Quest for the Sidequest!
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* In Neverwinter Nights 2, you spend about one-quarter of the entire game doing sub-sub-sub quests to open a single city gate so you can talk to someone on the other side of it. This door annoyed me so much I detailed the quest here.
* In Champions Online,my hulking superhero had to quest to get a key to open a wooden outhouse. A terrorist outhouse.
* In Resident Evil 4, the protagonists run into a hilariously flimsy gate constructed across the path in the woods. Instead of walking around it, climbing over it, burning it down, or toppling it with a shove, Leon decides the only possible route to freedom is to take the president's daughter through the heart of the enemy base and into the ninth ring of hell.
* Just about the entire plot arc of Fable 2.
In general, I think the question game designers should ask themselves is: Is the thing you're asking the player character to do the most obvious, straightforward, or fastest way to solve the given problem? Asking the player to go downstairs and get a key for a shoddy wooden door is not unreasonable. I certainly wouldn't smash a door if the key was just downstairs. Asking the player to climb to the top of Mt. Evil and fight the Soul-Devouring Dragon-Wraith of Pestilence to get the same key is completely ridiculous, because at that point it's less trouble to just kick the door down or call a locksmith or something.
