Something has really been irking me lately.

Side content (specifically in open world games) always seems to be just dull or subpar in quality. One of the worst offenders being the Assassin's Creed franchise where all the quests feel homogenized and cookie cutter. Like they sat down as said we need 200 menial/dull tasks to take up the player's time. Like most quests go something like this: "Im really worried about my sister I havent seen her in two days. Can you go find her? She spends a lot of time over by the well". You go there, kill 5 enemies and pull her out. Quest over.

There are exceptions to this. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a mind boggling amount of actually interesting quests. Or in Elden Ring there arent a lot of QUESTS but there are a lot of ENCOUNTERS. For example there are certain chests that if you open will teleport you to an totally different place on the map. This blew my mind the first time it happened. It was a memorable experience! And not a significant drain on dev time or resources. Or another example was in Skyrim being randomly attacked by an NPC and then finding a note on his body calling for my assassination.

And I would like to make a distinction there. I think if Ubisoft was less rigid in their and they recontextualized "quests" as we have come to expect them their open world experiences will be much more memorable!

So the question is, what open world encounters or quests have made an impact on you that kinda fit within these parameters? Or is there some fresh take youd like to see?

I'll go first. I'd like to see more spontaneous events. For example I'd love somethinf akin the Pursuer in Dark Souls 2. Where he'll just randomly appear and instigate a fight various times (but rarely) throughout the game.

Id love to hear your thoughts! Thanks!