It's Time to Save the World!... Or Not.

Originally I was going to write a piece about the "Tales of" series's current position in the gaming world and where I believe its future lies.  As I was playing through Tales of Berseria I was filled with all these thoughts about the series and excitement and hope for where it can go from here, and those thoughts may still make their way into this article.  However, after finishing Tales of Berseria my attention was drawn to another matter that I thought warranted discussion.  This is an issue that is rather prevalent in the JRPG genre, or just the RPG genre in general, but has always been especially bad in Tales games.  That is timing of side quests in respect to the main story.

Before I continue let me make this clear, I loved Tales of Berseria.  It has usurped Tales of the Abyss as my new favorite Tales game.  The combat was dynamic and fluid, the characters were some of the most colorful and interesting featured in any Tales game, and the natural connections made to its predecessor, Tales of Zestiria, were brilliant.  Most of all the story was the most gripping and engaging of any Tales game to date and the perfect pacing constantly drove me forward to progress.  It's because the story was so phenomenal and the pacing so on point that it was all the more important for side quests to not interfere with that.  And for the most part, Berseria accomplished that.  The side quests were minimal and and the ones that were there rarely detracted from the main story for more than a few minutes.  This was the case all the way until the the very end of the game, right when the final dungeon revealed itself and the final boss loomed ominously ahead.  The world was in imminent danger and instead of pushing me, the player, with urgency to save it, Berseria decided to instead reveal hours upon hours of side quests for me to complete.  Whatever urgency there was to save the world from impending danger was completely lost.

Indeed Laphicet

Now I understand the part of the definition of a "side quest" is that they are completely optional and not necessary to complete the main game.  Any RPG enthusiast, however, knows the feeling of being unable to simply ignore the "!" on a mini-map that is the universal sign for a quest.  When you ignore a quest that the game clearly goes out of the way to tell you about, you can't help but feel like the game is wagging a finger while chastising you, "Naughty, naughty little boy.  You know better than that." I just wanted to finish the game and see how this amazing story ends, but the game was making it so difficult for me to do so.

What made this even more frustrating was that these were good side quests.  Despite giving negligible to meaningless rewards, they fleshed out characters in such ways you never saw in the main story and made you care even more about them.  Besides that were other factors, but what makes a good side quest is another post in and of itself.  Regardless, the quality of these side quests made me wish that I could fully enjoy them without being distracted by thoughts of wanting to finish the game.  If the writers could have somehow incorporated these side quests more naturally throughout the game, I feel like they would have had much more impact rather than back-loading them all at the end.  At the same time, the story wrote itself into a corner with its fugitive tale so incorporating those side quests in the middle would have most likely broken the fantastical realism present.  In short, I don't have a solution for this specific case.

Like I said before, though, this is a problem present in the vast majority of RPG's, not just the Tales series.  Bravely Default and Bravely Second were both guilty of this, with pivotal story moments being interrupted by long and involved (but very good) side quests constantly throughout the games.  The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is another example.  Once Geralt had a very solid and convincing lead as to the whereabouts of the missing person he was looking for the entire game, I found it hard to believe he wouldn't rush straight there and instead take a contract to slay a random griffon that's been pestering a village.

There are a few ways for games to to handle side quests, though, and one example is Final Fantasy XV.  For all its faults, something I really appreciated about FFXV was how it funneled you into the main story in the latter half and drove you forward purposefully and relentlessly without any distractions.  It gave a sense of urgency and showed the conviction of the main cast to accomplish their goal at any cost.  The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky also spaced out its side quests with great efficiency.  It had large swathes of the main story completely side quest free and only provided them during lulls in said story where the characters naturally had a chance to take care of other activities.   Xenoblade Chronicles X gave you an in-universe reason to go out and take requests.  In between main missions HQ had to gather more intel before assigning you your next task so until then you were free to do whatever you pleased.  Even if danger was looming, as part of a military body there was nothing you could do as an individual until told to do so.

Tales of Berseria was a fantastic game that took the series just about to the limits of what it could accomplish with its current formula.  Now that it has reached those limits, though, the Tales series must evolve with its next entry or suffer the fate of stagnation.  There are many things I want from the next Tales game that I won't go into, but  I hope that better incorporation of side quests with the main story is one of them.