Every gamer knows the feeling. You boot up an RPG, start the main quest, and within ten hours realize the real magic is hiding in the optional content. The detour to help a strange old woman or photograph a wolf turns out to be the moment you remember years later. Here are five games where the side content didn’t just compete with the main story. It quietly buried it.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
CD Projekt Red built Geralt’s hunt for Ciri across roughly 50 hours of main story, but the side quests are what fans still talk about a decade later. Witcher contracts like “A Towerful of Mice” and “Carnal Sins” deliver self-contained gothic short stories with real moral weight. The Hearts of Stone expansion is widely considered better written than the base game’s main path, and the side-quest writing has racked up multiple industry awards over the years.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Rockstar’s main story is a sprawling epic about a dying gang, but the Stranger Missions are where Arthur Morgan actually becomes human. The wildlife photography arc with Albert Mason, the widow Charlotte Balfour learning to survive alone, and Marko Dragic’s homicidal robot stand alongside the game’s best writing. Red Dead Redemption 2 has 31 stranger side-missions, and finishing only 10 is required for full completion. The rest are pure gravy, and they include some of the most beloved side content of the last decade.
Cyberpunk 2077
Night City’s main plot is short, dark, and famously rushed. The relationship Side Jobs are the opposite. Panam Palmer’s Aldecaldo arc, Judy Álvarez’s investigation into Evelyn Parker, River Ward’s family case, and Kerry Eurodyne’s rockstar meltdown are not just better paced than the main story. They are necessary. Several of them actually unlock the game’s better endings, including the fan-favorite Aldecaldo route. The writing in these Side Jobs is widely viewed as the heart of what Cyberpunk 2077 became after years of patches and updates.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Ichiban Kasuga’s main story walks you through Yokohama gang politics, but the 52 substories in Like a Dragon are where the series’ personality lives. You’ll teach an English class, race in Mario Kart-style tournaments, manage a corporation, and have entirely serious heart-to-hearts with strangers ten minutes later. The Yakuza franchise has built its reputation on this whiplash between absurd comedy and quiet emotion, and Like a Dragon may be the purest distillation of that formula.
Fallout: New Vegas
Obsidian had only 18 months to build New Vegas, but somehow shipped a game where the side quests are more talked about than the four-faction war at its core. “Come Fly With Me” — a quest about a ghoul cult trying to launch themselves to space in salvaged rockets — is regularly cited as one of the best side quests in RPG history. Add in “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” “G.I. Blues,” and “Oh My Papa,” and you have the most consistently strong side-quest roster of its generation.
