Western developers have discovered one great truth about the genre: the modern RPG is really nothing more than a chain of short-term goals with a concrete beginning and a concrete ending, usually leading to a reward and/or a challenge (usually in the form of a boss battle). These short-term goals are normally given some sort of fancy name that is functionally equivalent to “quest.” While Japanese developers have generally not adopted this terminology, the same forces are at work. The party is in a location with a goal to achieve, it overcomes some obstacle and either is sent on another mission (part of a “chain quest”) or there is a resolution which leads directly to the next quest, either through mechanics of the game's plot or because the previous quest was a precondition for the new quest.

Not all quests, however, are created equal. Some quests must be completed by the player for the game to advance toward its ending. Other quests may advance some collateral plotline but need not be completed for the player to finish the game. These are variously referred to as “main quests” and “side quests,” but this raises problems in “sandbox” games where the vast majority of the quests are “side quests.” To avoid a more ridiculous contortion of the English language than even this site is accustomed to, I will refer to “main” quests as “Plot-Essential” (PE) quests and “side” quests as “Non-Plot-Essential” (NPE) quests, because the underlying question when classifying is not how many quests are unrelated to each other, but how these quests are related to the plot (and therefore the resolution of the game).

The other important consideration (and indeed the difference between RPGs and other games) is the mix between intrinsic and extrinsic goals and motivations for the completion of these quests. Intrinsic means it comes from the characters, separate from the player, while extrinsic means it comes from the player, independent of the character. Goals are the conclusions of quests (or “reward”), whereas motivations are the reasons for undertaking those quests. To put these categories together, we get:

While the differences may seem trivial, there is an important distinction between goals and motivations: motivations indicate a desire to begin the quest, whereas goals indicate a desire to have the quest concluded. This will become more important when we compare some games. For this article, I broke down Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic, Bethseda's Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Square-Enix's Final Fantasy IX to their most basic parts, the PE and NPE quests which provide structure for the game. This required some executive decisions, and I should note that these numbers are not accurate to a scientific degree, but they are quite close. For KotOR, the determination was easy, since the game clearly delineated between PE quests (Bastila/Star Map/Star Forge) and NPE quests. Morrowind was similarly simple. FFIX was much more difficult. Each PE quest correlates to a specific goal in the location the party is currently advancing the plot in. Each NPE quest is a discrete, optional block of the game which has both a motivation and a goal.