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 substories, many of which crop up at random, or take some investigative work to
03:14uncover. The Curse of Onomichi is one such substory. You'll need to venture to the graveyard
03:19at night in Onomichi once you've reached Chapter 4. Doing so will trigger a quest that's a little
03:25strange even for Yakuza, as Kiryu says he feels like he's being watched, and then you have to
03:31fight literal ghosts. Luckily, these particular ghosts can be punched into oblivion, and since
03:37that's Kiryu's specialty, you're good to go. You'll have to return to the area a few times,
03:41always during the evening, in order to complete the substory, but do so and you'll resolve the
03:47regrets the ghosts had about their former lives and unceremonious deaths. And you do that by
03:52punching them. This is a Yakuza game, after all. It's a little spooky, a little sad, and just one
03:57more avenue to showcase how painfully cool Kiryu is. You can't go wrong.
04:026. Without a Trace – The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Without a Trace is a funny quest for this list,
04:08as you do receive the contract from a local herbalist, which is not all that uncommon,
04:13but to achieve the true ending, you'll have to do some more investigating. While picking up a
04:18contract off a local notice board is absolutely standard fare for Witcher 3 side quests, things
04:23get a little messy from there on out. Otto the herbalist tells you his apprentice has gone
04:28missing. Your investigation takes you to a small, almost abandoned village, where you discover no
04:33trace of him, and an old couple tells you they're pretty sure the apprentice was attacked by wolves.
04:38Here, your quest log goes SICK, case closed, and tells you to go back and give the herbalist the
04:44bad news. You can do just that, or you can trigger the next stage of the quest by noticing the
04:49village is covered in blood, and that one gate of the town has a stink trail of rotten meat for
04:54Geralt to follow. I personally stumbled on that one on my way out, and to discover there's more
04:59to the quest is both satisfying and deeply unsettling, as it turns out the old couple have
05:05chopped up the apprentice for food. There's no way to know if they killed him or if it was wolves,
05:11as they continue to insist, but you can either let them go on their cannibally way, or kill them off
05:16to end the quest. Number 5. A Knife in the Dark. The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. While every quest
05:23has to trigger somewhat logically in order for you to find it, and this one absolutely does,
05:28you're still probably going to be very surprised by how this one kicks off.
05:31Or at least I imagine you were surprised if you, like me, played this one when it first came out
05:3615 years ago. Unless you've been attentively listening to the whispers around town about
05:40the Dark Brotherhood, you may not have known what was going on when you voluntarily or accidentally
05:45killed off an innocent NPC, only to see the words, your killing has been observed by forces unknown,
05:52appear on your screen. As it happens, the Dark Brotherhood watches murderers,
05:56and next time you go to sleep in any safe location, Lucian Lachance, a speaker for the shady
06:02organization, will appear to you and ask if you want to join their ranks. This kicks off a series
06:07of quests which, in 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 Dark Brotherhood,
06:22where you'll meet your new murdery co-workers, get some new armor, and take on some fantastic
06:27quests. Number four, Democracy in Action, Fallout New Vegas. One of the most interesting quests
06:33that you can stumble upon in New Vegas' massive wasteland concerns Vault 11. If you don't trigger
06:39this one by finding the front door, you might come across it through the Brotherhood of Steel
06:43quest called Still in the Dark, which also has you visit the vault. You'll need to go into the
06:48atrium of the vault and access an audio log that tells you more about what went down there.
06:53You'll battle your way further in and discover that the inhabitants had been instructed
06:57to sacrifice one person each year to ensure the survival of the rest. The small society then
07:03evolved to casting the overseer as the sacrifice. Voting blocks formed, manipulations ensued,
07:10a lot of murders took place as laws shifted through each administration,
07:14and finally only five people remained. In the end, the survivors discovered that not choosing
07:20a sacrifice actually caused the vault door to open, which is, yeah, really depressing. Given
07:27most players won't see this quest coming at all, since there's a good chance you'll just randomly
07:31happen upon it while trying to complete a different mission, it's especially painful
07:35to unravel how it all went down. Number three, Acquired Taste, Horizon Zero Dawn. Now this is
07:41one of those side quests where if you know, you know, and if you don't, you're gonna love this.
07:46In Horizon Zero Dawn, there's a side quest that's super easy to miss, as the area it's in doesn't
07:51contain any of the main mission content. Though if you're jumping from marker to marker, you're
07:56unlikely to find it. Deep within the center of the game world, you can stumble on a man named Brin.
08:01Locate him in his home buried between the walls of the canyon, and he'll ask you to take on a
08:06few challenges which 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 of the
08:15quest, he'll describe his visions, but the final one is the most fascinating. Here he says, and I
08:21quote, but no more stories of the past, all told, all done, future stories. I saw an onrushing storm.
08:29The future comes hungry for man and machine. It will catch me, I expect. Catch us all. So enough
08:35hunts, enough visions. I'll run, chase that teasing sun to the forbidden west. Yep, that's right, a
08:42quest that almost no one stumbled upon actually introduces the plot of the sequel. Pretty cool.
08:47Number two, Iron Fist Alexander's quest line, Elden Ring. Souls fans will know that FromSoftware
08:53don't exactly do their side quests in a traditional format, but that isn't to say there aren't very
08:59interesting quest lines to follow for attentive players. Iron Fist Alexander is a large living jar
09:04who you can first encounter in the unfortunate position of being stuck in the ground. You can
09:09walk away, sure, or you can whack him a few times to help him out of his predicament. You'll continue
09:14to stumble across him as you progress through the game, sometimes as a potential summon, sometimes
09:19because he's become stuck again. If you stick with him, your final engagement with him will be a jewel
09:24at his request. Sadly, this means you'll need to defeat him, but his greatest wish was to be a
09:30mighty warrior, and dying in battle is at least an honorable way to go. It's better than being
09:35stuck in the ground, anyway. Like many Souls side quests, they require initiative, and you'll have
09:40to stumble on each 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. Number one, Blood on the Ice, The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. This is
09:50another one that's pretty tricky to trigger, and you probably won't realize whether you are or
09:55aren't meeting the requirements for it until it does or doesn't happen. In order to kick off the
10:00Windhelm serial killer whodunit quest, Blood on the Ice, you'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 triggered.
10:10Then, you'll also need to arrive between 7pm and 7am through the main gate, the Dark's Gate,
10:16or by fast traveling. Finally, you'll need to ensure Tova Shadowshield and Aravania are alive.
10:22There's another way of doing this by obtaining a pamphlet about the murder and finding a key to
10:26the main manor in town, but that one's a little more straightforward. You can then venture to the
10:31graveyard at night and learn about the serial killer currently on the loose. You'll follow
10:35the leads, enter the manor, the plot thickens, find more clues, and ultimately catch the killer
10:41in the act and be the dragonborn hero I know you are. It's quests like this and the others on this
10:46list that you stumble upon out of nowhere which make the worlds they take place in feel all the
10:51more alive, so they're worth checking out if you've missed any of them. Let me know down in
10:55that comment section if you can think of any other excellent video game quests which trigger at
10:59random. As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me.
11:04If you like, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm
11:07at JessMcDonald, but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.