck battling their way through yet another dose of uninspired crap that should have been stripped from the game and left to die a slow death on the cutting room floor.
Here are the five worst types of missions in video game history.
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"Wolves are destroying my livestock. Could you kill 25 of the buggers and bring back their pelts as proof of your deeds? I'll pay you five silver as a reward!"
Most commonly found in abundance in MMORPGs, these missions are the worst sort of busy work there is. Even more annoying is the fact that there are half a dozen available in every Podunk town you stumble upon and, if you forget to accept them all before heading out, you can expect to visit the same areas time and time again in order to kill these things, collect these things and deliver these other things in stages, rather than all at once.
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"I'm a lazy bastard. Can you go drop off/pick up this inconsequential item from two buildings down? It has little to do with the story and your reward will be minimal, but at least if we cram enough of these into your game, it'll help stretch out that play time and give us an even bigger number to put after the bullet point on the back of the box."
Serving as an errand boy is (barely) okay so long as the quest takes you somewhere new or progresses the story in some meaningful way but, nine times out of 10, these fetch missions serve little purpose save to add fluff to your game.
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3) The miss-able mission
You're about 75 percent of the way through a campaign and you learn, much too late, that the only way to nab the best weapon in the game was to take a mission from an obscure character in a town that has since been destroyed by the evil overlord.
The Final Fantasy series is notorious for these types of shenanigans, often making it impossible to acquire something you really-really-super wanted but can no longer get because you didn't talk to Jebb, didn't grind a certain area for eight hours or opened a treasure chest you shouldn't have.
At 70 hours in, you can't just start over. But you can certainly swear a lot and start playing your games with the guide cracked open in front of you. But where's the fun in that second bit?
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We've all been there before. You've got an appointment in 30 minutes or need to start dinner soon, but Old Man Jenkins needs you to run down the street and drop off a sword he just forged for the Smith family. That'll only take five minutes, right?
Wrong.
Next thing you know, a simple task has evolved into a gauntlet of challenges spread across multiple locations that will easily take you an hour to complete. And the worst part? There was no way of knowing what you were getting yourself into and there are absolutely no save points anywhere along the way.
The kids will have to go hungry tonight
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That silence you're hearing is the sound of everyone reading this article nodding their head in unison, staring on with a mix of rage and agreeance. We're all abundantly familiar with escort missions and, no matter how much we complain in message boards and forums, they keep getting added to our games.
Usually found in shooters, the common escort mission asks the player to protect another character with low hit points and zero survival skills, usually while fighting off enormous waves of enemies and serving as a human shield, since god knows the President's daughter can't duck behind that crate she's standing right next to.
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