7 Side Quests You Should NEVER Finish: Commenter Edition 

Guard- *Murders Celeste Mike, loading a shotgun- "shame."

"If you give the girl the emerald, she'll know her parents are dead and that's awful" *Luke has absolutely no hesitation in giving the girl the emerald*

So fun story about that Birds of a Feather mission: before starting it, I broke into a box outside and stole the contents. Doesn't sound that interesting, until you find out that said contents was the items they give you for guarding the door. What ended up happening was he gave me _new_ items when I started the quest, and only took _one_ set back when I was done guarding the door. So I walked away with a free bit of gear. The best part is the combat armor was marked as a quest item, and therefore weighed nothing, but more importantly couldn't be removed from my inventory. Apparently this also applied during the Dead Money DLC, so I got to bring in a nice little full set of combat armor to the DLC where you're _supposed_ to have nothing.

I love that the Fallout 4 one isn't "you'll lose a great piece of gear" or "this character will die horribly" or even "you'll experience a game-breaking bug", but rather "the 'story' of Fallout 4 will continue, endlessly, whether you like it or not"

With the Little Girl quest in Bloodborne, the best outcome is to find the brooch, tell her “nope, didn’t find it”, then don’t tell her about the Clinic or the Chapel; she’ll stay in her house for the night, where she has the best chance of survival.

My favorite thing about Cass isn't even her quest, it's her sense of humor. When sneaking, she shushes you and says "we're hunting shit heads."

I see a theme here: a side quest gets dark real quick, deprives you of a really good gun, or introduces something really annoying.

Funny thing is, lore wise Clavicus got the sword in the Skyrim timeline and it promptly stole half of his power and created a flying island so no one would bother it anymore. So really even for the guy giving the quest it’s best that you don’t finish it.

I actually almost did Birds of a Feather to completion. Already had Cass as a companion, and when I found out they kill her, reloaded a save and burned the place down with Cass. Loved every second. Edit: future advice for those who wanna go down this way, if you kill the Van Graffs and then get Heartache by the Number, don’t talk to Cass until the quest is over, or you’ll be locked into the murder mode.

You can't really count Javik's memory shard quest as "unfinished". You can absolutely finish his quest with no regrets - tell him to not touch the shard, that the past should stay where it belongs, and not only is the questline finished, but he survives and looks towards the future.

Another bonus to umbra was that there is a main story quest where you must infiltrate the cult of dagon and have them take away your inventory for a bit, but umbra is a quest item, so it stays in your inventory.

In one of your videos recently the spoilers list was read aloud. I think this is a wonderful idea, because it's super helpful to someone with sight issues and if you miss the few seconds it appears on screens. Pls keep doing that. As always, your content is superb and there's a good reason this channel's fanbase keeps growing :)

For me, just activating that side quest in The Outer Worlds was a herculean feat because by the time I reached Byzantium, I'd attained a fully negative reputation with The Board. So, every guard in the city wanted to kill me and even Celeste was antagonistic after I spoke to her. I managed to set it right later via the main story quest, so you can imagine my reaction after I completed the side quest and saw that Celeste died anyway. Oh well, at least I managed to get Parvati that date she wanted

I love how often Bethesda has appeared on these lists. You can't trust them to be nice to you with their quest results.

In the Skyrim mission "A Daedra's best friend" if you never turn in the quest Barbas, literally half of a God, will to follow you around for the rest of the game acting like a normal dog follower. But he is immortal, pulls so much agro enemies will completely ignore you, and doesn't count as a follower so you can use a second follower. It's dope.

Still feel like the Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name storyline from Fallen London takes the cake here, seeing as completing it permanently bricks your account and the game tells you, in absolutely no uncertain terms, to turn back pretty much every step of the way.

The end of Solaire's quest from Dark Souls 1 can be DEVASTATING if not done right, and the onion knight's quest always ends in tragedy. I'm starting to feel like Dark Souls has a really melancholic world.

I do enjoy the reoccurring joke that they just call Benny chandler from friends.

Honestly, you could fill a list of these with Dark Souls because most of the side quests end with "And then they died, too." Or "And then they lost all their purpose and turned into a zombie" Most of the best outcomes are NOT to finish them.

I’m literally running a minutemen build with my friend right now for some reason I’m actually enjoying all these settlement quests

I honestly loved "Makes space suits, won't travel", because it let me wear a fancy suit and a top hat as I killed people with still decent armor. It was more the fact I was trying to look like a super villain than the actual reward

That one with Jaavik seems less like a mission that shouldn’t be finished and more like a difficult choice.

Birds of a Feather is, without a doubt, the most impactful on this list in my opinion. Just because it has the harshest in-game consequences, and is also one of the ones that is super easy to be blindsided for if you're not paying attention. If you're just breezing through the game completing quests without thinking about who you're working for, you can just do the questline with no worries all the way up until you realize you just killed off one of the best companions in the game. If you were paying any attention to the various Freeside NPC's who will tell you the Van Graffs are psychopaths, or the Van Graffs who will actively demonstrate being psychopaths, or Cass's questline which shows that the Van Graffs are psychopaths, you'll be able to piece together what'll happen if you finish their quest. But if you're not paying attention to the world of Fallout New Vegas, and wander around it like a murder hobo, it'll absolutely punish you. Absolute god-tier game, 10/10 would face terrible consequences for my terrible actions again.

Side Note: Javik's choice to cowrite a book with Liara only happens if you visit his quarters after Priority: Thessia and carry out a Paragon Interrupt when Liara's biotics flare in anger. If you don't, he remains a Prothean supremacist and plans to go to the Hanar homeworld of Kahje where he plans to exploit the Hanar belief that the Protheans (who they call the Enkindlers) are gods. He intends to "live like a king."

In one of my Fallout 3 playthroughs, I started the quest to escort Sticky from Little Lamplight to Bigtown. I went through a good 3/4 of the game with him following me constantly asking "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" ...You're probably gonna wanna finish that quest to not feel the torment I went through

In its defence, that suit you get for completing Have Spacesuit, Won't Travel is the best armour in the game (until the DLCs) and has unique dialogues if you're wearing it in those DLCs.

I'm sure you guys have covered this one at some point, but on the subject of Clavicus Vile, in Skyrim if you don't complete his quest you can keep Barbas and have an immortal dog forever.

I expected fallout 4's to be the quest Trouble Brewin' because in the quest you get a cool robot, but if you complete it, you lose the robot, the robot can also make you drinks that are fairly good, like ice cold Nuka cola, something that has very little placements otherwise and heals over twice as much as regular nuka cola

Are we surprised Luke completed that side quest in Bloodborne? He did harvest the Little Sisters after all, hahah

You gotta admit Claptrap looks fly af with a beard.

preston is my favorite companion in fallout 4 :( his personal story is touching and i found his friendship rewarding. breaks my heart how much people hate him as a person for the fault of game mechanics.

The Quest I think of when I see the words "Elder Scrolls IV" and "do not complete" is the Grey Prince Quest. Sure, it makes the titular Prince easier to compete, but he gets so dispirited from learning the truth about his father that all the fun from the fight is lost. It feels kinder to just not do the quest at all.

Oh man, Umbra! That takes me back. I used to go there at early levels and kill her from atop the pillars, where she couldn't reach me. It's an awesome sword for a level 2 character :D

Andy: "If you show it to her she'll know her parents are dead and only a real monster wou-" Smash cut to Luke showing the sad girl the broach. Me: 😂😂😂😭😂

Watching Tina not process Roland's death is the saddest thing I've EVER seen in a game. I legit cried

I didn't even realise Cass could die, just wiped out everyone in the place beforehand - what a decade-long revelation!

The best part of Luke's reaction to the little girl quest in Bloodborne was afterward he asks for a quest reward.

Fun fact- some of the many expanded object scrapping/deletion mods actually let you delete the animation interaction spots that cause the Sanctuary dweebs to hammer on the walls. They're REALLY hard to get because its a very small invisible thing that's obviously mostly inside the wall, but whether it takes you five minutes or fifteen to get all of them, you gotta admit it's all worth it.

"...will, much like a dangerously spicy eating challenge, leave you full of sadness and regret" - I cannot help but believe a word of a man who participated in such challenge himself.

The Outer worlds quest gives you the Chimera armor that boost all dialog by 10. This is the only way to get it and is a part of an achievement

I started playing through Fallout NV late last year and i've been having fun trying to explore every nook and cranny of the Nevada. That said, I was surprised at the omission of Birds of a Feather on the last list-- count me as one of the ones who went full Fat Man on the store when I found out what they wanted.

Not having played Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, I assumed the regret was going to be killing all those dwarves just for their beard hair. My faith in humanity has been lost.

Umbra is available at lv1, without even starting the quest, it's a one handed sword with the stats of a two handed sword. And having it as quest item, means if its hotkey'd at parts of the game where your separated from your gear, it's still available via hot key. Its enchantment is usable but not even close to being the reason to keep it.

12:19 You can finish that quest just in a way to not let Javik get suicidal. There are different outcomes for that quest

I remember the first time I did Clavicus Vile's quest, somehow a traveling countess and her retinue went into the ruin just ahead of me and got slaughtered. I thought it was part of the quest and got very confused.

Another minor Skyrim example for me is The Golden Claw. Why? Because as long as you don't turn it in, the Riverwood Trader is open at all hours, including the dead of night. Once you turn in the Golden Claw, Lucan actually starts sleeping like normal people. As someone who A) pretty much always makes Anise's Cabin (which is decently close to Riverwood) my home in the early game to save money and B) always immediately makes it a priority to max out Enchanting as soon as humanly possible by enchanting weapons and trading them for soul gems, having a 24/7 convenience store that sells soul gems, among other things, at arm's reach is great! Sure, I could just T to wait for 10 hours, but that always feels like cheating somehow...

In Fallout 4 the minutemen radiant quests only start after you do the quest "The First Step". You can freely complete "When Freedom Calls" and "Sanctuary" for the pretty significant xp rewards and then just never do the followup that sends you to Tenpines Bluff.

I love Preston Garvey, I took so many quests from him that the game broke and he stopped give me any which made me sad. I was maxing out my companion rep using them, every one likes doing minuet man quests to one level or another.

Greirat the Thief in Dark Souls 3 better be here this time. I didn't want my friend to die in that castle.

Letting the Van Graffs get strangled by bureaucracy is one of my favourite quest endings. Cruel, profitable and just.

That mission with cass, i always finish siding with her. I can get energy weapons anywhere in the game however, I buy the unique ones before offing the van graffs. Also, Not touching that shard is the best option.

"Plus........now I'm gonna have to kill all these guards" Very relatable.

The Skyrim sidequest that always gets me that no seems to remember is finding out what happened to Angela in Solitude's soldier daughter. It might only take all of ten seconds, but you still have to shatter a woman's heart by telling her her daughter is dead. It's the VA's delivery that kills me...

I can only think of one from Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s in the Frozen Wilds DLC, and it tasks you with killing a stormbird in order to upgrade one of the DLC weapons, the stormslinger. The storm slinger at base, fires electrically charged bolts that do middling damage, but pack a big electric elemental punch. The upgraded version does exactly the same, but as you hold doesn’t the fire button, the damage and fire rate ramp up dramatically. This upgrade sounds great, until you realize that at max fire rate, the bolts also start dealing damage to you. Even with the maximum lightning protection, you can only survive firing 8 bolts before dying, or about 2.5 seconds with how fast it shoots at that point. So congratulations, you now have a very loud, head hitting, high fire rate weapon with an element that almost half of your enemies resist, only three are weak to, that will also kill you in about nine seconds. And you have to go back to the dlc area to buy a basic one so you can actually use it.

I love that after all these years, the Preston Garvey meme is still alive and kicking.

That last one is hilarious. Love a good preston garvey joke

The Bigfoot Side Mission in Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare. No matter the choice you make at the final moment, you end up killing an entire species of herbivores and the other living beings who speak the human language. That's really dark...

When writing a line about drunk dwarves getting smashed in mining equipment, how do you write the line 'At least they died doing what they loved. Being drunk' and not 'being SMASHED'?! Why, why do you hate fun?

Tiny Tina's expansion/DLC is on PS+ for those who haven't played it yet.

Preston Garvey's constant loading of the Sole Survivor with new quests to rescue settlements makes perfect sense for the character. If you follow through with the companion conversations with him, you find out that between Mama Murphy predicting the Survivor's arrival, the seemingly miraculous rescue, and the severe PTSD Preston's picked up while losing all the other surviving Minutemen from Quincy and most of the townsfolk (he started out with 3 other Minutemen and 20 townsfolk, and 0 Minutemen and 4 townsfolk by the time he gets trapped in the museum) -- well, he's built up the Survivor into some sort of mythic hero in his mind. That's why he declares you General of the Minutemen when you've rescued a few settlements, and why he's the one character that flat-out *will not* forgive you or work with you if you become the Overboss of Nuka-World. So, yeah, he's really clingy and needy in terms of constantly wanting to send you out to save people, but that's because he's decided that you are The Hero, and that his road to redemption is to help The Hero with being Heroic. You find out late in the companion conversations that his plan, if you had saved them and then just walked off, was to get the people to Sanctuary, and then walk out into the Commonwealth and find something big and mean enough to kill him, before his leadership got anyone else killed. There's also a mod that changes his dialog so that you can finish a quest and then will have to initiate dialog with him again to start a new one, which takes out most of the irritation factor.

Two more: In Skyrim, if you don't finish a Daedra's best friend, you have Barnabas the dog as a permanent, invincible follower that helps in a fight (though he may bonk you off of a cliff to your death) In dark souls 3, you free Greirat from jail and he becomes another merchant at firelink shrine. Every now and then you send him on missions to get more inventory. On his last mission, you find his corpse and ashes for the old hag. If you don't send him off on the last one, he'll stay in firelink as a cool merchant forever

I got one. Half of the side quests in Ghost of Tsushima. "Can you save my wife and child?" "Sure!"... "Oh wait, they're already dead." That's a majority of them, hella depressing.

The mission I regret doing the most was Tenpenny Tower in Fallout 3. You are tasked with convincing the humans of one of the largest and most peaceful human settlements to let the Ghouls live with them. But in the end, the Ghouls slaughter all the humans behind your back and take the tower for themselves. And there's nothing more you can do about it. Terrible choice.

I actually found Umbra without talking to the statue and so when I eventually wandered up to it I was kinda sol.

due to popular demand the grog nozzle was made a boss drop much later in games lifespan. still very very rare drop though. they also made it a drop during an event where i picked up like 20

I looked into the business partner. Thanks dude, this saved me hours of work.

In Geneforge 1 and its remake Geneforge 1 - Mutagen there is an early quest to retrieve a stolen knife for a chef. If you do you get a discount on some food she sells. But the knife is quite powerful, especially at this early stage. It’s much better to hold onto this knife, at least until you find something better.

In Skyrim there's a quest for clavacus vile were you get a talking dog and in another quest you get a goat that can fight thelat one is for the degric lord the guy with the sanguine rose

In every playthrough of Fallout 4, I've always completed the 'When Freedom Calls' quest. It was actually a side quest?!?!?

2:26 “at least they died doing what they loved... being drunk.” Jane 2022 My tombstone quote be sorted bois lol

So a fun thing about the "When Freedom Rings" quest is that you don't even need to ever go inside to grab the power armor. If you climb to the belfry of the church next door, you can quicksave on the roof and jump from it to the vertibird wing crashed into the museum, and from there hop down and just grab the power armor and leave. Sure, you miss out on the bobblehead if you leave, but if you check the door, it's open. In fact, so is the other door, so you can just walk in with the armor, grab the bobblehead, and skedaddle before Preston can even talk to you, especially if he, as per usual for a Bethesda game, gets stuck on other NPCs or world geometry. If in doubt, though, try Jet, I've heard it's a great way of slowing down time and definitely NOT getting addicted to chems.

I *am* a high-powered city lawyer and that closing message was chilling.

I don't know what you have against "Sinking City", but it's filled with depressing side missions. One for all: a man asks you to find his missing sister. Quite a difficult one, you travel between the asylum and a creepy butchery... only to find out that the poor girl has been killed, her body distributed to the asylum's patients as food so that they didn't starve during the flood. You either lie to her brother, thus fueling his obsession on finding her on his own, or you tell him the truth, leading him to commit suicide out of desperation and disgust. Quite a choice!

We forgot to mention how the armor she made is made of human skin and I still rock it because how fucking cool is that

I didn't even know you could run missions for the van Graffs - I always go for Cass as a companion first, murder the whole lot of 'em, then sell all that sweet loot.

So ... Would it be possible to one day have the oxventure crew do a D&D/borderlands campaign? I think I really just want to hear Johnny yell "roll for initiative bitches!"

You should do 7 times video games massively subverted our expectations

2:26 It's exactly this kind of stereotyping that forced dwarves underground.

There has never been a time in the history of Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep that her intro line "The world... is on the bring of going boom boom" didn't make me crack my ribs laughing. It's always funny

If you don't turn in the Clavicus Vile quest, you can't do the Hermaeus Mora quest though. The reward for it is the Oghma Infinium, which can increase your skills above the cap.

In my current playthrough of New Vegas I never even started Birds of a Feather, just got Cass as a companion and then cleared SIlver Rush when the BoS asked.

As soon as I saw Bloodborne on this list, I knew exactly which one it was going to be. *Full body shivers from the guilt of my past* _There can only be one_ ...

When you see the list of games you already know it’s gonna be good

The sidequest I regret from Fallout 4 is the one where you have to trick the radio DJ into being more confident. It doesn't change your game at all but he's just so much more interesting before doing the quest.

Speaking of Outer Worlds, never finish the side quest where you try to crack the “alien conspiracy” for Sublight and Lillia Hagan. If you complete it and don’t kill the scientist she “has an accident in a loading bay” and Sublight falls apart without her. If you don’t complete the quest she survives and Sublight thrives, helping out the colony in its struggle for survival. Not worth the like 500 bits _and_ negative faction reputation you earn by doing it.

I pick parthurnax over the blades every time. Never won’t.

I actually kinda like the 'When Freedom Calls' quests. I've had a blast building up my settlements. It feels like I'm slowly-but-surely making the Commonwealth a better, safer place for the long-term.

In The Outer Worlds, you don't have to kill those guards. You can just walk into the back room and take the outfit, and it's fantastic.

I still stand by the tenpenny tower quest in fallout 3 being the side quest I never want to do again. There's no good answer, it's either murder ghouls for the racists, murder everyone in the tower including the non-racists (bonus points, if you blew up megaton, your home in the game is now basically unlivable), or think you're doing the right thing, kicking out all the racists, and letting everyone live together...only for the racists to be proven right, get to live and all of the nice accepting people are now dead.

As much as I love Fallout 4, I had to cackle a bit at not finishing that quest because you end up having to put up with Preston. Also Cass from New Vegas was one of my longest companions, aside from ED-E. I coul never sell her out to those guy. What a lot of people also not know, she is the daughter of Cassidy from Fallout 2.

The Beard Makes the Man is exactly what I thought of last video! Thank y’all for recommending it

The Penhold Staff from chapter 1 of the original campaign in Neverwinter Nights falls into this category. The staff belonged to a mage that was overwhelmed by zombies, and the mage's brother gives you a quest to find him, which is completed by turning over the mage's journal and staff. If you turn over the staff willingly, you get 400 GP and some XP (though its a relatively small amount), or you can demand payment for it and get around 1200 GP with no XP. Either way, your alignment shifts slightly toward good or evil depending on whether you give him the staff freely or demand payment for it. The staff can be used to cast a few useful spells (namely Hold Person and Freedom of Movement) and you can pick it up pretty much as soon as you start the chapter. Rather than turning it over to the brother for the quest rewards, you can keep the staff and use the charges to cast those spells as needed, then turn it in for the reward just before ending the chapter if you want the XP reward or need the alignment shift for some reason. Or you can just keep the staff and continue using it throughout the game, at least until it runs out of charges. If your interest is gold, you'll get more gold from selling it to a vendor instead of the brother anyways AND you won't get hit with the alignment shift toward evil. Since the XP reward for turning over the staff is so small, its generally better to go for the money and the vendors pay more so there is no reason for most characters to return the staff to the brother.

Another Bloodborne sidequest you shouldn't do is sending people to the clinic. You'll get some handy items for it, but the people you send will be turned into monsters. Doing so can also prevent other quests from being completed, depending on who you send.

Far Cry 2: Buddy System (3 variations) 1.) Rescuing/Finding Buddies: The more you find in the world, the more you will have to fight and eventually kill near the end of the game. 2.) Buddy Missions: By deviating from original mission objectives to complete buddy missions, you run the risk of your buddy dying in perma-death, sometimes by your very hand. 3.) Killing Buddies in the Endgame: Technically the objective is to just steal the diamond briefcase from them, even though the area is designed to be an ambush. Nothing is stopping you from taking it and running, avoiding the necessity to kill each one to get it.

In birds of a feather you can get revenge later in the game when you get a quest from the brotherhood of steel to kill the van graffs, however you can only get this quest if you want to be a part of the brotherhood. Gives you a good bit of armor as well. Loved every single minute of killing em.

The Outer Worlds quest gives you amazing armor at the end of it. Best stats and you look classy.

Personally, I'll take the 45 weight penalty for Umbra in order to get the Hermaeus Mora quest and reward in Oblivion.

Emotionally , I have never been able to play an evil character in RPG-s. Since BG and Morrowind and carried on to Fallout (isometrical to FNV). And just imagining turning Cass to the bloody family!? NO! As soon as I meet her... Let's get those van Graffs! and as a bonus... I will totally waste the director of Crimson Caravan... Edit: and as you understand, i will not side with Legion!

Hollow Knight has a couple of these. One is Cloth's quest, if you don't meet her in Ancient Basin she goes home instead of the alternative. There is also saving Zote which if you want to get Godhome finished fully then that choice will fill you with regret. So much regret.

In Pillars of Eternity 2, there are four factions. You can do the tasks for all of them, right up to the last quest - which you can only do for one faction, marking your alliance with them. Problem: depending on your choice, you will either lose a companion you've known since POE1, the sister of another companion from POE1, or both! No, your relationship with them doesn't matter! How about not doing any of that? Huh? An alliance with someone is required for the finale? Oh.