Fetch Quest

"Yet more meaningless endeavours?"

- Magus, Chrono Trigger DS

Need more gameplay hours? Simple: Send the player on a Fetch Quest.

A Fetch Quest is a subquest unimportant to the overreaching plot, which must nonetheless be completed in order to trigger a vital Event Flag. Find a key, save a kid lost in the cave, defeat the monster attacking the town, rescue the trapped workers, otherwise resolve an Adventure Towns problem. These tend to occur early in the game, before the party gets sidetracked into more important matters.

Gotta Catch Them All plots are often just a series of Fetch Quests. If it's not necessary to complete the game, it's a Sidequest.

Games will often use a Broken Bridge to browbeat you into solving a Fetch Quest even if you should intuitively have more important things to do. A Giant Space Flea From Nowhere will often be waiting for you at the end of such a quest.

Also known as a FedEx quest, since they often consist of little more than receiving an object from an NPC and taking it to a particular person or place or going to a particular place and bringing back an object. The people, places, and objects themselves are largely inconsequential—you're just their mail carrier.

Sometimes, however, a Fetch Quest - if done well - will provide essential exposition of the plot's backstory which would otherwise be awkward or obvious (or tedious) if delivered another way, say by a monologue delivered by an NPC.

Notice, if you will, that these are not restricted to games. Novels and episodic shows rely on these as subplots quite frequently.

Extend this ad infinitum, and you get a Chain of Deals. Twenty Bear Asses is the variant where you have to collect a given number of objects dropped by enemies, and is much more popular with developers than players.

Film

 * Bizarrely, this seems to be the plot of The Matrix Reloaded. Visit this guy, go to this guy to get this guy, get this guy to that thing...
 * This is actually noted. The Merovingian mocks the heroes for mindlessly following the Oracle's orders, Persephone mocks the Merovingian for calling everything "a game", the Keymaker fatalistically states that he has no purpose but to expedite the quest, and the Architect mocks Neo for believing he "chose" anything in his life. The "revolutions" of the last movie are when both humans and machines break off the fetching.
 * The same could be said of The Wizard of Oz, when you think about it.

Literature

 * Subverted in China Mieville's Un Lun Dun. The Unchosen One Deeba tries to follow the path her friend (the true Chosen One) would've followed. Upon learning that the tasks required are merely a Fetch Quest for retrieving the Infinity Plus One Gun (and with their attempt to get the first item costing them two of their party members), Deeba declares that they're going to skip all that and head straight for the final item on the list.
 * Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows which was set up as Gotta Catch Them All Horcruxes; averted mostly by the addition of Fake Difficulty.
 * The protagonist of "Araby" promises to retrieve something for his crush, as if he were a knight heading for the holy land in search for a sacred relic.
 * The protagonist of Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire is sent on such a quest to find the titular plants.

Live Action TV

 * House: Bring me the thong... of Lisa Cuddy.
 * The Amazing Race: Get Object A, take to Location B to receive your next clue, return to starting point to retrieve your teammate.

Mythology

 * The Irish legend of the Sons of Tuirenn. They are tricked into a series of dangerous fetch quests by the High King Lugh the Long Hand, for having murdered Lugh's father Cian. The brothers forget the last item, and things did not end well.

Theatre
"The pickpocket: Run round to all the taverns—The Golden Wine Press, the Pine Cone, The Belt that Bursts, The Two Torches, The Three Funnels, and at each leave a word that shall put him on his guard."
 * Cyrano De Bergerac: The Pickpocket sends Christian to various taverns to left Ligniere a note in each of them about a plot against his life. It seem's unimportant to the overreaching plot, but this quest triggers a vital Event Flag: Thanks to the note Ligniere found, Cyrano will fight against the one hundred men send to kill Ligniere and ultimately begin De Guiche's grudge against him.

Web Comics
"The Duke: Bring me five red salamander tongues. Torg: Salamander tongues? The Duke: Yes. Torg: That will help "rid the evil"? The Duke: You're wielding a stick. Start with salamanders."
 * An example from Web Comic Order of the Stick; subverted in that the Fetch Quest is meant as a diversion from the villains' plans.
 * Gold Coin Comics does this as a sidequest when Lance must undergo a fetch quest from an NPC.
 * When Torg plays a MMORPG in Sluggy Freelance he finds the initial Fetch Quest very underwhelming.


 * The main plot of The Burned is completely focused on the main character, Hunter Kirizaki, fetching fifteen magical weapons that could, if left unchecked, probably cause The End of the World as We Know It
 * Red Mage embarks solo on an unsuccessful one in this strip of 8-Bit Theater.
 * Battle Of Olympus has a few. But since pretty much everything is just a way to get into Tartarus to confront Hades, yeah.

Western Animation
"Chicken Hawk: I wonder what the cheese will want!"
 * An old Foghorn Leghorn cartoon perfectly demonstrates the multi-layered Fetch Quest (a kind of Chain of Deals) years before computers games started using them. The chicken hawk wants to capture Foghorn, and the dog says he'll tell how to do it if he'll just get him a bone. The cat knows where a bone is, but he wants a fish for his troubles. The mouse will provide a fish, but he needs some cheese first, leading to:


 * Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy has an entire episode revolving around the Eds getting things from one person, to the other, to the next, sometimes traveling to someone's house again for something completely different, all so they can get an egg. So they can grow a chicken. So they can get more eggs. So they can have an omelet for breakfast.
 * Similarly, an episode of Chowder has the title character losing his Nice Hat and having to go through a chain of deals to get it back... the last item in the chain being the very hat he was trying to get back.

Action-Adventure Games
"First: Wander around enough until you find the two fairies. Second: Summon the Great Fairy to get the magic meter. Third: Use new-found magic to pop the balloon. Fourth: Find the kids. Fifth: Use the codes the kids give you to get into the observatory. Sixth: Look through the telescope. Seventh: Get the Moon's Tear. Eighth: Give the Moon's Tear to the very unmemorable Deku Scrub character in Clock Town. Ninth: Use his flower to reach the tower. Tenth: Wait until midnight on the 3rd night for the tower to open. Eleventh: Knock the Ocarina out of Skull Kid's hand. Twelfth: Play the Song of Time."
 * Castlevania: PortraitOfRuin has an NPC who rewards you with items and abilities just for doing nearly random fetch quests for him, such as gathering one of each of five item-drop playing cards from various enemies, entering in a button sequence, or buying a potion and the first castle map. Not to mention there are a total of 37 of these, and they make up just one of the many categories of things you can get 100% in in this game.
 * Order of Ecclesia also features plenty of fetch quests with a difference: Whereas in PoR they were optional to some degree, in OoE they're practically mandatory if you want to survive the rest of the game as said quests are the only way to get the equipment, health items and other stuff you'll be needing by the end of the adventure.
 * Cave Story has a few of these. In one early level, a robot asks you to bring three items so it can make a bomb. In the following level, an old woman makes you track down her five lost puppies one by one.
 * The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask became infamous for Fetch Quests, though most of them were confined to the large and frustrating Kafei/Anju sidequest that, thanks to the game's Groundhog Day Loop element, had to be repeated at least twice (for those who knew exactly where to be) and as many as four times (for those who didn't), to collect every item available from it.
 * A lot of the Zelda games have at least one of these, but Majora's Mask is the only one that actually gives Link a day planner to keep track of them all.
 * Many forget the fact that the beginning of the game is, in itself, a huge, trial-and-error guessing game for those new to the game, requiring you to talk to pretty much everyone in Clock Town, remember what they say, and connect very vague and seemingly minor tasks with each other:

"First: Pick up a Yoshi Doll playing the Trendy Game (a crane game). Second: Trade the Yoshi Doll to a child for a Ribbon. Third: Trade the Ribbon to a vain Chain-Chomp for Dog Food. Fourth: Trade the Dog Food to a canned-food loving alligator for Bananas. Fifth: Trade the Bananas to monkeys - they'll not only build a bridge for you, but also leave a stick behind. Sixth: Give the stick to Tarin (Marin's dad) who will then poke a beehive which results in you getting a Honeycomb. Seventh: Trade the Honeycomb to a chef for a Pineapple. Eighth: Trade the Pineapple to a hungry man for a Hibiscus. Ninth: Give the Hibiscus to a woman who will then ask you to deliver a Letter for her. Tenth: Deliver the Letter to Mr. Write to get a Broom. Eleventh: Give the Broom to a woman who was sweeping nonstop until just before you got the Broom and she'll give you a Fishhook. Twelfth: Give the Fishhook to a fisherman who will then give you his next catch: a Necklace. Thirteenth: Give the Necklace to a mermaid who lost her Necklace and you'll get one of her Scales. (Given that the necklace was a bra in the Japanese version, you now know why the mermaid was always blushing and why she started yelling at you whenever you dived underwater next to her). Fourteenth: Use the Scale on the Mermaid's Statue and it will open up a cave which holds a Magnifying Glass. Fifteenth: Use the Magnifying Glass on the small-print book in the Mabe Village library to find out how to get through the last dungeon."
 * Even Navi's successor gives you only very vague hints on what to do here, and this is before you even have your freaking sword! Not to mention you have three in-game days to do it, after which, it's Game Over and you have to start from the beginning with no hint as to what you did wrong! This is probably why the game wasn't as popular as its predecessor - nobody could get past the first part!
 * The grand champion of fetch quests in the Zelda series is probably the one in Link's Awakening - completing this massive Chain of Deals is required to complete the game, as well. Most players don't even realize that they've started this quest until they're halfway through it...


 * The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time had the Biggoron Sword quest which, though quite frustrating in itself, was mercifully shorter and simpler than Majora's Kafei/Anju quest.
 * Zelda II had a number of these which Link was forced to perform in order to be taught the skills he needed to complete his quest. At one point, he has to fetch a kid, who is held up in the air and stored in inventory like anything else.
 * Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons each have a Fetch Quest to get the first sword upgrade, which in addition to dealing more damage to enemies also allows you to smash pots with your sword and fire Sword Beams when your hearts are full, although it is not necessary to complete the fetch quest in Seasons, if you know what to do in the Lost Woods.
 * Skyward Sword is absolutely loaded with these, most of them needed to open up dungeons. While most of them let you explore the world a bit more and get to know the inhabitants, others are simply plain old Padding.
 * Final Fantasy Adventure had its share of these required for plot advancement. The remake, Sword of Mana, retained these and added many more, mostly within the towns. It even keeps track of them all in a diary, and some can be easily failed. One or two of the townsfolk actually mock you for doing an early quest that requires handing out advertisements to 15 different people.
 * Killer7 will usually fill an Assignment's puzzle quota with nonsensical Fetch Quests. For every Assignment you're tasked to find anywhere between one to seven "Soul Shells", which are the game's resident McGuffin, but also various kinds of rings, odd engravings, cassettes and later on "color samples". Travis Bell has something to say on the subject of color samples:
 * Travis: Straight up, this is a pain, man? Running around for some frickin’ color samples. What makes it worse? This town is a mess. THAT’S what makes it worse.

Action Games

 * The Devil May Cry games often calls on these; in fact, many a Boss Battle kicks off when you retrieve the quest object, Nightmare in the first game being notoriously bad about this.

Adventure Games

 * Chibi-Robo! is made of these quests (with a subverted storyline in the middle).
 * The "To D'ni" expansion set to Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is basically one of these. It leads to a bit of extra backstory and of course new areas to explore.
 * The 1999 PC adventure game Outcast was essentially a gigantic series of nested fetch quests, and played like a flowchart. For example, Level One required the player to visit a character who would ask you to find another character who would request an object and then ask you to see a third character who asked you to find an object from a fourth character; at that point you had to find a series of keys which allowed you to retrieve an object which you had to take to a further character who would ask you to retrieve some stones; and then you had to visit some more characters who would ask you to visit another character who would send you to visit another character who required a certain object before he would give you a message to deliver for another character who would ask you to find some dynamite. At that point you were roughly three-quarters of the way through level one. There were five levels, which continued in the exact same vein.
 * One of the first quests you get in Quest for Glory. A healer living just outside the First Town asks you to retrieve her golden ring, which quickly turns out to have been stolen by a small reptilian bird living in a tree outside the healer's hut. If you're a magic user, the solution to this side-quest is to cast a "FETCH" spell on the bird's nest. Lampshade Hanging? Or just a coincidence?
 * Actually a lot of these in game are these, but not very obvious. This gets Egregious in part 5, where most of the game seems to consist out of "Go over there, beat the shit out of people, get us proof that you did."
 * In the second Discworld computer game, Rincewind actually manages to complain his way out of an arbitrary fetch quest. The other character gives in and just gives him the item he's holding without having him bring him anything in return.
 * If you're not in court, this is the only other gaming aspect of Phoenix Wright: Fetching information/items and presenting them to other people for even more information.
 * Parodied in Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People. Strong Sad keeps sending Strong Bad on pointless fetch quests to find thing like "The Sigil of Dark Dampening" and "The Shimmering Trinket of Endless Bargain-Hunting." The reward for each quest? Another fetch quest, to fetch the next item! All of these are, in fact, the same item that keeps respawning in the same location. The only way to break this chain is to give Strong Sad a different item that will cause the King of Town to attack him.

Card Games

 * Used in the DS SNK vs. Capcom CARD GAME, of all places, because the AI is so poor the game would be over in about 2 hours without it (there's an exploit to defeat any opponent in 3 turns, including the final boss). A player cannot get past the gate keeper without spending hours farming for 3 rare cards. And then it needs to be done later on. Oh how fun.
 * This is lampshaded to hell and back in the Telltale Sam and Max Freelance Police games, where half the gameplay is about getting or giving something. In one episode, Sam and Max hear the setup for a fetch quest (get ingredients for an exotic cake they need), and instantly accept it, but are told that it wouldn't matter anyway because the cake would take more than a day to make and they don't have time to wait.

Edutainment Games
"Joni: I think we're gonna need to find some keys to open these boxes. LapTrap: Oh, of course! Why can't it be easy for once? Owen: Hey, it's no fun if it's too easy, dude. Joni: Yeah, the tougher, the better. LapTrap: Oh, great! Here we go again."
 * Ubiquitious in the Learning Company's Edutainment Game series The Clue Finders. One game, The Clue Finders Search and Solve Adventures, even Lampshaded it:

First-Person Shooter
"Kyle: They always lock the door. You'd think they'd have learned by now. Doesn't look like there's a key -- that would be too easy. The console to unlock the door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up or something... how does that make sense?"
 * The Metroid Prime games are often criticized for the fetch quests they use (Chozo Artifacts, Sky Temple Keys, etc.) to increase play time before the final boss.
 * Although it was only particularly annoying in Prime 2, where you couldn't get most of these Plot Coupons until the very moment right before the final battle.
 * Prime 3 took a different option and had Samus collect energy cells. The trick in this game is that getting the cells is almost mandatory to finish certain tasks, so you'll only have to backtrack once or twice instead of nine or twelve times.
 * Word of God says that the reason for the fetch quests was to allow you to have more time with the fully upgraded Samus, though probably padding too. It feels cheap, but it's not that bad as getting around is relatively painless by the time you're armed to the teeth. It's also a great opportunity to get the items you were missing such as missile expansions and energy tanks.
 * Both System Shock 2 and its Spiritual Successor, BioShock (series), feature many of these. Your very *first* objective in SS2 is: 'Find the guy who has the key to this section of the ship, which contains this other guy who has the code you need to go down a level, where you can fix the elevator so you can go up a level...' Naturally it only gains more layers of complications as you progress.
 * System Shock 2 actually gets less complicated as you progress. In fact, once you reach the sixth deck of the Von Braun, your objectives basically boil down to "Get in the escape shuttle, kill shit."
 * BioShock (series) provides the player the opportunity to learn more about events before their arrival in Rapture by collecting recordings they encounter as they progress through each Fetch Quest. Collecting all of them nets you an achievement.
 * Annoyingly done in STALKER, your chance of finding said item is very low if you actually looking for it and each quest has a time limit. Generally you are better off finding a object and then seeing if anyone else is looking for it.
 * A few quests in Borderlands require fetching. TK Baha runs you on at least two: collecting food stolen by skags, and collecting . The second one is tricky; any quest items you pick up before getting the quest(s) don't count toward the prerequisite.
 * The entirity of the "story" of Time Splitters, as well as a couple of the multiplayer modes.
 * Dark Forces. "Find the red key card" turns out you need three separate blue key cards to open the secret door that contains the red key card, which is locked in a hidden vault seven floors away from the door the red key card opens in the first place, but that's okay, since the only purpose in opening the red key card door is to get the green key card which opens the exit back on floor seven.
 * Subsequent game Jedi Academy mocks this:

4X Games

 * Though all the X-Universe games have the normal variety of Fetch Quests (typically it's "pick up a delivery" or "gather up some materials from wherever"), X3: Terran Conflict ups the ante with a Fetch Plot. Finishing the plot in a timely fashion (as in, less than several months in Real Life) requires the player to build his own infrastructure to supply the materials. The good news is, the  is an extremely useful structure, and the infrastructure you build to repair it will make ludicrous amounts of money afterwards.

Freeware Games

 * Parodied (like every other video game trope) in Progress Quest. Quests are made from two randomized components, Action and Item. One of the possible actions is Fetch Me an [Item].
 * Makes up 90% of Hero's Realm's final act. The player is tasked with fetching the ultimate equipment from every corner of the earth...for someone else to use.

MMORPGs
"You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: Not right now. You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: I don't have the money. You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: Okay, fine, I guess I'll take a bottle just to get you off my back. You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: What? No! I just bought some! I have enough! You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: Go away! You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: Okay, fine, here, I'll take another bottle. You: Want to buy some Olive Oil? He: What do you want from me??!!"
 * City of Heroes has many of these, often as a part of a story arc or task force. City of Villains not nearly as many, but they're still there. Sometimes called "Bathroom break" missions when in a group because one person can usually take care of it.
 * The game often attempts to spice these missions up by having a group of enemy forces spawn to ambush the player. Since skilled characters with the right powers can move something like a hundred and eighty miles per hour in this game, the most common actual result is the ambush to spawn, be left in the dust without the player even noticing them, and ultimately make life very "interesting" for some much lower level character who blunders into them.
 * The freeware MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing frequently uses these, but also makes fun of them in the process. At the start of the Level 2 quest, the Council of Loathing tells you "We need a mosquito larva. Don't ask why, because we won't tell you." At one stage in the Level 11 quest, your character, upon being told he must paint a red door black to prove his worthiness for no particular reason, says "Are you sure you're not just taking the opportunity to have me do some menial jobs while I'm here?" Also from the level 11 quest, you are tasked at one point to retrieve fifteen pages from a book. After finding the first two pages, you find the third through fifteenth pages all at once, and the game remarks "Okay, I guess it's not going to take as long as you thought."
 * The last one is a sendup of a pair of particularly annoying fetch quests in World of Warcraft. In each one, every single enemy in the zone has a minute chance of dropping one of about 12 pages from a book. Add this to the fact that you can get multiples of the same page, and you have a recipe for aggravation.
 * You can auction those extra pages for much more than you can get with a sale to a vendor. That makes it a little bit less aggravating.
 * One of the Silverspring quest chains from Runes of Magic is something along these lines. You have to retrieve pages of a history book that was stolen by bandits, and every bandit you kill yields a page. Sometimes you'll get the same page from different bandits, though the game does allow you to sell off any excess pages in any shop you can find.
 * Subverted in Guild Wars: Nightfall; while the entire series is filled with fetch quests, one NPC is more than happy to go and collect the item they need by themselves (also dodging a potential Escort Mission in the process) while leaving you with the relatively "easy" task of guarding the ruins that is supposed to be their charge. Needless to say, once the NPC is out of sight, you get to earn your quest reward.
 * World of Warcraft. If you're not killing something, you're killing something and stealing its stuff.
 * An especially silly example: One quest requires turtle meat from the nearby river and spices... which the Quest NPC sells to you.
 * Different, but no less silly: Shuttling messages between two questgivers that are anywhere from shouting distance to ten feet apart.
 * Maybe they're just not talking to each other...
 * The same, and a complete pain in the ass: Killing something for body parts that it can't live without, and the amount of work you have to do is best summed up by: <# of mobs you have to kill> = <# required of the item that keeps the mob alive> X 100.
 * Headless Raptors, although legless Zhevra and the many bird-species that sometimes lack any feathers at all deserve mentions (even though you just saw them flying or running).
 * Lampshaded in Runescape's quest one small favour. The quest text itself will taunt you about how mundane it feels for a mighty adventurer to carry around a rust bucket, a pot lid, sharpening tools worth pocket change, a few chickens, gnome tea, the medieval equivalent of aspirin (a taunt on how this part of the quest makes player sick of it, perhaps), a weathervane, the medieval equivalent to screw eight lightbulbs, and a mattress. Also averted, as out of 160+ quests in the game, there are 3 Fetch Quests (One Small Favour, Rune Mysteries, Cook's Assistant, the latter two being some of the first quests ever made)
 * There's four fetch quests, actually. Imp Catcher involves hunting down God-knows how many imps to find four supposedly magic beads. Except walking over to the Grand Exchange makes it abundantly clear that the beads are, in fact, tradable, making the imp hunt completely pointless.
 * If you want to see how bad this trope can possibly get, go sign up for the browser-based MMORPG Travians. The Fetch Quest is its bread-and-butter, and it's layered on top of Broken Bridges and Insurmountable Waist High Fences everywhere. Not to mention Red Herrings (if an NPC says he won't talk to you because you're a "swineherd," this does not mean you've finally found a reason to drop your pig off at the woman who keeps asking you if you want to leave your pig with her). Here's a sample:
 * Most of the quests are triggered by you being a certain age (in days). So if you've done all the quests up to a certain point, you may not be able to do another quest for three or four days. There is no way of telling this in advance from the game itself.
 * Also, maybe half the quests are revealed randomly by talking to NPC's. (Yes, yes, WoW does this too, but then WoW manages to stick enough quests all over the place to make it worth your while; Travians has no Side Quests and only ever one quest at a time.) Most obstacles are either randomly cleared (which you don't know until you run over there) or randomly opened up by your presence (you've gained enough strength to move boulders now = believable; you suddenly possess the know-how to fix bridges but FYI can't fix the identical bridge on the other side of the map). So if you want to do each quest as soon as you can, and don't resort to hints, the only course of action is to log in each day and run around the entire map talking to each and every NPC and approaching each obstacle on the slim hope that one of them might possibly start up a quest or open up a new area for you. That is, if it's not one of those days when you don't have any quests at all (and the Support Chat moderators counsel you to "be patient").
 * Quest: Sell 20 bottles of Olive Oil.
 * Reason this is infuriating: There aren't anything like 20 NPC's in the entire game. And of the maybe five you can talk to, two of them respond to your sales pitch with "Never!" or "I hate olive oil!" It might appear that you're supposed to return to the three who'll (occasionally) buy once a day to sell them new bottles; certainly one of their responses is "I have enough for now" or "I don't have enough money for another bottle right now." No; the solution is to badger them into submission via the age-old tricks of telemarketing. That is, when she says "I have enough" or he says "Um, no, not right now," you simply ask them again. Until they buy. And then ask them again. Until they buy more. Ergo, your role in this quest works out to:


 * Just completing this quest made me feel dirty.
 * Some olive oil will get that dirt right out. Buy a bottle.
 * Quest: Get the three parts of a password from three NPC's. Each NPC says "Not until you gather 5 of Resource X" (wheat, clay, ore, whatever - different for each NPC).
 * Reason this is infuriating: You have two occupations in the game, and having an occupation means you gather X resource way better than any other resource (something like 20-to-1 ratio). Gathering any resource outside your occupation is a total waste of OP (occupation points), all the more since you can buy any of the resources at the Player Market or NPC Market as needed. But the NPC's for this quest don't want you to bring them Resource X, they don't want you to use Resource X, they just want you to pointless waste 5 OP to gather Resource X. Which never comes into play during the quest. At all.
 * Quest: Talk to uppity girl in the southeast corner of the map. What Guide Dang It might tell you: You need to be wearing a Silver Cape to do so (she won't talk to you otherwise). So the quest is really: Find Silver Cape.
 * Reason this is infuriating: Firstly, without Guide Dang It, the way to discover the underlying quest is to return to an out-of-the-way NPC whose quest you just completed and who you thought you'd never mess with again. Secondly, the quest goes like this: Start with out-of-the-way NPC in SSE corner of map. Return to main tavern at North edge of map. Grinning git there actually has the cape, but won't tell you until you've run to five or six other NPC's at all corners of the map and returned twice to the starting tavern (the first time to talk to the innkeeper, who sends you off on another wild goose chase; the second time to talk to the grinning git and get the cape).
 * In EVE Online, your agent's division determines how many Fetch Quests you get. Note that the difference between Courier missions and Mining missions is the former is the typical A and transport (an) item(s) to B while the latter is go to location A, mine a specific mineral (usually along the lines of thousands of units of ore), and take it to B. Effectively, they are both Fetch Quests.

Platformers

 * Taken to great lengths in Star Fox Adventures. At one point you need to recover cogs to get a bridge to work. Most items in the game are held over Fox's head as he stares at it in awe (likely a reference, mocking or otherwise, to the 3-D Zelda games), and the bridge cogs are no exception. Each bridge cog, as you collect them.
 * La-Mulana has two of these, each made aggravating by the lack of a convenient Grail Point.
 * Epic Mickey. Good lord. In order to advance to new areas, you need to supply the gnomes with Power Cells (or whatever those things are) to activate the machine. Several people in town have Cells, but they won't simply give them to you, sending you on your merry way to gather whatever they want. In the 2D side-scroller levels, you can also pick up film reels to trade in for tickets, Cells, or unlockable content. Not only that, but animatronic Goofy, Donald, and Daisy had their limbs/torsos torn off and scattered around in certain levels, forcing you to get them if you want the best ending. To put it simply, if you're not killing Blotlings or fixing/destroying the landscape, you're fetching items.
 * The majority of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 has you spending time in a drab, lifeless, Dreamcast-era town completing brainless Fetch Quests for nameless, faceless NPCs. None of the quests have any storyline significance and are all there for the sake of Fake Longevity. They barely reward the player with anything vital for the main quest, and yet are all necessary to unlock main-story missions. It also doesn't help that even Sonic and his friends themselves have no story-significance to the human Damsel Scrappy's mysterious past!
 * The entirity of the first Tak and the Power of Juju game is a long string of fetch quests. First, you gotta get a staff from a nearby graveyard and collect a bunch of magic flowers in order to remove the sheep curse from Lok. Then go to the nearby village and get the Spirit Rattle. Then traipse around the entire game world to get 100 Yorbels, and then get spirit from the Spirit world to bring him back from the dead. Then go to the temples and collect the Moonstones. Then you can go and fight the final boss. That final fight is the only time in the game when you're not being told to go and collect something.

Puzzle Games

 * Puzzle Quest has quite a few sidequests of this type, but subverts it a bit by giving you the choice of returning the item for the reward... or keeping it yourself.
 * The 11th Hour takes this to a ridiculous extreme. Ostensibly, the point of the game is to run around solving puzzles like its predecessor, The 7th Guest. However, in T 11 H, all solving a room's puzzle does is open it up to examination; this is where the fetching comes into play, as Carl's digital notepad is sent various messages which are supposed to guide him to touch a particular object and get rewarded with a clip of video showing some backstory.

Role-Playing Games
"Migelo: My courier didn't arrive with food for the banquet! Vaan: Oh, you want me to go find him. Migelo: Too dangerous. I'm getting food from Tomaj instead. Vaan: So you want me to pick it up. Migelo: No, I already sent Kytes to do that. But he's gone missing. Go find him. Vaan: Sounds wild."
 * If you want to become a mage in Planescape: Torment, your mentor sends you on a series of fetch quests. Depending on your character's wisdom, he may understand why or merely get angry. This is actually lampshaded thoroughly in your journal entries.
 * In Pokémon Gold and Silver/Crystal (as well as the remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver), you have to go to the pharmacy in Cianwood City to get some medicine for Jasmine's Ampharos, because Jasmine won't battle you until Amphy's better.
 * Slightly averted, in that you needed to go to Cianwood City anyway to fight Chuck (and encounter Suicune in Crystal and the remakes).
 * These were actually a category of quests in Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm.
 * Many players of the first game of the Baldur's Gate series complain that the game world is packed with lazy, lazy people who won't even walk down the street to the shop to buy themselves a book. It's also full of people who claim to be strong heroes who had something stolen but don't have the guts to get it back themselves. In fact, this player remembers the first chapter was nothing but fetch quests.
 * The second game is generally much better about this, and even when it really is "fetch me this guy's knife" it's a) part of something much larger, b) giving you a choice about whose knife to fetch or c) giving you a very, very good reason to kill the woman, Lanthorn be damned. On the other hand, when your characters use the "Limited Wish" spell to ask for an adventure unlike any they'd experienced before, it's a particularly convoluted, tedious, and silly Fetch Quest.
 * In the expansion pack to the second game, your characters are above such petty concerns. Instead, you can send a group of low-level adventurers out on a fetch quest for you.
 * The player's character is sent on a FedEx quest so many times that he finally snaps and vents his frustration in an Angry Rant on the hapless NPC that (attempted to) assign the quest.
 * Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, has such things as collecting the TNT from the botched drug deal (mandatory) or collecting the voodoo doll for the flesh-eating Vampire (optional).
 * 80% of side quests are of the fetch variety in the first game.
 * The Chrono Trigger DS re-release has a new optional dungeon which is nothing but fetch quests. One particularly egregious example, towards the end of the dungeon, is a fetch quest that requires you to traverse one dungeon (getting into three battles you can't avoid), then leave the dungeon, then go back through the dungeon, then leave the dungeon, then go back through the dungeon, then leave the dungeon, then go back through the dungeon...It reaches the breaking point when, for this one fetch quest, you become Genre Savvy and realize that the first item you grab is not going to be the item that was requested, but looking for the right item is impossible until you're told that the one you have is the wrong item. And then, because once isn't enough, the game does the exact same thing immediately afterwards.
 * All the mountain climbing is sure to be good exercise, right?
 * This troper would say the optional dungeon counts as That One Level.
 * At least there are a couple pretty intense boss battles. It's just a little weird that it's broken up by having to go down and then back up a mountain to get one of the bosses some lunch. Twice.
 * The original Dragon Quest has a biggie. You need to get the Staff of Rain, Stones of Sunlight, and Erdrick's Token to get the Rainbow Bridge. Getting the Staff of Rain requires getting the Silver Harp. You need a key to get the Stones of Sunlight. (And you might need more than one, depending on if you accidentally leave the castle.) Getting Erdrick's Token doesn't technically involve saving Princess Gwaelin, but it's a lot easier.
 * There are quite a few of these in the Final Fantasy series.
 * The original Final Fantasy. To move on with the game once you get the ship (at approximately level 4-5), you need to change one tile of the map from a small land bridge to water. To do this, you need a dwarven engineer to blow it up. He needs TNT. TNT is behind a magically locked door in the very first castle in the game. The door requires the mystic KEY, which is held by the Prince of Elfland. The Prince is cursed to sleep forever, until he's given the HERB. Matoya, a witch, has the HERB, but a dark elf stole her CRYSTAL. Astos has the CRYSTAL, but won't reveal himself as Astos until you get him the CROWN, which is at the bottom of the Marsh Cave, which you should be level 9-11 to attempt. Get used to grinding for a few hours.
 * Final Fantasy I is much more palatable when you realize the whole thing is the second half of a fetch quest. You've already fetched the orbs (or crystal shards, depending on the version) before the game begins. Now, you have to return the Cosmic Keystone to the respective altar. Only in the last 10% of the game is it revealed that the fetch quest was all designed to allow you to reach the Big Bad.
 * Final Fantasy X would abuse this with the Monster Arena (although all you needed to do was kill a monster with a certain weapon. (Nine times for bragging rights.)
 * Final Fantasy XII actually subverts it ("Thing is, I'm gonna need some special tools to open the door ... Heh, I'm just messin' with ya. I've got everything I need ready to go!").
 * Although the long treks to find the various shards of nethicite and the Occurian sword can be considered this.
 * This subversion itself comes after you've spent an hour or so running around on various inane tasks.
 * Another subversion early in the game. Paraphrased:


 * Final Fantasy Tactics Advance features so many Fetch Quests that plot-relevant missions are the exception, rather than the rule. To be fair, most of them are completely optional -- if you want to be slaughtered when you actually attempt to do a plot quest.
 * A substantial portion of Final Fantasy XIII-2. As in, much of the main game and most of the side content.
 * Both games in the Golden Sun series.
 * Knights of the Old Republic imaginatively conceals this by making the Four Objects you must collect Four Planets you must visit. So, if you're in a generous mood, you don't even notice that you've been FedExing.
 * Lufia 2 is filled with these.
 * For that matter, the original Lufia is essentially one big string of (often minor and insignificant) fetch quests loosely connected in a way that helps the heroes pursue their main goal of preventing the rebirth of the evil Super Beings defeated nearly 100 years ago. Only occasionally does a given quest directly involve the main adventure, and usually then it's only in hindsight; there are seriously about three directly plot-relevant quests in the entire journey, and the total length of the game springs from the fact that those relevant quests just happen to require the heroes to go on enough plot-irrelevant fetch quests to bring the game up to passable RPG length. To top it off, the bulk of those fetch quests are so random and ordinary (dungeon crawling and monster-fighting aside) that they seem almost mundane within the in-game universe. Basically, if the heroes didn't occasionally regroup and discuss their main goal, the player could easily forget that they're trying to save the world from a group of Big Bads as opposed to just looking for random good deeds to do. Despite this, it's actually quite an enjoyable and cult-classic RPG.
 * Example: trying to track down a scientist. When you arrive in town, the ever-so-helpful NPCs state that you just missed him and that he went to some cave. You go there, get to the end and find out that he went to another dungeon. You go THERE, get to the end and find out he went to some tower. You go THERE, GET to the end and find out the bastard went back to town. Cue screams of, "Why couldn't I just have waited for him!?"
 * Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Paper Mario, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door all use them in abundance.
 * In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, you have these. General White is the PRIME example. To find him, you must go to Petalburg. He's not there, so you must check Keelhaul Key. Missing again. You are then sent to: Glitzville, The Great Tree, then Twilight Town in that order with the only clue being that he "looked tired." You are supposed to interpret this as "he went to Fahr Outpost," which is where you started.
 * An interview had Intelligent Systems called out on this - their response was that they wanted the player to see that not only was it possible to backtrack, but there were often new quests and such waiting for them if they did.
 * Once you reach Chapter 8 in The Thousand Year Door you have the choice to accept a trouble known as "Delivery, please." It begins by going to Poshley Heights to meet a bob-omb with a package, which he asks you to bring to Fahr Outpost for General White. He's not there, and you are directed to Rogueport. He's not there, and you are directed to Glitzville. He's not there, and you are directed back to Poshley Heights, where the requester tells you he sent General White to Fahr Outpost. You then must go there, then back to Poshley Heights to complete the quest.
 * Near the beginning of Skies of Arcadia, Vyse and Aika briefly leave their home for an inconsequential Fetch Quest. This results in them being conveniently absent when their peaceful hamlet is burned to the ground and their friends are kidnapped. Later in the game, the characters completely drop the main plot briefly to go on a treasure hunt. After all, it's not like the fate of the world is hanging in the balance or anything.
 * The Mega Man Battle Network games love these. Battle Network 5 starts spamming them at the end. Just when you think you're ready to attack the evil headquarters, your buddy gets kidnapped, you have to do an errand to get a new office, then you have to hunt down and destroy five MacGuffins by going through five areas you've been to before, and fight five easy bosses you've beaten before. Considering the amount of postgame stuff, you have to wonder how much of this was really needed.
 * The first Mega Man Star Force lets our hero hack into any Transer, find out which silly problem the owner may have, and then helping them out. It wouldn't have been that bad, if there weren't over 60 people with Transers ambulating aimlessly through the town, wanting their problems to be solved. Worse, you can only take one problem at a time, by finding a person, then finding the nearest waveworld entrance, going back to the person to read their Transer, getting the quest, leave waveworld to solve the problem, and then go back to complete the quest the same way. And odds are good that the reward is not worth the effort.
 * Thankfully, in the second game it becomes obvious which NPC's have sidequests, by having the blue thing floating over their head when in visualiser/wave mode turn red.
 * The World Ends With You has one where the characters have to find a stolen microphone. After they've finished the quest, Neku calls it "the detour from hell."
 * Xbox 360 RPG Infinite Undiscovery has more than its fair share of these as well.
 * In Suikoden I, you encounter a Fetch Quest with several steps in one of the later towns, when you are convincing one of the 108 Stars of Destiny to join you. After talking to about six different people you finally get the soap the Star in question wanted...but then she says she discovered she had some all along.
 * The 1997 Macintosh RPG Task Maker is nothing but a fetch-quest.
 * Mana Khemia Alchemists of Al Revis had two types of Side Quests: one where the party fights optional Bosses, and the other fall into Fetch Quests.
 * The Dark Cloud games tend to do this in a unique fashion. Moving the plot forward relies in restoring specific key buildings in the Georamas, usually yielding some or another item which is needed to do away with a Broken Bridge. And then there's the condition to revive the Treant in Matataki Village, which combines a very strange Fetch Quest with a broken river: you have to collect enough river parts in the dungeon to reconnect the waterfall at one end of the valley to the Treant's spring to revive him.
 * Oblivion includes several, such as retrieving the Amulet of Kings after the monk loses it (mandatory) or collecting various ingredients for a witch to brew a Cure for Vampirism (optional). Fetch quests are more common in Morrowind, which is full of alchemists who can't be bothered to gather their own ingredients and wizards who would rather wait around for a PC to show up and ask for work than go to the bookstore themselves.
 * In Oblivion, there's also the quest "Finding Your Roots", where you have to go around finding a very rare plant called Nirnroot to give to a guy who makes it into increasingly potent batches of a potion. There are over 350 placed in the game, usually near water, and you need one hundred of them to fully complete the quest. This one is best done by picking them up as you're doing other things.
 * Skyrim's Radiant Quest system consists of a large amount of fetch quests, particularly the mini-quests given by the Thieves' Guild and the Companions (which are largely "go here, kill/rob X, bring back sword/necklace/gold statue/etc. to quest-giver"). There is also the "No Stone Unturned" quest, which sends you seeking the stones of Barenziah all over Skyrim, and the "A Return to Your Roots" quest, which is a retread of the above "Finding Your Roots" quest from Oblivion, though at least this time you're collecting crimson nirnroot in one giant cavern instead of all over the world map.
 * Fable I: Collecting mushrooms as payment for a cure for the sick boy (optional).
 * Dragon Quest VIII is full of 'em. At one point, where you have to use a particular monster to power up a magic mirror so you can fight the Big Bad, if you pick that moment to talk to Jessica, she'll complain aloud that, if the rest of their quest has been any indication, the monster in question will have a toothache and your team will be forced to find the remedy (fortunately, that doesn't happen.)
 * Fallout 3 mostly avoids these, with the 'Nuka-cola challenge' being the only notable one that is listed as a quest. However a player may end up searching high and low for parts to make custom weapons and there are many NPC's who will trade you for items you may have run across.
 * The whole of Fallout: New Vegas is basically about the Courier scouring the Mojave and New Vegas looking for a Platinum Chip. It's a bit subverted in that it is not meant to pad the game out at all (that's what the rest of the content is for) being that it's a main quest plot thing. Straighter than this is the Sunset Sarsaparilla Star Bottlecaps, the snow globes for Mr. House, and your companions.
 * During the quest "Come Fly With Me", once you've gained access to the basement, Haversam will send you to find the thrust controls and an ignition source. He will actually attempt to give you only one task at a time, so you'll have to go out, find the item, bring it back, then go out again for the other. However you can accept the first task, then tell him you want to do the other instead, then go out and find both things at the same time. Likewise, the quest to kill the three Fiend bosses tries to send you on only one hit at a time, but you can take them out in one swoop if you want.
 * New Vegas also allows the Courier to bypass some fetch quests by passing skill checks instead. For example, at one point a Mess Seargent asks you to repair an industrial food processor for the NCR's army - this requires a whole page worth of parts which are all Vendor Trash otherwise. Alternatively, if you have 80+ Repair skill, you can jury-rig the food processor to work again using "a couple of bobby pins".
 * Dragonball Z: The Legacy of Goku II has one after Trunks's warning from the future about the Androids. You (at this point of the game, Gohan) and Goku go to West City to meet up with Piccolo near City Hall. Goku can't see Piccolo anywhere so he decides to go to Capsule Corp. Just after he leaves, you find out where Piccolo is. City Hall's courtyard, which is being blocked by a float for the "Hercule Day" parade. Instead of just flying over the obstacle (especially since you already just flew halfway across the world map to get to West City) you must go get Hercule a an open faced club sandwich because he refuses to start the parade without one. So you go to the sandwich shop, but the owner refuses to make any sandwiches until he's read today's paper. So you go to the newspaper stand and the newspaper salesman isn't there because the local school bus crashed on a field trip leaving four kids, including the newspaper guy's son, lost in the wilderness. You must go out into the wolf and snake infested woods to save the kids. After bringing all four back safely, you finally get your newspaper which you give to the sandwich guy who gives you the sandwich which you give to Hercule. The parade is finally about to start when... What is this music!? Hercule specifically requested that Eye of the Lion be played!! ... Oh well, off to the record store then...
 * In Persona 3 there are several kinds of fetch quests:
 * The simplest usually involve talking to someone on a certain day to get an item from them.
 * The next simplest involve farming a common enemy from a specific location until you get the number of items you need, and the items go from rare (the original) to uncommon (FES) to guaranteed (PSP).
 * A level up involves finding "red" enemies... basically the same as the one above except the enemy is a little rarer.
 * Even harder involve hunting down a Metal Slime for the item.
 * The worst ones involve getting an item from a rare chest. Not only does the chest not always appear, but the odds on actually getting that specific item from the chest are very low.
 * In order to meet Mutatsu, one must first undertake one of these that involves delivering people the drinks they want.
 * Hyperdimension Neptunia goes out of its way to insult fetch quests. Considering the entire videogame is spent with the characters fully knowing they're in a videogame they have Neptune talk to a mystical tome about collecting four keystones by defeating four bosses to save her. Neptune immediately calls it a fetch quest then says no because it sounds boring. Histoire, the tome, then pumps her up by saying it'll save the world, to which Neptune decides that she will now partake of the fetch quest.
 * Nastily subverted at one point in Dragon Age II.  Inverted elsewhere - you find various objects lying around and can return them to their owners for cash and XP.
 * Kingdom Hearts has TWO in the beginning of the first game spanning 2 days in story time. The first, you must gather items required to build a raft (Logs, rope, cloth) in order to proceed. Likewise, the second forces you to gather provisions (Water, fish, mushrooms, coconuts, and a Seagull egg) before continuing.
 * As a Sidequest, you must find and release all 99 Dalmatian puppies.
 * Rune Factory 2 and 3 have request boards, most of which can be completed immediately. Some requests double as Heart Events for the eligible bachelorettes.
 * Rune Factory 2 and 3 have request boards, most of which can be completed immediately. Some requests double as Heart Events for the eligible bachelorettes.

Simulation Games

 * 60% of Animal Crossing is nothing but long, drawn out, randomly generated fetch quest where someone borrowed something, and lent it to someone and then someone stole it from them, etc. Which leads you through almost everyone into the village to get someone's [random Nintendo product] back in exchange for the original guy to give you some throwaway carpet or piece of furniture that you probably didn't want to begin with.
 * Thankfully toned down in the sequels, which now only has you go from person A, to person B, then back to person A with the item in tow.
 * In The Sims Bustin' Out for the GBA, some quests have you involve grabbing something like an urn to give to a ghost in order to proceed. You can also ask others for an errand, and upon completion, you get a bit of money. Helpful when you begin the game and have little cash, but next to useless later, because you get better jobs eventually.

Sports Games

 * Shaun White Snowboarding had the player traipsing around the mountain for coins in order to unlock the next mountain. Seriously.
 * In Backyard Skateboarding, you must find the key to Shark Belly Shores in the Boardwalk before beating the Tour Guide Challenge, which unlocks the next level.
 * This actually happens many, many times in the game.

Stealth-Based Games

 * Assassin's Creed is positively loaded with pointless and mindlessly repetitive fetch quests, a flaw nigh unforgivable to some in an otherwise excellent game. The most blatant example is probably the "informant" quest where you have to gather up approx. 10-15 Masyaf flags scattered around the general area. This can be partially justified in that one of the informants seems to genuinely hate the main character's guts and would no doubt relish the opportunity to make Altair's life needlessly complicated by sending him on pointless fetch quests. But then there's the informant who claims to have "dropped" his massive bundle of Masyaf flags which somehow scattered them all over an entire city block, including a few that launched themselves onto the rooftops of several buildings.
 * Brotherhood brings them back, but fortunately as sidequests for Tiber Island shopkeepers. The stuff you get from completing them, while nice to have, are optional.

Survival Horror

 * Used throughout Penumbra's trilogy, and lampshaded by

Turn-Based Strategy

 * Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword has one of these around the late middle of the game: . It's really not much more than an attempt to get the Fire Emblem into the game, since it has to be in every game, as well as show us Zephiel before he   in FE6, since 7 is a prequel.

Wide Open Sandbox

 * Overtime Mode in Dead Rising is almost all Fetch Quest. Like the rest of the game, it's also a Timed Mission. What makes it bad is that while the first half of the Fetch Quest is gathering key items, the second half requires you to collect.
 * In Dead Rising 2 - Case Zero, the overarching fetch quest is gathering parts to fix a motorcycle so you can get out of zombie-infested Still Creek. The drawback here is that every bike part is treated as a large item, meaning that you'll drop it if you get grabbed or cycle through your inventory on the way back to the garage.
 * The Xenon Hub mission from Egosoft's X3:Terran Conflict. The development team in charge was definitely up against a looming deadline and the executive powers-that-be responsible for approving or vetoing the idea looked at the proposed mission and said, "Seeing as how no one has a better idea, let's put this in the game." The player has to provide:
 * Even the developers have had to admit that the Hub mission is over the top—several of the game's patches have reduced the requirements. A little.
 * Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns has a "requests board" in both towns, with several classes of requests ranging in rarity, quantity and quality of the items requested. Anything "B Class" and above is a Luck-Based Mission, as villagers will often ask for items that aren't in season, can only be procured under special circumstances or that you simply aren't able to manufacture yet. Presumably, you're supposed to use the Wi-Fi connection to try and trade for such items.