There and back again, and all I got was this rusty sword.

 RPG's piss me off.

 It's a love/hate thing really. It's like when you get with who you think is the perfect girl and she ends up being nonsensical and psychotic. There's really nothing you can do but scream, because you can't win no matter what you do. You will go to the ends of the earth to figure out what you can do about her, but it ends up that you never should have gone anywhere to begin with and that a middle finger would have solved the problem.

 Developers have long thought that putting fetch quests into games would extend the play-time so that they could claim they had an epic game on their hands. Trouble is, it's usually not worth it, and one game reminded me to come back to this point. I beat it months ago, but I've never gone back to finish what I was actually meaning to do, and that's beat up on the hidden boss in Persona 4, or Persona 3: FES, for that matter. I have an interest in beating them because, if you know what they are, your mind can only say, "Oh, you know, I would want to do that."

 Not so with most games. Have you ever gone through the pain that you must go through to get Knights of the Round in FFVII? Have you played through FFX to get every ultimate weapon before beating the boss?

 Most of the time, these quests or "hidden" materials are useless to the overall experience of the game. Take, for example, Final Fantasy VI, which is a textbook lesson on how to do things right. The first half of the game was spent going through the linear story with a few steps along the way. Sure, you had your freedoms, but for the most part you weren't wasting your time hunting for insane secrets. You could plainly walk through the first half of the game without fearing repercussions later on.

 Then the second half of the game began, and you were faced with the complete freedom to do whatever you needed to do. The difference between this and most games is that you truly wanted to do it. Basically, after the major story-changing event happens midway through the game, you are given the exact route to the final boss. It's sitting right in front of you. There are a few things you have to do first, but for the most part, you're on one giant sidequest to accomplish what you felt was necessary to accomplish.

 The truly great thing about this part of the game is that you were rewarded with something. You weren't beating the hardest boss in the game to get a sword that's only purpose would be to fight the boss you're already fighting. Instead, you were not only given items, weapons, and abilities; you were given a story to follow. By choosing the paths you cared to pursue, you discovered more about the world that these characters were living in.

 That's more than I can say about most games. Since then, I've often wondered why I do the things I do in games. For Kingdom Hearts, the only reason why I did the crazy things I did was so that I could beat Sephiroth and get the secret ending video. At least in that case, there was a reason. In Final Fantasy XII, I found myself going after bosses for no other reason than to beat them, and while that's great, there should have been a worthwhile reward. I could not come up with a good reason these bosses were in the game except to provide a challenge to lifeless geeks.

 Not that there's anything wrong with lifeless geeks, but I can't do that. I need a reason, and a good one. I have to get something out of the experience. If I'm going to waste 4 hours of my life micromanaging a boss fight, then I should, at the very least, get some kind of revelation out of it. If not a revelation, than a big ass sword that I can use to beat the even bigger boss so that HE can give me a revelation.

 Turns out, there is nothing at all to gain. I bring up Persona because, at least, you know who these hidden bosses are, and while I may not receive an awesome cut-scene for it, I may get a few lines of narrative telling me that I'm a badass from two characters I'm very familiar with.

 Point is, don't just stuff your games with extra content unless you have a reason for doing so. Even in FFVI, when you went to go get your two secret characters, it didn't feel like it was some big secret. It felt like it was meant to happen, and you not only got the characters out of the quests, but in one you are given a blank slate of a character left for you to interpret. The interpretation isn't cheap, either, because the most accepted explanation is that the character fits into another character's back story.

 See? I'm rambling about side quests in FFVI. If I'm rambling about it, it was worth it. I don't ramble about the ultimate weapons in FFX. I don't spooge over finding hidden items in your not-so-epic RPG's, either. It especially ticks me off when an RPG that doesn't have much in the way of "epic" going for it tries to pull something out of their ass for the guys at GameFAQ's to write about.

 Though, on the flip side (I'm looking at you, Fallout 3), developers could also take a cue from this extra content to give already badass characters something to focus their strength on. If you have every ultimate weapon, every great skill, and are maxed out in levels, what's going to give you a challenge? Shouldn't you use that power to take part in something massive?

 Bethesda should have a Weapon locked away for a DLC. So long as there was a good explanation after you stomp it. Digg It Stumble it ! Reddit