So often, when I read critiques of video games, open world ones in particular, the conversation quickly turns to bloat. People love to trash a game for having too many icons on the map unless that content is Cyberpunk 2077 levels of phenomenal. With games like Horizon, Assassin’s Creed, Final Fantasy XVI, or the recent Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, I will hear complaints about the side content before I hear any other thoughts on the game.
And after a while, I just want to ask people… did you know that you can skip almost all of that stuff? There are many people out there who play video games without bothering with side content. I personally love side content because it allows me to play a game the way I want to. The time I spend tackling side content is generally correlated with how much I like the game. If I view a game as a 7/10, I will usually just do a little bit of the side content. If it’s an 8, I’ll probably do a fair bit of it, but skip going for 100%. And if I truly love a game and I just don’t want to leave it, I’ll often play any bit of content I can get my hands on.
To me, side content represents a level of freedom. But for many, side content almost seems like a prison that they can’t break out of.
I’ve tweeted this take a few times in the past few months and have had a fair bit of disagreement on it. This is a passionate topic for many gamers. But in the end, I truly feel like when you mark games down for bad side content, you are doing a huge disservice to that game and most of the people who are considering playing it. This post is my attempt to fully explain my position.
But It’s Content In The Game!
The biggest response I receive to this take is that side content is part of the game and, thus, should be judged fully as part of it. Another take that ties into this is that side content is often a large chunk of the overall content of a video game, and thus, potentially ignoring half of the content in a game seems absurd when doing a review.
The simplest response I can provide to this is that I don’t understand why eliminating optional content in a game would suddenly make that game better for you. You literally don’t have to play it. The whole point of this content is to allow people who want to experience more of the game to do so. It is optional by design because the developer knows it is probably inferior to the main game in terms of quest design or story stakes. I’d say less than 5% of games have side content that is actually on the level of the main content in the game. And that is fine! I think Cyberpunk 2077 has the best side content of all time, but even that game has plenty of side content that is just a generic fight to clear an icon off the map. I skipped all of those and was so much happier for it.
I think a lot of this actually stems back to another classic game debate. The debate on if game length should be a factor in review scores. My personal view on this is also that this should almost never negatively impact a review score. I think a reviewer should solely judge the quality of the content, and also mention how long the game was, and let the consumer decide from there if that quality and hour amount is worth the value the game is being sold for. I personally would not want to pay $70 for a 7 hour game that is a 7/10 for me. However, I would pay $70 for a 7 hour game that is a 9/10. Each consumer has different budgets and preferences.
And that same logic should also apply to side content. Why should I harshly judge a game for optional content when a good chunk of people will likely skip it if it gets boring? Not everyone is a trophy hunter or completionist. In fact, I’d say the average person is not going to feel the need to do every bit of side content in a game.
The Icons Are The Problem… And Self Control
The reality is that games tend to get far less flack for mediocre side content if they decide not to show you where that content is on the map. Tears of the Kingdom would get ripped apart for its side content if every sign guy and Korok quest showed up on the map. There are a whole lot of those activities in that game, and they aren’t awesome activities on their own. I actually didn’t mind the sign guy activities personally, but only because I tackled them on the occasions where I organically ran into him. I never felt compelled to go to find him at every possible point and do every single one. If I did that, the activity would have gone from kind of fun to terrible very fast.
And that is the thing with most side content. It is generally just an extension of the core gameplay of the game. Rise of the Ronin’s side content is not bad in and of itself. Most of it is just more combat encounters, and the combat in that game is excellent. But there are literally hundreds of extra encounters throughout the game, and eventually, trying to do them all is just exhausting. If all of this content was in the game but not revealed on the map for some strange reason, half of the complaints I heard about the game would go away. In the end, you still don’t have to do these side activities, even if there is an icon on the map for them!
The Potential Exceptions
Of course, there are always potential exceptions. I guess I could have said that in the headline, but it would have made that headline significantly less interesting. Nuance is simply not sexy.
Not doing ANY side content can sometimes make the base game a little trickier, as you aren’t going to be as strong from not having those extra opportunities to level up. However, I don’t think this is super common. Games where I skip the side content rarely get me in too much trouble, and if the game has difficulty options, then that problem is easily solved. In most games, I think even if the side content isn’t top tier, it’s good enough to do a little bit of it to get a few extra level ups as well. In the rare circumstance where a game does not have difficulty options and has mediocre side content, well, it’s probably a soulslike anyway.
I also get that some people want to do all the side content because they fear missing out on something really great. But this is another scenario that is extremely rare. Almost every game that has some great side content is pretty consistent with it. There are very few games that have some absolute top tier side content mixed in with a lot of mediocre stuff. Final Fantasy XVI is one of the few examples of this I can recall, but even that game had special indicators for its really important side quests. In the end, though, missing out on 1 or 2 cool side quests is never worth making yourself miserable through 20.
I Was The Same
I’m passionate about this subject because I was once someone who felt the need to clear every icon off of a map. Time after time, I’d barely make it to the finish of games that I loved overall, and sometimes, I’d even abandon a video game that I had genuinely enjoyed. In recent years, I’ve finally learned the art of letting go. And I’ve been so much happier for it. I enjoy video games more, I finish more video games, and I avoid the trap where they end up feeling like a chore.
When you look at trophy completion lists, a staggering amount of gamers never even finish the games that they play. A game with over 40% completion is often a very impressive number. When you start diving into the percentage of people who complete all the side content in a game, that number gets even lower.
So, if most gamers do not try and clear tons of side content (or even beat the game for that matter), and completing all the side content in a game generally makes the experience worse, why would I review a game negatively if that content is nothing special, and if there is too much of it? The easier and more logical solution is to simply stop playing the content that I don’t have to if I’m not enjoying it anymore.
This is how the majority of gamers play these games, and it is the far more logical way to approach them. Because of this, I’ll (almost) never let side content negatively affect a review score.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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