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[Ghost of Caelid]

A dream game of mines is one where you are just in a world, interacting with the locals doing side quest but theres no main over arcing objective...are there any games currently like this or should I enroll in game design school? Imagine Skyrim but you aren't doing the Dovakin stuff just doing side quest in perpetuity until you decide it's time to put it down.

 

[cormack12]

GT7

 

[Kuranghi]

Diablo 3? The main quest is done once and you don't even have to pay any attention, then you keep playing for thousands more hours but never do the main quest again, just "events", I don't think thats what you meant though, you mean like side quests in an open world game where you help fleshed out characters yah? I dunno

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

morrowind

 

[JLB]

Elite Dangerous is what you are looking for.

 

[Guilty_AI]

There are plenty of games like that where you can just perpetually play without following any clear objective (X4 games, Terraria, Stardew Valley, No Mans Sky, Elite Dangerous, Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, etc). However i don't think those are the types of game you want.

You probably want something with engaging and well developed side-quests, with interesting story and world building, casual friendly, and then having those going on forever in the world. In that case the answer is 'no', since you'd need either procedurally generated quests which are rarely interesting in the way people want them to be, or designed quests that would keep repeating itself with maybe some slight variations.

I could even suggest stuff like Dwarf Fortress or Daggerfall, which are close in concept but i doubt those would satisfy you.

 

[RoboFu]

Zelda botw? LOL Pretty Much

 

[phant0m]

ESO, kind of.

You can play it for 100s of hours and not ever touch the original "main quest" line. Each expansion has it's own "main" quest part but AFAIK it's not really a singular story that ties in/builds on the original main quest line. If you buy all the game today for the first time you can start at any of the expansions at level 1.

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Elite Dangerous is what you are looking for.

Loved it but dropped it when they stopped supporting console sadly.

 

[Wildebeest]

Games that are that pure of a sandbox usually have quite weak procedurally generated "missions" and not RPG type side quests. I suppose some people are hoping to change that with tools like ChatGPT getting better.

 

[diffusionx]

Sid Meiers Pirates

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Rage

 

[Companion Cube]

Can’t you play mmos like this?

 

[Rac3r]

Red Dead Online has more side missions than main quests

 

[MGHA]

Pong

 

[LazyParrot]

Does it really matter if Skyrim has a main quest or not if you can just ignore it? It arguably improves the experience, too, since it essentially gets rid of all dragons, which are the shittiest, most boring enemies in the entire game.

 

[phant0m]

Can’t you play mmos like this?

Depends. Some yes (such as ESO, as I mentioned above). But others like FFXIV gate zones and content by both level and MSQ completion. Yes, you can pay for level or story skip but I still count that as "needing" to play the main story.

 

[Aenima]

I feel like all bugthesda games i played (Elder Scrolls and Fallout) are just a bunch of sidequests. At least the most memorable moments are from side quests. They have a main quests but is always forgetable.

Anyway OP, seems like your dream game is pretty much any MMORPGs.

 

[PonyStation4]

Stardew Valley

 

[ntropy]

baldur's gate 2

 

[Bojji]

AC Valhalla feels like that.

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

WoW in single player

 

[Tams]

RuneScape. I think it has a 'main' storyline now, but before it just had many different quests. Some were part of a series and series interlinked, but that's all.

Other than that, there are plenty if games that have enough content that you can ignore the main quest.

No one has mentioned Just Cause yet.

 

[AncientOrigin]

Monster Hunter Series is like that even with a main story or missions it’s basically all side missions collet 5 eggs find bla bla sauros kill that big monkey

 

[L*][*N*K]

Animal Crossing games

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Ghost of Caelid

 

[SmokedMeat]

Valheim has no real missions or side quests. You can just farm, build shit, and fend off monsters if that’s all you want to do.

 

[analog_future]

I'm new to the Monster Hunter games, but Monster Hunter Rise sure seems that way. The main "solo" missions are not really different from the side quests.

 

[crackajack]

Open world games almost never feel like there is a main quest since its always buried in distracting sidequests I don't want to come back to later so I just do them immeditaely, so main and side tasks get mixed into one boring hamster wheel game. Depending on AAA-ness taking either too long or way too long to have any, mostly anyway vapid, main story arc survive under that garbage.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Quests are something developers are still trying to figure out.

 

[ManaByte]

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Mass Effect 2 is pretty close. Basically the entire game is just doing side missions to recruit/make loyal people, and every once in a while (like 4 times total) you do a mission central to the main plot. The actual main plot is like a paragraph long.

 

[Archaic101]

Mass Effect 2 is pretty close. Basically the entire game is just doing side missions to recruit/make loyal people, and every once in a while (like 4 times total) you do a mission central to the main plot. The actual main plot is like a paragraph long.

Came in to say this. Weird structure for a Bioware game, but I liked it.