I know that you’re excited to read this post, but first go get me 12 wolf pelts from the other side of town!

Side quests are more often than not just that, some boring fetch quest so that, best case scenario you can get some experience or a swank piece of loot.  We all groan when the NPC sends us off, once again to grab some garbage that they carelessly left on top of a damn building.

This type of lazy task-building is still a big part of gaming, and it is not going anywhere. “Games-as-a-service” style games are even taking this to new levels with games like Destiny 2 having you repeat the same missions over and over to mind numbing degrees. Recently though, games have been moving in a positive direction on this front.

The touchstone for this shift towards meaningful side quests in the triple A gaming world has to be The Witcher 3, and I am definitely not the only person who thinks this. The most interesting one of the dozens of quests in this game is one called “Carnal Sins”.

This begins when friend of the protagonist calls upon you for help after his lover is badly disfigured when a mysterious entity attacks her. The mission becomes a bit of a murder mystery as you go about inspecting other victims of this mysterious enemy.

The trail eventually leads to a reverend who has deep ties to organized crime. The game really wants you to believe that this reverend is the culprit behind these attacks, if you have not been closely paying attention to the clues than he would seem to fit the bill well enough.

A closer investigation though indicates that he is actually not the killer but the most interesting thing about this quest, what puts it above all the rest for me, is that the game actually would let you make the mistake of killing him. If you kill this “red herring” reverend than the quest ends, your friend believes that you saved the day, hizzahs all around! Then a few more victims are found, but you have lost the trail of the true killer.

It is so uncommon for a game to have this dynamic of split story threads, for the stories to actually end up this radically different. And for a game to expect you to be this attentive is kind of rare.

Also the true killer is a badass vampire that you get to fight. So come on, this is for sure the raddest side quest in the Witcher 3 and a good example of how the gaming industry is starting to put more care into side content as a whole.