He’s on me before I realise I’ve been spotted. I curse myself for venturing this close to town but, with supplies running low, what other option was there? Not that keeping to the wilds was any safer – only two days ago I turned around to see three of them barrelling towards me. My pursuer’s face filling my field of vision, I brace myself for the inevitable.
“Greetings, stranger,” he says. “Can I interest you in an adventure?”
Being asked to rescue someone’s grandmother from a bandit cave might not sound like nightmare fuel but I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of dodging quests – ever since The Man With The Long Chin, a character from Teletext gaming mag Digitiser, punched someone for offering him a quest. This comedic revelation opened my mind to a world of possibilities. What if, instead of ending up with a laundry list of unfinished business, you could tell someone to shove their demands right up their Deepwater Hollow? Or, better yet, if you ran a mile whenever anyone looked like they were going to drag you into their affairs?
You could argue that quests are essential to establishing a fantasy world, but overloading the player with them erodes that world’s credibility; it paints a picture of a populace who can barely function without the intervention of an outsider. Skyrim is one of the worst offenders in this regard. At times it resembles Invasion of the Body Snatchers: an NPC catches sight of you, the cry goes up and before you know it you’ve got seventeen couriers shoving notes into your hand. You step into the pub for a quiet pint, and when you leave your quest log is big enough to bludgeon a dragon to death.