Tay Open Forum – Sidequest Rave

? Happy birthday to Slink ?
? Happy birthday to Slink ?
? Happy birthday @slinker ?
? Happy skeletor to you! ?

It’s the Tuesday Open Forum, and it also happens to be Slinker’s birthday. So I’m here standing in with the OF duties while they party it up. That’s them, pictured in the image above!

I’ve been playing a rotation of Yakuza Kiwami, Boxboy! + Boxgirl!, and Octopath Traveler lately (alongside interspersed bouts of Ring Fit Adventure). You know what they have in common? Sidequests! Well, kind of. Boxboy is a stretch, but it does have these little floating crowns and other… optional objectives that you can do on your way through each level. Kind of like Celeste‘s strawberries, but in a more play-at-your-own-pace, puzzle solving way. Yakuza Kiwami‘s approach to substories is strange even by the standards of the series, giving progression and small storylines to some minigames (there’s a whole questline for the UFO catcher!) while giving relatively little in the way of the narrative experience of later entries. It’s a very noticeable jump coming off Judgment and going through a wormhole to this remake of a PS2 game. We can talk Octopath, but… maybe not, ’tis a silly game.

QUESTIONS!

• What are your favorite ways that games handled sidequests?
• Or your favorite sidequest ever?
• How meaty do you like your sidequests – do you want little six-second bits of seasoning, or whole-ass stories?
• What else do you want to talk about?

BONUS!

I’m not the biggest fan of Grimes, but I’m a sucker for rave remixes. And this whole album remix of her latest is good, folks. Break out the glowsticks and the Y2K style and give it a spin: