The year is 2026, and the gaming landscape is littered with the shattered dreams of players who dove headfirst into critically acclaimed open-world epics, only to discover that the main narrative was a soul-crushing disaster. Yet, paradoxically, they couldn’t stop playing. How is this possible? Because sometimes, developers accidentally craft worlds so magnificent, combat so sublime, and side quests so enthralling that the core storyline becomes an almost hilarious afterthought. Buckle up, dear reader, as we dissect ten games where the main quest is an abomination, but the overall experience remains a narcotic addiction you’ll chase until 4 AM.

10. Horizon Zero Dawn: Aloy’s Past Is Ten Times More Electrifying Than Her Present

From the moment the sun-drenched wilds of the post-apocalyptic United States sprawl before you, Horizon Zero Dawn screams masterpiece. The combat? A thunderous ballet of tearing apart mechanical leviathans with precision arrows. The graphics? So gorgeous they could make a grown gamer weep. But the main quest? Oh, it’s a tedious, soul-sucking trudge through every overused “evil entity wants to conquer the world” cliché known to humankind. Aloy, a character of staggering depth, is shackled to a villain whose motives are as thin as paper and whose forces are somehow less threatening than a rusty Watcher. The missions force you into hours of insipid stealth sequences against generic human cultists, a criminal waste when you could be toppling a Thunderjaw in a blaze of glory. The true tragedy is that the side quests exploring the Old Ones’ lore—revealing the heartbreaking truth of Project Zero Dawn—are masterpieces of storytelling, dripping with atmosphere and gut-wrenching revelations. Those should have been the spine of the game, but instead, the main quest is a parade of yawn-inducing fetch quests delivered by characters flatter than a pancake. By 2026, players are still screaming into the void: why, Guerrilla?

9. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Greece Cried Out For A Better Plot

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a sun-kissed miracle of RPG design. Kassandra (or Alexios) stomps through a Greece so breathtakingly recreated that you can almost smell the olive groves. The side quests are a glorious mess of wit, tragedy, and multi-phase adventures that twist and turn for hours, leaving you utterly invested. Then there’s the main narrative, which has the narrative spine of a wet noodle. It blitzes through its villain reveals with all the suspense of a deflating balloon, then slams a level-gate in your face that screams, “Go grind side quests for ten hours because we forgot to write anything compelling here!” It’s the game literally admitting creative bankruptcy mid-playthrough. By the time the story devolves into the same stale Assassin vs. Templar proxy war (even if they call them something else), you’re so numbed by the generic “family revenge” plot that you’ve mentally checked out. The real adventure? Sailing to a forgotten island and stumbling upon a quest chain about a lost love that spans decades. That’s where Odyssey lives. The main quest is just a tax you pay to get to the good stuff.

8. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Where Dragons Bore and Civil Wars Thrill

In the eternal halls of gaming legend, Skyrim sits on a throne forged from a million saved files and a billion shouts. But even the greatest can stumble, and the main quest of Skyrim is a stumble so catastrophic it’s a miracle you don’t uninstall after slaying Alduin. That dragon? A villain so cartoonishly evil for evil’s sake that he makes Saturday morning cartoon antagonists look nuanced. The quests to stop him are a masterclass in formulaic dungeon-crawling and conversations with NPCs who have the charisma of wet cardboard. The entire thing climaxes in Sovngarde, a realm so briefly dazzling that it feels like an insult—a single bite of chocolate after a five-course meal of plain oatmeal. Meanwhile, the civil war questline? An epic, branching saga of siege warfare and political betrayal. The Dark Brotherhood? A chilling murder mystery. The Thieves Guild? A noir masterpiece. Skyrim is a game that actively punishes you for following the main story. The true journey is ignoring the impending apocalypse to become a master blacksmith, adopt a child, and build a lakeside manor. The Dovahkiin deserves better.

7. Starfield: In Space, No One Can Hear You Yawn

Bethesda’s grand space opera, even in 2026, remains a universe of infinite possibility where you can be a smuggler, a scientist, or a chef. But the main storyline? It’s a sterile, committee-written disaster that begins with you touching a glowing rock and being handed a starship for absolutely no reason. The Starborn, your central antagonists, lose every shred of intrigue roughly ten minutes after they appear—turning what should be an existential cosmic mystery into a repetitive shooting gallery against shimmering goons. Your companions are a pack of insufferably polite, diligently inoffensive automatons who react to universe-shattering revelations with the emotional range of a toast rack. The finale is arguably one of the most insulting endings ever committed to code, a narrative ouroboros that wastes your time and leaves you staring at the credits in disbelief. And yet, Starfield holds you hostage with its staggering breadth. The UC Vanguard questline is a tense, horrifying descent into bioweapon terror that should have been the main game. The Crimson Fleet arc? A delicious undercover thriller that lets you play both sides. The main quest is a boring hallway you sprint through to reach the real adventures.

6. Borderlands 3: How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?

Borderlands 3 is a looter-shooter nirvana, a pyrotechnic festival of guns with legs, guns that scream, and guns that vomit fiery death. The combat is so exquisitely tuned that you can lose days just testing new weapon combinations. But the moment the Calypso Twins open their mouths, a cosmic cringe washes over the entire universe. This is dialogue so embarrassingly bad, so desperately “hello fellow kids,” that you will physically recoil from your screen. The humor, once a sharp-edged satire, has decayed into a stream of internet references that were stale the day the game shipped. The main quest is a long, painful trudge through endless waves of bullet-sponges while these two YouTube-obsessed villains shriek at you. The urge to mute the TV becomes a survival instinct. Yet, the sheer joy of combat saves it. The build diversity is insane, the cooperative mayhem is unmatched, and the art style remains a triumph. You just have to accept that the story is a tax, a terrible tax, on the otherwise flawless gunplay.

5. Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dropping the Ball With Arrogant Style

Dragon’s Dogma fans waited over a decade for a sequel that would fulfill every broken promise of the original. What they got was Dragon’s Dogma 2, a game whose main quest is arguably the worst-written narrative catastrophe in modern RPG history. Characters are introduced with grand fanfare, only to vanish for sixty hours. Shocking plot twists are set up and then abandoned like an unwanted Pawn. A potentially magnificent antagonist appears, then the game forgets they exist. The writing screams of a development team that actively resented having to tell a story, and by the final bewildering cutscene you are left in a state of absolute fury. So why is this game still being played fervently in 2026? Because the combat is a weighty, brutal masterpiece. Climbing a cyclops to stab its eye has never felt more visceral. The emergent quests that spring up as you wander are pure organic chaos, and the Pawn system remains one of gaming’s greatest innovations. The main quest is a trainwreck you actively despise, but the world around it is too magnificent to abandon.

4. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Almost Perfection, Then Nothing

In 2026, Metal Gear Solid V still stands as perhaps the pinnacle of third-person stealth action. The fluidity, the sheer number of tactical approaches, the way a simple infiltration can spiral into a desperate firefight with a helicopter—it’s a gameplay miracle. Graphically, it puts many newer releases to shame. But the story? It is a gaping, unfinished wound. Hideo Kojima’s departure left a phantom pain of its own, with a main quest that evaporates just as it supposedly gets going. Venom Snake is practically mute for the entire game; Ocelot, a legendary schemer, is reduced to a bland mission coordinator; and plot threads are left dangling like corpses on a gallows. The episodic structure kills all momentum, and the game simply… stops, with a true conclusion locked behind a repetitive grind and a final cutscene that was leaked years ago. It is a heartbreaking husk of what could have been. Yet, the freedom of approach is so intoxicating that players have spent a decade perfecting their own sandbox stories. The main quest is a frustrating ghost, but the sandbox is a living masterpiece.

3. Avowed: Amazing Exploration Wrapped in a “Power of Friendship” Nightmare

Avowed arrived in 2025 with the promise of a deep, reactive RPG from Obsidian. What it delivered was a main story so painfully generic and safe that it ends with a literal “power of friendship” speech. The mysterious voice in your head telegraphs every single twist, the companions are a collection of personality-free archetypes, and the core loop of “go here, kill these same enemies again, listen to bland exposition” is soul-draining. It feels like someone tried to distill Mass Effect but removed every drop of charm and moral ambiguity. The villain is forgettable, the stakes feel manufactured, and the final choice ultimately doesn’t matter. Yet, Avowed has a saving grace: the world of Eora is breathtaking, the first-person spellcasting is some of the most spectacular ever created, and the side quests are brimming with the intrigue the main path lacks. Take the “Dawntreader” questline pictured above. In a couple of hours, it delivers more mystery, creepiness, and narrative weight than the entire 40-hour main campaign. Avowed is a bizarre creature: a game where you ignore the critical path so you can actually find a good story.

2. Xenoblade Chronicles X: An Incredible World to Explore, For Little Reason

When Xenoblade Chronicles X first streaked across screens, hearts stopped. Could this be the Xenogears revival? It was not. Instead, players were handed a main quest that takes eons to get moving, burying you under an avalanche of tedious fetch quests and busywork that feels designed to test your patience to the breaking point. When the story finally picks up in the second half, with giant mechs called Skells and an alien threat looming, it’s too little, too late—the characters are still painfully thin, and the antagonist is utterly forgettable. But, and this is a miraculous but, the world of Mira is one of gaming’s greatest achievements. Even in 2026, no open world has matched its sheer vertical scale and alien beauty. The joy is in ignoring the central narrative entirely: recruiting new party members, diving into complex and rewarding side quests, and simply stomping across continents in a transforming mech. The main quest is a boring hallway, but Mira is an endless playground of wonder.

1. Hogwarts Legacy: You Are Not the Chosen One, and It Shows

Hogwarts Legacy smashed sales records by making a generation’s wizarding dreams come true. The castle is a staggering, detailed labyrinth; flying a broomstick feels transcendent; the classes are pure wish-fulfillment. It is, in every atmospheric sense, a magic trick of the highest order. But the main quest? It’s a bucket of ice-cold water. You are thrust into a generic “chosen one” plot—except you’re not even that special—battling a goblin rebellion and an ancient magic conspiracy that are impossibly tame when the spectre of Voldemort looms in the franchise’s future. The villain is a toothless stand-in, the missions are a repetitive sequence of “go to that cave, fight those spiders, find that glowing thing,” and the overall stakes feel lower than a first-year Herbology exam. It’s a paint-by-numbers fantasy plot that never once matches the magic of simply existing in the world. Meanwhile, the side quest that lets you learn the Unforgivable Curses is dark, terrifying, and morally complex—everything the main story should have been. Hogwarts Legacy proves that the journey matters more than the destination, especially when the destination is a yawn.

In the end, these ten games stand as monoliths to a simple truth: a catastrophic main quest cannot kill a game if the world around it is a masterpiece. They are the digital equivalent of a bad movie you watch for the special effects, a terrible meal you devour because the dessert is divine. So the next time you find yourself rolling your eyes at a cutscene while simultaneously planning your next hundred hours of exploration, remember—you’re not alone. The main quest is just the price of admission.'

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