7 Quests That Ended Terribly for the Quest Giver 

The first one I thought of was the final Dark Brotherhood Quest in Skyrim. You're tasked by Amaund Motierre to kill the Emperor. When you sneak onto the Emperor's ship and finally come face to face with him, he seems like a pretty chill guy who has come to terms with his death, he has only one last request: that you kill the person who ordered the hit on him. It's technically optional, but I always do it, honouring a dead man's last request seems like the least I can do.

To be fair to the Riddler, I'd feel pretty smart too if I managed to trick Batman into painstakingly tracking down several hundred meaningless trophies.

In the Elder Scrolls Oblivion, The Grey Prince gives you a quest where you help him find out his heritage, he gives you a key to a fort, which when you go through it, you find out he is the son of a vampire, when you tell him, he becomes all depressed and when you fight him at the end of the arena quest line, he won't fight back at all, while wanting you to kill him

the pose Kassandra makes after "He screamed, but not in agony" is priceless.

Kassandra: "Oh he screamed. But not in agony." 😏 Supideo: _backs away in horror_ *"AAUUGGGGHH!!"* That scene should be on a list of 'Most realistic reactions by an NPC'. 🤣

Honorary mention for Delphine, who got caught up in a mountaintop Fus Ro Day accident after asking me to kill Paarthurnax. She might not have died, but falling that far definitely qualifies as having a terrible time.

If you decline giving Laurentius knowledge of Chaos Pyromancy or Quelaana, he actually apologizes for asking and remains perfectly content to stay in Firelink Shrine for the rest of the game as your friend and helper, selling his spells and upgrading your glove. Only you as the player can lead him to ruin :\

When I saw Odyssey, I was expecting the 'One really, really bad day' questline, where Kassandra encounters a village under attack from pirates. In trying to fend them off, she watches their stable groom ride a 'pegasus' off a cliff, immolates their folk hero at his behest, gathers all the equipment for their blind blacksmith just so he can inadvertently crush himself, before taking out the pirate ships herself. The town's ships which had been disguised to get past the real pirates, only no one bothered telling the misthios, so she ends up fighting the pirates off by herself. Laughed like a drain doing the whole thing, wondering just how *this* mission was going to end in disaster

There's a quest in Bloodborne given to you by a little girl holed up in her house like many other NPCs in Yharnam who's looking for her parents, who haven't come home yet. Her dad just so happens to be Father Gascoigne, who you have to kill (she at least gives you the music box to stun him during the fight) and her mom is dead, killed by Gascoigne in his madness. If you return her broach to the girl, she falls into despair. Iirc, if you talk to her a little later, she mentions that she's gonna be brave and leave the house like her sister did - only to later end up as dinner for one of the massive pigs, implied by the red ribbon you get from killing it.

The Skyrim quest in Markarth where the priest asks you to help him solve the mystery of missing corpses, there’s a decent chance he becomes the next meal to a cannibal cult

8:23 Kassandra, master of social context, smiles at Screwing the guy's father as she explains how he screams in bed. She's so awful, I love it.

The way Arthur just walks away, a casual "I see you later", and utter resignation oozing out of every pore.

The Assassins Creed Odyssey quest is my favorite quest in the game. It’s hilarious. It always happens someone tries to stop some prophecy from coming true, but end up doing the thing that leads to the prophecy coming true.

Almost every interaction in Dragon Age 2 results in someone wishing Hawke they'd never asked - including I guess the whole game - but Javaris Tintop stands out in my memory as someone who really didn't get the deal he thought he was going to

Armor Core 6 would like to be acknowledged as fromsofts most recent game

In fable 3 you have a side quest called hobnobbing with Hobbes. You guide a man, Dans Mourir, to a Hobbes cave so he can befriend them. After leaving him there you can return and explore deeper in the cave. The books he left behind reveal he was eaten.

Forget ye not about Otto, the blind Templar from _Dragon Age: Origins!_ He just wants to clear out a haunted orphanage of its demons, and do some good in his infirm age. But he gets stabbed in the back by a pitchfork and dies. The worst part is, he needs to be alive to die at the end, so you keep him alive throughout the quest only to watch him get killed in a cutscene.

This could be composed entirely of Red Dead Redemption quests - including the _main plot,_ come to think of it, given what Jack ends up doing in the epilogue.

I was thinking about Jefferson Peralez (who is the popular candidate for mayor) and his wife in Cyberpunk 2077. They hire you first to investigate the suspicious death of the previous mayor, which goes well and leads to a whole questline with the police detective that was investigating the case. Later on though, they call you because they are sure that someone broke into their apartment and that Jefferson shot the guy, but their security team says that it never happened. After some investigating you figure out that someone (we never find out who's in charge) has been using their security team to monitor and brainwash the Peralez's (with brainwave frequency technobabble) from within their own home. You have the option to tell Jefferson that his thoughts, feelings, and even memories are a lie implanted by someone else (the obvious right thing to do) but his wife begs you not to. If you tell him, he becomes dysfunctionally paranoid and starts to believe that even his wife is against him (which could even be true considering the brainwashing). If you don't tell him, he becomes a literal puppet controlled by someone else for purposes unknown.

That AC plot kind of rings a bell... (looks at the name "Supideo" for several minutes) HOLD THE HECKIN PHONE

Cawlin's love letter from Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. If you give it to Karane, she goes out with Pipit instead and breaks his heart. If you give it to the toilet ghost hand, the hand haunts him.

The Skyrim quest I think that hits hardest for this is The Forsworn Conspiracy. Not only is this quest shoved down your throat upon entering Markarth, but following up on the quest not only screws up the quest giver's life but yours as well by putting a bounty on your head

KotOR 2, the signal tracking mission you get from a Bith Scientist on Nar Shaddaa, he just ends up dead while you're gone, even if you split the party and leave someone with him (because they didn't script that bit and he's gone with the scene change).

A rare Luke/Mike combo.

That AC Odyssey quest was the one that immediately sprang to mind lmao. Love that game 🥰

This could just be a FromSoft NPC quest giver list tbh!

The quest in Skyrim that you get the Ogmha infinum from. You help this eccentric old researcher open an ancient dwarven container and find one of the daedric artifacts. Unfortunately, he opens it before you and turns to ash as the daedric Prince it belongs to has no more need of him

14:46 no, don't worry, Luke, these aren't grapes! They're... miniature plums! Have a few! 😂

In Star Wars the Old Republic as part of the Sith Inquisitor story branch. As part of a series of quests given to you by your mentor Zash you end up acquiring the companion Khem Val. Khem Val is compelled to serve you after you best him, it would be difficult for him to do otherwise. Later it turns out Zash has had you running around in order to prepare a ritual that will allow her to steal your body, which should have all worked out perfectly except that Khem Val gets in the way and she ends up stuck sharing his body. And now all her resources and people are yours because she set them up to serve you, thinking she would already be in your body.

There are sooo many quest givers in Skyrim that end up dead or worse, but my favorite is part of the Dark Brotherhood storyline. A noble hires you to assassinate the Emperor, and the Emperor asks you politely to kill the noble that hired you.

Some Admiral in Mass Effect 1. The guy who had you look into Cerberus. At the end of the quest chain the admiral is found dead.

Okay, tragic yes, but the sentence "You killed his mater and *[BEEP]* his pater." sounds darkly hilarious to me for some reason.

One people might not notice until it's too late: the violin player in Dark Woods. He can move into one of your bases if you're nice to him but eventually grows hungry. If you don't bring him food, he dies, but if you give him food he lives and can live till the end if you play things right. But give him the wrong food? Well, he mutates into a room sized tumour and will die if you choose the "good" ending. Must've been something he ate....

In God of War II, there's the argonaut that asks you to help Jason, only for Kratos to throw him in to a mechanism to break some gears blocking his path, and then stand by while Jason gets eaten by a cerberus.

Emil has not one but two pretty bad times in Nier Automata side quests. As you find the Lunar Tear flowers he gradually recalls his horrifying past, before you find his home and steal from him, at which point he justifiably flips out and you are forced to defeat him. Not satisfied with one horrific ending, upgrading every weapon causes Emil to flee to the desert, where he is once again faced with his existential nightmare of a past as you do battle with endless gigantic clones he created to fight a war as his humanity slipped away piece by piece.

I loved the line “he screamed but not in agony” 😂

About the AC Odyssey entry. You don't need to romance the dad/Blacksmith but it's impossible to get the shield without killing the mum/Bandit.

Arguably, all of the scam artists in the Yakuza series are quest givers who end up getting beaten up by Kiryu.

We could talk about the quest line for Paladin Dance in Fallout 4. I’m surprised thus wasn’t mentioned since there is usually at least one Fallout 4 entry.

The Heist in Cyberpunk 2077 works for this on so many levels. Contractually, the quest giver is Dex, who gets killed by Takemura. The idea and funding for the quest came from Evelyn, who got fried by the VDBs, abused by her employer, sold to a creeper ripperdoc, then ultimately given to scavs who specialize in XBDs. We could even read Jackie as a quest giver, since he tells V to meet Dex in the first place, setting the whole thing in motion. Jackie of course is killed during the heist. Even TBug could be considered a quest giver, since she introduced Jackie and Dex while Dex was looking for a crew. She is of course fried by Arasaka black ice (or possible daemons or netrunners) during the heist.

That's odd. I expected this to be another video about Johnny talking about how you all derail them every session.

Honestly, if an NPC(that isn't Patches) is alive and not a gibbering wreck at the end of their quest in a Soulsborn, that's a big twist.

There's got to be a good example in Ghost of Tsushima. One of my main memories of that game is not knowing if the questgiver would still be breathing by the time I return to them to wrap the quest up.

There was that one Witcher quest where someone put up a bounty on themselves so they could rob any would-be bounty hunters. Geralt points out the flaw in their logic when he takes up the quest.

Immediately thought of the priest in Skyrim. Starts off with u investigating who has been stealing corpses and ends with the poor priest on an alter about to be eaten by a group of cannibals. Not to mention that u can even take part in making him into a meal which gives u a ring from the Daedric Prince Namira who is not only know as the Mistress of Decay but she is also associated with spiders, insects, slugs, etc and is a patron to cannibals

As for the "Supideo" quest... Spoilers (not that it should surprise anybody) ... ... ... ... I see a few people mentioning Oedipus in the comments, but I think it bears mentioning that that entire quest was basically a whole-plot reference to Oedipus, not just a somewhat similar self-fulfilling prophecy, including the whole self-blinding bit at the end. They did a gender-swap on the parents though, but yeah. They were definitely having fun with that one. In a creepy, creepy way.

Thank you for reminding me of that AC: Odyssey quest. It literally made me lol at the climax (pun intended)

When I saw Red Dead Redemption was going to be on this list, I was certain the “Deadalus and Son” quest from RDR1 would be featured. Charles had so much faith things would end well for him

More coin from Big Red you say, dang I should've sided with that wolf. In the first Witcher, there's a bandit that basically hires Geralt to kill him I think his intention was to lead the Witcher into a trap, but he and his boys are no match

Let's be real here, this entire video could be on Soulsborne questlines.

i wish somewhere in the witcher 3 game geralt would have said something like "it was nice working with you, oh and by the way- if i ever catch you killing anyone, anywhere- ever again- I'll have to-- ya know-- do the witcher thing..."

that was a unique twist to the one from assassin's creed entry on this list, would not of guessed that

Ocarina of Time had the chain of deals as Adult Link. Now the end goal is the biggoron sword but at one point you help the Cuccoo lady and you get a blue Cuccoo and you reunite him with the emo son of the csrpenters' boss And when you continue this quest past him, you'll find a Kokiri in his place saying that people in the lost woods... end up... you know

I really thought you'd have Devin Weston from GTA V in this list. After all the quests he gives you, assuming you follow the "all 3 survive" ending, he winds up in the trunk of his car and shoved over a cliff.

Interesting- I thought most of the jokes in the Witcher that were "lost in translation" were in the polish version, and now you show me a Werewolf version of Red Riding Hood. Oh, woe is me, now I'll have to play through them all again*! *at least through "Assassins of Kings and "Wild Hunt"- as far as W1 playthrough is concerned, I'll probably wait for the remaster:)

How about Red Dead Redemption 1 where John collects various materials for a man to make glue for his flying machine? Didn't end well for him. Bit of a theme for those games.

3. Oedipus OX

One quest that comes to mind is in Borderlands: The Pre-sequel, wherein you see a Hyperion scientist that wants to talk to you in person. He opens the window near him, forgetting that they're on the Helios space station, and gets sucked out into space as a result.

In the game Elden Ring, one of the first characters you meet is Sellen the sorceress in the Limgrave region. Her questline includes defeating both Radahn and transplanting her glintstone crystal into a new body. Her goal is to return to the academy of Raya Lucaria and replace Rennala as the academy's headmaster. There are two endings for Sellen's quest and neither of them end well for her. She either turns into one of those stone balls with the faces on them or you kill her with the help of Jerren the witch hunter.

Mass Effect has this salarian named Schells who asks for help with cheating in a nightclub called Flux. You get to test the device he had made, took him five years to make too. You can give this device to the nightclub's owner instead. Resulting in Schell to have wasted five years of his short salarian's life.

This 7 Part Quest Given to you by... Outside Questra! (I hope they fare well.)

Actually it wasn't the time Batman took finding the trophies, it was the Riddler radioing in to taunt or throw a fit allowing Batman to use his own radio signal to locate him and then send that location to Gotham PD.

I mean literally the entire Dark Brotherhood questline in Skyrim ends up badly for Astrid. Of course that can be said about a lot of questlines in Skyrim, like joining the vampires, siding with half of the Daedric princes, etc. Also pretty much anything involving the Dark Urge in Baldur's Gate 3.

Octopath Traveler 2 has a side quest where a court bailiff asks you to find evidence that people standing trial are innocent of the crimes they're accused of. There's 2 of these and you can in fact prove the people on trial are innocent and have them set free. Come back after doing these and you'll find out that the bailiff himself has been accused of murdering the judge that presided over the 2 previous trials. One of the people in the galley doesn't buy it and asks you to investigate the murder, do so and you discover.... that the bailiff murdered the judge. Turns out that the judge himself was a thief that framed the bailiffs father years ago and sentenced him to death to cover his tracks. For what it's worth, your investigation also proves this fact as well and it's strongly implied that the bailiff wanted to be caught, and that the only reason he tried to get away with it was to force an investigation that would prove he had a motive, therby also proving that his father was framed. Either way, the bailiff that starts you on the questline ends up going down for murdering a judge.

If you talk to little girl in Bloodborne, things go terribly for her no matter what you do.

I'm sure it's been pointed out but the AC:O one was a reference to Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex. At least he didn't bang his dad himself like poor Oedipus did his mom. Either way, the moral's the same: DON'T. TRUST. ORACLES!!!

Another great Elden Ring example is Sellen. Help her out, and she tries to unlock the secrets of the Primeval Current, and promptly turns into a giant ball of faces.

How about Gascoigne's daughters in Bloodborne? The younger daughter will either get killed by the nearby enemies while trying to seek shelter or get turned into a monster. The older daughter will kill herself after her section of the quest is done.

The githyanki egg quest in baldur's gate 3. The people who wanted it abuse the kid born from it and then he kills them

A few questlines in Ghost of Tsushima can end badly for the quest giver, like A Wealthy Man Has All He Needs

I would say that Face McShooty in Borderlands 2 had a pretty terrible ending, what with being shot in the face (at minimum) and all, but he seemed to have a great time about it, so I'm not really sure.

A perfect thing that comes to mind is in Skyrim when you have to help the last descendant of one of the Mythic Dawn cultists reforge Mehrunes Razor the dagger of the deadric lord himself so the guy can put it in his museum. The quest goes well until the end for him when Mehrunes Dagon asks you to kill the guy and claim the dagger for yourself. Now you can always disobey the deadric prince but the guy only gives you 500 gold pieces and I'd rather have a cool unique dagger with a 1% instant kill perk then 500 pieces of gold especially for all the trouble it takes to get all the pieces

I'm a bit surprised that Elden Ring's Irina wasn't picked. Hyetta does get burned alive at the end, but Irina asks you to find her father and after you help her father retake the castle, when you can go back and find her dead and her father mourning over her body. And then later in the game, her father, having gone nuttier than trail mix, invades you forcing you to kill him and taking an Shabriri Grape which ties back into Hyetta.

My first thought, went to Dead Rising 3. There’s a quest, where you help a guy get his RV going, by getting different kinds of fuel. After you get them for him, he pours them all into the tank of the RV, despite you warning him how dangerous it is, to mix them. As expected, the RV explodes, when he tries to start it.

One of the first quests of Arcanum: Of Steamwork and Magick Obscura. In the starting area, there is a cave where it lies the spirit of a bandit who has been cursed by an elven priest because he and another rogue stole from him a holy manufact. He was killed by the greedy companion, who now has the manufact, and the spirit asks the hero to convince the monk to release the curse so his soul could pass through afterlife. Meeting the priest, he said that he cannot (and probably neither wants) remove the curse, but he can reward the hero if they recover the manufact. Completing that quest gives you a blessing improving the opinion with every other character in the world. You can later return to the cave and tell the spirit he is doomed forever.

In KOTOR 2 you end up having to kill the very person who started you down the path of the main quest in the first place.

Big Hat Logan had it worse in Dark Souls. Not only does his questline end in his death, but he tells you Sieths weakness along the way and killing him gives you the final sorcery.

Scanning the Keepers in Mass Effect if you decide to do the Renegade option

I mean depending on how you play it pretty much all of disco Elysium is one big mission that’s gone terribly for you

"Missing wife" + "Wild at Heart" in The Witcher III. Also, "Coming of Age" or "The Pale Lady" in Skyrim.

I cant think of a single Elden Ring sidequest where the quest giver doesnt die.

There's a fair few of these in Wizard101. Normally, this happens because the quest giver betrayed the Young Wizard, who swiftly and violently retaliates.

Stomund from Lords of the Fallen got a pretty tragic one. It is a shame you can't tell him he can't cure madness with nostalgia.

For some weird reason, the first quest I thought of was one in Skyward Sword where when Cawlin gives you a love letter to give to his crush, you have two options, both ending equally terribly for Cawlin. The first option is doing as told and giving the letter to his crush, and have her completely reject and scorn him, or you can give it to Phoeni, the ghost hand in the toilet who wants paper, where, after receiving the love letter, will think it was for her and from that day on, creepily caress Cawlin, thinking he meant it for her, giving Cawlin (from the sound of the whimpering) horrifying nightmares!

How about Gary the prophet in Cyberpunk? He spends his time next to Misty's Esoterica raving about various conspiracy theories. If you talk to him often enough he'll give you details of a meet up, which you dubiously follow up, not expecting anyone to show. When they do and you defeat them you return to Gary to find that he's been snatched away by shady Corpo types.

Yamarz in Skyrim. Hires you to help him clear out a cave full of giants with him and let you do all the work. Then, he tries to kill you so he can take the credit. Even though he just watched you demolish a cave full of literal giants 😂

I feel like you can make a whole season of lists about this subject using only Fallout quests. 😆

Sozo from Cult of The Lamb. I'm sure completing this quest to give him mushrooms won't have any repercussions. Goes back to visit later...

Lol ive never played odyssey but i would like to think I would've noticed the guy trying to not go all "Oedipus" on everyone's name is "Supideo" and seen things coming a little quicker (no pun intended) 😂 -- isnt that a game where you can play male or female protag? Does that change the quest at all if you choose male? Jc

I remember that quest in AC Odyssey. Hilarious. That's the kind of quests which are the reason why Odyssey was my favorite amongst the newer style of AC-games.

Here's a simple one from Wild Arms - Mother at a festival has lost track of her kid. So as good old heroes you head out to track him down. He's got a red balloon so shouldn't be too tricky. Just...once you find the kid he loses the balloon. Oh and a dimension rift opens up in the sky, death rains down on the city...and the kid dies.

The Dockworker from Dredge would fit in nicely in that list.

The Odyssey quest is funnier if you play as Alexios. There's something about his accent that sells it.

The look Mike had on his face throughout the AC entry was exactly the look I expected a guy to have describing that scene. Like "I can't believe that this *is* my real job."

In Diablo 4 there’s a guy in a stockade who sends you to retrieve his eyes from some enemy in a dungeon. If you do so, he attempts to put them back in and his head combusts, seeing him run away screaming in pain. But, at least it broke him out of the stockade. Somehow.

Ohoho, ready for this one: Boone from New Vegas, even in the best case is stuck kicking it with the person who reminds him of his tragic past. The very first love triangle distraction after the intro in Skyrim. Solaaaaaaaaire and his dipteran delusions. And while we’re on Souls, Siegward’s sad, sad questline. Remnant 2, choose any of the endings in which the Red Doe doesn’t survive and you steal the last hope of the first Pan you encounter in Yaesha.

I love how Mike sounds like he can barely stop himself from laughing towards the end of the AC: Odyssey segment.

Whoever isn't the award winner between DJ Grooves and The Conductor in A Hat In Time.

Ya konw there's a guy in one of the Borderlands games, I think maybe 2, where there's a guy who literally demands you shoot him in the face. Seems obvious for this list, that's all I'm saying.

The real hero is presumably ellen for going back to shadow of the tomb raider to get capture for this 😅