Many quests are relatively banale, some are a bit dumb and some are genuinely interesting.
The writing quality in these quests is solid, for the most part. I’m happy to see this has been addressed, at least. The game only just added differentiation between what is “main quest” and what are less important side quests, meaning that for much of my playthrough, I had no way of knowing what I was getting into, apart from starting to develop a hunch for what characters are generally involved with the more interesting quest lines. While you sometimes get brief cutscenes and custom animations, many of the more trivial quests feature only a progress bar at the bottom of your screen that tells you what action your character is performing, rather than showing any specific animation. It’s always easy to abstract any game mechanic to the point where it sounds boring, but what makes many quests feel frustrating is that the presentation and polish around them is lacking. The resulting gameplay often feels extra clunky, as though the quest designers did what they could to bring in some variety, but were too limited in their toolset to add anything that actually feels good. There are rare occasions where the mechanics deviate from these norms: the game offers a handful of stealth missions, for example.
Unfortunately, all too many of the quests’ mechanics boil down to the bog-standard “go there” and “pick up five of that”, aside from the ever-present “race through these checkpoints”. Some of the quests feel epic, urgent and important, others focus very much on the daily life in horse-crazy Jorvik. As can be expected with such a scope, these quests vary drastically in their quality, both in terms of writing and presentation. Star Stable Online boasts of offering ten thousand quests to play.
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