The main quest is something that fuels most games, but it can be a hard thing to get right. From the characters to the plot moving the game forward, everything has to be in synergy to nail a main journey. Sometimes, that just doesn’t happen, even for some of the best games out there.
Due to theopen worldgenre providing you a literal sandbox to play in outside the main quest, there have actually been several games that are fantastic and fun to play while having some pretty bad main quests in the process.
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For players who want to explore, but not be overwhelmed by a world larger than the story.
For me, the main quest is always what brings me to the table, but I can admit that some of my favorite games ever have less than stellar main tales to tell.
We’re going to check out a handful of games that miss the mark when it comes to main quests, but still manage to be incredibly fun games to play regardless.
10Horizon Zero Dawn
Alloy’s Past Is More Interesting Than Her Present
Horizon Zero Dawn
Fextralife Wiki
Horizon: Zero Dawn is one of the most remarkable games of the past 10 years and, with its thrilling combat, incredible graphics, and impressive voicework, you’d think it was the perfect package.
Unfortunately, the game falls flat when it comes to the main quest. With such a fascinating world and pieces to play with, the main quest here is nothing more than an evil entity that wants to take over the world and has its indoctrinated subjects doing the bidding in the process.
We’ve seen it time and time again, and the quest design that supports it is not all that thrilling. There are far too many missions requiring you to stealthily creep around other humans, which just pales in comparison to the over-the-top insane fights against the robot dinosaurs that are present throughout the game.
What makes the main quest stand out in a bad way is how great the quests discovering the lore of the world are. These are absolutely thrilling and full of incredible discoveries about the world and the characters in the game, and have some amazing visuals on top of that.
They feel like they should’ve been required for the main quest, but instead, the main quest is full of tired tropes and boring stealth missions.
9Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Greece Didn’t Need the Assassins Or Templars
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Assassin’s Creed: Odysseyis, in many ways, the highlight of the modern-era RPG-focused games in the series, and that’s largely due to some great characters,amazing vistas, and really fun and well-written side quests to engage with.
The main quest, however, drops the ball in so many ways.
It starts off intriguing enough, but quickly reveals its villains to you all too soon and lacks any sense of pacing which completely derails the urgency the plot would seem to require.
There is a segment about midway through the game that all but forces you to go off and do hours of side quests to get to the level required to continue the main quest. It’s the game basically saying “we forgot to write something interesting here, so go make your own fun”, which is both a blessing and a curse.
When you’re doing side quests in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, you’re getting the game at its best. These are varied and have fun and interesting objectives. Some of the quests are multiphase, meaning you won’t get the whole story in just one simple mission. Some of these can stretch on for a while.
The creativity shown in these optional activities far outdoes the main quest, which eventually devolves into the same old Assassin’s vs Templars drama that you’ve seen time and time again in this series, even if they go by different names here.
8The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Choose Your Adventure
Skyrimis one of the best games ever made, plain and simple. It’s a near-endless world to explore that lets you do everything from becoming a merchant, farmer, cave explorer, assassin, or a soldier, just to name a few.
One area where Skyrim falters greatly, however, is in the main quest. The mission to stop Alduin feels so formulaic, and it ends just when it feels like it’s starting to get interesting.
The characters in the main quest are dull as dirt, and the quest to stop a dragon that is just evil to be evil isn’t all that compelling. We finally get some interesting moments towards the end with Sovengard, but it’s all too brief and doesn’t make up for the hours of mundane gameplay that comes before it.
On the other hand, the side quests are generally great, with one of the best being the war between the stormcloaks and imperials, which lets you choose a side and join the war effort in a series of several epic battles.
There’s also in-depth stories like the Dark Brotherhood, the Thieves Guild, and the Fighter’s guild. All of these are so well-written and intriguing plot wise that you wonder where that effort was in the main quest line.
7Starfield
In Space, Nobody Can Hear You Yawn
I very much enjoyed my time withStarfieldand found it to be an often-times fascinating experience. The universe was a sandbox to explore, and I never knew what I’d get up to when I landed on a planet or decided to take on a stranger’s request for help.
However, my experience felt incredibly hollow when following the main questline presented here. It’s so painfully boring and terribly set up that it makes all the reveals and twists feel like barely anything at all.
It starts with you touching a rock and having some visions, and then a guy gives you his ship for….literally no reason. It gets dumber from there, and there is no compelling antagonist or enemy to fight against in the main story either, just boring pirates and Starborn, who lose all their intrigue about 10 minutes after you encounter them.
The best way to describe the main plot is sterile and safe. You and your league of extraordinary space adventures are incredibly lame and feel like they were all written as not to offend anyone at any time. The story itself goes nowhere interesting and has one of the worst endings I’ve ever seen in a game.
Now, elsewhere in Starfield? There are some fantastic and lengthy quests to take part in. For example, the UC Vanguard questline is incredible and creepy and, in many ways, feels like it should’ve been the main quest of the game.
The Crimson Fleet quest is also great, letting you either side with the gang you’re going undercover to infiltrate or take them out when the time comes, giving you a little bit of The Departed in space vibe.
It’s a shame this level of fun couldn’t happen in the main quest.
6Borderlands 3
How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 is about as good as it gets from a looter-shooter perspective. The guns are endlessly interesting to try out, the enemy variety is great, and there are constantly new things to see and do as you explore the open world.
However, if you’re just coming for the main quest here, you’re going to want to mute your TV.This is some of the worst dialogue ever conceivedand the moment the twin antagonists hit the screen, you’ll immediately start to wonder what on earth they were thinking.
It’s the latest in a long line of games that tries to be cool and use modern lingo but instead achieves horrifically cringe-inducing results.
In the same way that DMC: Devil May Cry once failed at this, and how Forspoken became a literal meme because of it, Borderlands 3 tries so hard to be cool and edgy that it makes it impossible to even vaguely take seriously. While it gives you plenty of reason to want to kill the main villains, it doesn’t make up for the hours of terrible dialogue and mundane quests it’ll take to do so.
But, the shooting is top-notch, the abilities are tons of fun to play around with, and the graphics are the best realized version of the unique, pseudo-cell-shaded world it goes for, so you still get plenty of bang for your buck when playing.
5Dragon’s Dogma 2
Dropping the Ball with Style
Dragon’s Dogma 2
I can feel the rage build within me as I type this. I loved the original Dragon’s Dogma, quirks and all, and I believed a sequel would fulfill the promises made by that first game.
That did not happen inDragon’s Dogma 2, especially when it came to the main quest.Without a doubt, it is the worst written storyI’ve ever played. It introduces intriguing plot threads and drops them within seconds.
It gives you some potentially cool characters to adventure with, and then forgets they exist within a couple of hours. It gives you something resembling a good antagonist and doesn’t mention them again until 60 hours later.
What were they thinking? Who was in charge of this main quest? These are all questions that went through my head as I played through one baffling story mission after another.
Luckily, the game is still worth playing for the combat and exploration. The combat is weighty and difficult, and the outstanding pawn system makes it so adventuring never gets too repetitive.
There are also plenty of emergent quests to discover along your travels, and most of the fun of the game is what you make of it yourself.
4Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Almost Perfection
Metal Gear Solid 5 The Phantom Pain
Metal Gear Solid Vmight have the best gameplay in video game history.It’s an incredibly sharp third-person shooterwith truly elite stealth mechanics, and the sheer wealth of options you have when approaching a mission is absolutely mind-boggling.
It also stands toe to toe graphically with any current game, which is crazy considering it’s 10 years old.
The problem with the game lies in the story. I’m replaying Metal Gear Solid 4 right now, and coming from a recent playthrough of Metal Gear Solid V, it is jarring. There is so much banter, so many plot developments, and so many great characters that it reminded me of what made the series so special to begin with.
Then you have Metal Gear Solid V, which is effectively devoid of all of the above. Snake barely speaks in this one, Ocelot, who should be a major player in this story, is just kind of there, filling in for Otacon this time around, and the story takes hours to get going and quickly disappears once it does.
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There are so many plot threads left hanging, tons of clearly unfinished content and, overall, the main quest is so underwhelming to play through. The only thing keeping you going throughout is the fantastic stealth action.
Amazing Exploration, Generic Story
Avowedwas a fun experience that I’ll likely never think about again. The reason for that is that the story is so generic and safe that it literally ends with a “power of friendship” speech.
The way the story will play out is obvious from the second you hear a mysterious voice in your head, and the quests involved are painfully boring, with you fighting waves of the same exact enemies over and over. It only really picks up in the final area of the game.
The visuals are incredible, but being shepherded by one character from location to location without anything interesting driving you beyond “find out what’s going on” is easy to lose interest in quickly.
The characters are a big reason to blame, because none of them have a personality worth approaching. It feels like someone tried to write Mass Effect without any of the charm and intrigue.
Aside from the main quest though, the game is actually pretty good. The combat is fast and flashy, with some of the best magic spells I’ve seen in gaming, and the side quests are, for the most part, a lot of fun to do.
Pictured above is the character Sargamis, whose side quest “Dawntreader” takes place early in the game and has more intrigue in it than the entirety of the main quest. Iteven hints at being directly tied to ituntil the thread is forgotten until the very end of the game, where your choice doesn’t even end up mattering.
That’s the deal you get with Avowed: great exploration, combat, and side content, and a weak main quest.
2Xenoblade Chronicles X
An Incredible World To Explore, For Little Reason
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
Xenoblade Chronicles Xfooled me when it was first revealed. Seeing that X streaking across the screen, I thought “Could this be the Xenogears remake I’ve been waiting for?” I was hooked from there.
That’s not quite the promise that Xenoblade Chronicles X delivers though, at least from the main quest.
While I do love this game, the main story is very dull, and takes forever to actually get going as you do nothing but busy work and fetch quests for the first few hours of the game.
Luckily, it picks up a bit in the second half once you have access to your Skells and the main threats reveal themselves more palpably, but there is precious little in the way of intriguing plot threads, well-written characters, or a compelling antagonist to really drive home that this is a story worth paying attention to.
Aside from the mundane main plot though, Xenoblade Chronicles X is packed with things to do, from interesting side quests to recruiting new characters to just exploring one of the best open worlds in gaming history. Even if you’re bored to tears by the main quest, you’ll get hours of enjoyment just immersing yourself in this unique and alien world.
1Hogwarts Legacy
You Are Not The Chosen One
Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacyfully realizes so many childhood dreams that it’s an achievement for that alone. What really made this game sell like crazy in 2023 was the way it made you feel like a wizard at Hogwarts.
The classes, the learning spells, the atmosphere, the music; everything you could possibly want from a game in this universe was there to be had, and you could tell the developers were huge fans of the series.
Exploring the world is great fun too, letting you fly around on a broomstick or soar through the air on a Hippogryph.
When it comes to playing through the story, though, things are far less interesting. The plot is pretty generic, with an incredibly tame villain compared to the iconic Voldemort that we’ve seen for years now, and the quests that surround the story are not much to write home about either.
The formula is painfully generic, often tasking you with finding a person, seeing what they want, and going off to some random cave or dungeon to do fairly mundane activities like fighting the same enemies over and over or discovering an important piece of lore.
It just feels by the numbers in so many ways, and it’s painful because the side content is generally pretty fruitful here. My favorite is the quest to acquire the forbidden curses, and they’re every bit as creepy and foreboding as you could hope.
That same intrigue just never hit for me with the main quest, and dealing with goblins and whatnot felt so low stakes compared to what we know lurks in the future of this franchise.
10 Open World Games With Amazing Side Quests
These games have such immersive universes that the optional content ends up being just as good as the main campaign.
