9 Best Video Game Quests Triggered At Random
Yakuza's NPCs have got your number.
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00:00Games that offer up engaging side activities are a blast as there's more to sink your teeth into
00:04than just a single main storyline. Whether you're happy to take on a few of these side quests,
00:09as many as your map pulls up in the form of a little exclamation point, or you go the whole
00:14hog and use a guide to make sure no stone is left unturned, more content is never a bad thing.
00:19That said, these side quests can sometimes be somewhat tricky to uncover. While these
00:24missions will all require a little more than usual for you to get into, they are more than worth it.
00:29I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are the 9 Best Video Game Quests Triggered at Random.
00:349. A Night to Remember – The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim
00:38Unless you're a Dragonborn teetotaler with an aversion to taverns, there's a very good
00:43chance you've found this quest. That said, if you didn't, it might be because it does trigger
00:48at random. In order to kick this one off, you'll need to hit level 14 and then saunter into any of
00:53Skyrim's local watering holes. You might need to jump around a few inns to locate the subject
00:58of this quest, Sam Guevane, and once you do, he'll challenge you to a drinking contest.
01:03As long as you lean in and drink as much as you possibly can, you'll eventually find yourself
01:08blacking out after trying to win his stuff. You'll wake up in the Temple of Dibella in Markarth,
01:14apparently blabbing about marriage and a goat. The first thing you're asked to do is pick up
01:18trash from your binge the night before, and given the subtask is indeed pick up trash,
01:24a few players decided to put the quest down here. Press on though, and A Night to Remember
01:28has you chase leads to find Sam. Along the way, you'll discover you did indeed steal a goat,
01:34sell it to a giant, buy a wedding ring from my personal Skyrim wife Ysolda,
01:38and make a plan to marry someone in a ruined fort where Sam would be your best man.
01:43At the end of the day, it turns out that Sam is in fact the Daedric Prince Sanguine,
01:48having a bit of a good time at your expense. But you do get to staff the Sanguine Rose for
01:53your travel.
01:548. The Mercies of Knowledge – Red Dead Redemption 2
01:57There are a few different ways to get intel on this stranger mission, but the most common will
02:02be a chance encounter, by those enjoying a stroll around Sendoni once they've tucked into Chapter 4.
02:08Wander past Professor Andrew Bell III, and he'll jump out from the back of his house,
02:12calling for your attention in helping him find a lot of moonshine.
02:16Now, this is a seven part quest, so there's a lot to it if you're up for the challenge.
02:20A man in Rhodes then gives you a lead on a wagon replete with moonshine, which you then
02:25take back to the Professor, at which point you find out you're helping him invent the electric
02:30chair. Once you get the all clear to try the chair out from local law enforcement,
02:34and kidnap an unwilling test subject, you attend the demonstration off the chair.
02:39Unfortunately, it all goes sideways, and as the Professor tries to insist this is a far
02:44more humane way of dealing with criminals, he basically just tortures the guy in the chair.
02:49He does eventually die, but the Professor also accidentally shocks himself to death in the
02:53process.
02:547. The Curse of Onomichi – Yakuza 6 The Song of Life
02:58Yakuza 6, and let's face it, every Yakuza game is a fantastic game that should not be missed,
03:04especially if you're a big fan of side content. The franchise and its spin-off Judgment are
03:09riddled with sub-stories, many of which crop up at random or take some investigative work
03:14to uncover. The Curse of Onomichi is one such sub-story. You'll need to venture
03:18to the graveyard at night in Onomichi once you've reached Chapter 4.
03:22Doing so will trigger a quest that's a little strange even for Yakuza,
03:27as Kiryu says he feels like he's being watched, and then you have to fight literal ghosts.
03:32Luckily, these particular ghosts can be punched into oblivion,
03:36and since that's Kiryu's specialty, you're good to go. You'll have to return to the area
03:41a few times, always during the evening, in order to complete the sub-story,
03:45but do so and you'll resolve the regrets the ghosts had about their former lives and
03:49unceremonious deaths. And you do that by punching them. This is a Yakuza game, after all. It's a
03:54little spooky, a little sad, and just one more avenue to showcase how painfully cool Kiryu is.
04:00You can't go wrong.
04:02Number 6 Without a Trace The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
04:05Without a Trace is a funny quest for this list, as you do receive the contract from a local
04:10herbalist, which is not all that uncommon, but to achieve the true ending, you'll have to do some
04:16more investigating. While picking up a contract off a local notice board is absolutely standard
04:21fare for Witcher 3 side quests, things get a little messy from there on out. Otto the herbalist
04:26tells you his apprentice has gone missing. Your investigation takes you to a small, almost
04:31abandoned village, where you discover no trace of him, and an old couple tells you they're pretty
04:36sure the apprentice was attacked by wolves. Here, your quest log goes SICK, case closed,
04:41and tells you to go back and give the herbalist the bad news. You can do just that, or you can
04:46trigger the next stage of the quest by noticing the village is covered in blood, and that one
04:52gate of the town has a stink trail of rotten meat for Geralt to follow. I personally stumbled on that
04:57one on my way out, and to discover there's more to the quest is both satisfying and deeply
05:03unsettling, as it turns out the old couple have chopped up the apprentice for food.
05:07There's no way to know if they killed him or if it was wolves, as they continue to insist,
05:13but you can either let them go on their cannibally way, or kill them off to end the quest.
05:185. A Knife in the Dark – The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion
05:22While every quest has to trigger somewhat logically in order for you to find it,
05:26and this one absolutely does, you're still probably going to be very surprised by how
05:30this one kicks off. Or at least I imagine you were surprised if you, like me, played this one
05:35when it first came out 15 years ago. Unless you've been attentively listening to the whispers around
05:39town about the Dark Brotherhood, you may not have known what was going on when you voluntarily, or
05:45accidentally, killed off an innocent NPC, only to see the words,
05:49your killing has been observed by forces unknown, appear on your screen.
05:53As it happens, the Dark Brotherhood watches murderers, and next time you go to sleep in
05:58any safe location, Lucian Lachance, a speaker for the shady organisation, will appear to you
06:04and ask if you want to join their ranks. This kicks off a series of quests which,
06:08in my opinion, are some of the best in the entire Elder Scrolls series.
06:12The first, called A Knife in the Dark, is completed by taking on a contract to kill
06:16off an old man named Rufio. Doing so will bring you into the Chadenhall arm of the
06:21Dark Brotherhood, where you'll meet your new murdery co-workers, get some new armour,
06:26and take on some fantastic quests.
06:28Number four, Democracy in Action, Fallout New Vegas.
06:32One of the most interesting quests that you can stumble upon in New Vegas' massive wasteland
06:37concerns Vault 11. If you don't trigger this one by finding the front door,
06:41you might come across it through the Brotherhood of Steel quest called Still in the Dark,
06:45which also has you visit the vault. You'll need to go into the atrium of the vault and access an
06:50audio log that tells you more about what went down there. You'll battle your way further in,
06:54and discover that the inhabitants had been instructed to sacrifice one person each year,
07:00to ensure the survival of the rest.
07:02The small society then evolved to casting the overseer as the sacrifice. Voting blocks formed,
07:08manipulations ensued, a lot of murders took place as laws shifted through each administration,
07:14and finally only five people remained.
07:17In the end, the survivors discovered that not choosing a sacrifice actually caused the
07:22vault door to open, which is, yeah, really depressing.
07:27Given most players won't see this quest coming at all, since there's a good chance you'll just
07:31randomly happen upon it while trying to complete a different mission, it's especially painful
07:35to unravel how it all went down.
07:37Number three, Acquired Taste, Horizon Zero Dawn.
07:41Now this is one of those side quests where if you know, you know, and if you don't,
07:45you're gonna love this. In Horizon Zero Dawn, there's a side quest that's super easy to miss,
07:49as the area it's in doesn't contain any of the main mission content.
07:54So if you're jumping from marker to marker, you're unlikely to find it.
07:57Deep within the center of the game world, you can stumble on a man named Brin. Locate him in
08:02his home buried between the walls of the canyon, and he'll ask you to take on a few challenges,
08:07which involve getting blood from machines. When you return each set of the goods,
08:11he'll have a specific vision after ingesting the blood. Each time you complete a portion
08:15of the quest, he'll describe his visions, but the final one is the most fascinating.
08:20Here he says, and I quote,
08:22But no more stories of the past. All told, all done. Future stories.
08:27I saw an onrushing storm. The future comes hungry for man and machine.
08:32It will catch me, I expect. Catch us all. So enough hunts, enough visions.
08:37I'll run, chase that teasing sun to the forbidden west.
08:41Yep, that's right. A quest that almost no one stumbled upon
08:44actually introduces the plot of the sequel. Pretty cool.
08:47Number two, Iron Fist Alexander's quest line, Elden Ring.
08:51Souls fans will know that FromSoftware don't exactly do their side quests in a traditional
08:56format, but that isn't to say there aren't very interesting quest lines to follow for
09:00attentive players. Iron Fist Alexander is a large living jar who you can first encounter
09:05in the unfortunate position of being stuck in the ground.
09:09You can walk away, sure, or you can whack him a few times to help him out of his predicament.
09:14You'll continue to stumble across him as you progress through the game,
09:17sometimes as a potential summon, sometimes because he's become stuck again.
09:21If you stick with him, your final engagement with him will be a jewel at his request.
09:25Sadly, this means you'll need to defeat him, but his greatest wish was to be a mighty warrior,
09:30and dying in battle is at least an honorable way to go.
09:34It's better than being stuck in the ground, anyway.
09:36Like many Souls side quests, they require initiative, and you'll have to stumble on
09:40each subsequent step to trigger the rest of the quest, but it's so worth it for those
09:44who can make it to the end.
09:46Number one, Blood on the Ice, The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim.
09:50This is another one that's pretty tricky to trigger, and you probably won't realize
09:54whether you are or aren't meeting the requirements for it until it does or doesn't happen.
09:59In order to kick off the Windhelm serial killer whodunit quest Blood on the Ice,
10:03you'll need to do a few different things.
10:05The first is that you'll have had to visit Windhelm four times before the quest can be
10:09triggered.
10:10Then you'll also need to arrive between 7pm and 7am through the main gate, the docks gate,
10:16or by fast travelling.
10:17Finally, you'll need to ensure Tova Shadowshield and Aravanya are alive.
10:22There's another way of doing this by obtaining a pamphlet about the murder and finding a
10:26key to the main manor in town, but that one's a little more straightforward.
10:30You can then venture to the graveyard at night and learn about the serial killer currently
10:34on the loose.
10:35You'll follow the leads, enter the manor, the plot thickens, find more clues, and ultimately
10:40catch the killer in the act and be the dragonborn hero I know you are.
10:44It's quests like this and the others on this list that you stumble upon out of nowhere
10:48which make the worlds they take place in feel all the more alive.
10:52So they're worth checking out if you've missed any of them.
10:54Let me know down in that comment section if you can think of any other excellent video
10:57game quests which trigger at random.
11:00As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
11:02Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
11:04If you're liking, come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald,
11:08but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.