Best RPG Side Quests: Optional Content Better Than the Main Story

Side quests in RPGs range from forgettable fetch tasks to self-contained narratives that outshine the main campaign. The best side quests reward exploration with unique loot, permanent character changes, or story revelations that recontextualize the entire game.

How We Selected: We surveyed options using extensive playtime, community consensus, and mechanical depth analysis. Key factors included gameplay depth, balance and fairness, content updates, replayability. No sponsorship or affiliate relationship influenced our selections.

The Witcher 3: Bloody Baron

The Bloody Baron questline in Velen begins as a missing-persons investigation and unfolds into a morally complex family drama. Freeing the spirit under the Whispering Hillock saves the Baron’s wife but dooms the orphans of Crookback Bog. Leaving it trapped saves the children but condemns Anna to madness. There is no clean outcome.

The quest introduces the botchling, a creature born from Anna’s stillborn child. Geralt can kill it or perform a ritual transforming it into a lubberkin, a protective household spirit that reveals Anna’s location. The ritual requires carrying the botchling to the Baron’s threshold without it turning hostile, creating real tension.

Baldur’s Gate 3: The Githyanki Creche

Lae’zel’s quest to the Githyanki Creche integrates companion storytelling with mechanical rewards. The Zaith’isk device supposedly removes the Illithid tadpole but instead triggers an Illithid power awakening. Pulling Lae’zel free requires passing multiple ability checks before the device destroys her mind. Success unlocks early access to Illithid powers like Black Hole and Displacer Beast Shape.

The Creche also hides the Blood of Lathander, one of the best maces in the game. Retrieving it means solving a puzzle with ceremonial weapons and disarming a trap that would level the monastery. The weapon deals 2d6 radiant damage, blinds nearby undead, and once per long rest prevents death by restoring the wielder to full health while radiating healing sunlight.

Dark Souls: Siegmeyer of Catarina

Siegmeyer’s questline spans five locations. Each encounter presents him stuck somewhere, and your intervention either helps or diminishes his purpose. In Lost Izalith, killing the Chaos Eaters before he fights collapses his self-worth and he goes hollow. Letting him fight while keeping him above 50% health leads to a bittersweet reunion with his daughter Sieglinde in Ash Lake.

Skyrim: The Mind of Madness

Sheogorath’s Daedric quest sends you into dead Emperor Pelagius III’s mind. The Wabbajack becomes a puzzle tool: Pelagius’s paranoia manifests as guards growing larger with each blast until you target Pelagius himself. His anger becomes an arena where you shrink the hostile combatant while enlarging the passive one. The reward is the Wabbajack staff, which transforms any target into random creatures.

Mass Effect 2: Mordin’s Loyalty Mission

Mordin helped develop the modified genophage that sterilized the Krogan. His loyalty mission forces confrontation with that legacy when his former student Maelon is found conducting brutal cure experiments. The choice to destroy or preserve Maelon’s research data echoes into Mass Effect 3: preserved data enables a genuine cure during the Tuchanka arc, while destroyed data forces an impossible choice.

Fallout New Vegas: Beyond the Beef

The Ultra-Luxe casino quest reveals the White Glove Society’s cannibal relapse. It offers at least six resolution paths: expose the conspiracy, help complete the feast, substitute animal meat, assassinate the ringleader, blackmail the society, or walk away. Each path changes faction reputation and ending slides.

What Makes a Side Quest Memorable

The difference between a forgettable side quest and a legendary one comes down to three elements: meaningful choices, unexpected consequences, and self-contained storytelling that enriches the main narrative without depending on it. The Bloody Baron questline in The Witcher 3 works because it presents a domestic abuse situation with no clean resolution: every outcome involves loss, and the player must decide which loss is most acceptable. FFXIV’s Hildibrand questline works for the opposite reason: pure comedy relief that provides emotional contrast to the main storyline’s heavy themes. BG3’s companion quests succeed because they weave personal stakes into the world’s broader conflicts, making each companion’s resolution feel like both a character moment and a plot development. The best side quests make you forget they are optional.

The best side content works because optional status frees developers from pacing constraints. For companion-driven narratives, see our Best RPG Companions of All Time guide. For games where side content rivals the main quest, check Best Open World RPGs for Exploration.