There is a particular flavour of despair that only two situations in life can produce. The first is opening a video game quest log to find an objective that says “speak to the Elder” only to be told by the Elder to “speak to his assistant”, who tells you to come back after a festival, which doesn’t trigger for six in-game days, by which point the original NPC has wandered into a river. The second is lodging a noise complaint with your local council. I’ve experienced both. I’d genuinely struggle to tell you which left the deeper psychological scar.
Video game sidequests and UK council bureaucracy are, I’m now convinced, designed by the same person. A person who hates you specifically, has never once met a human being, and gets paid per redirect.
The fetch quest that refers you to another fetch quest
Classic scenario. You need the Amulet of Whatever to progress. The blacksmith has it, but he won’t give it to you until you bring him three wolf pelts. You get the pelts. Now he needs a gemstone. The gemstone merchant has one, but she needs a signed letter from the mayor. The mayor is away on council business. You wait. He returns. The letter requires a stamp from the archivist. The archivist is dead.
I played about forty hours of this in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered earlier this year and felt an uncanny recognition I couldn’t place. Then I remembered: that’s exactly what happened when I tried to report a broken streetlamp to my local council in 2024. You submit the online form. You get an automated reply saying your case has been logged. Three weeks later, a second email arrives telling you to use the correct reporting portal. The correct portal 404s. You call the number. The number plays hold music for eleven minutes before disconnecting. You are the wolf pelts. You have always been the wolf pelts.
Objectives that reset for absolutely no stated reason
This one is special. You’ve done everything right. You gathered the items, spoke to every NPC, navigated the dungeon, and handed in the quest. Quest complete. Except the next morning the objective is back in your log, marked as incomplete, with a helpful note saying “see the clerk”. The clerk says the same thing she said at the start. There is no explanation. The game does not acknowledge this has happened.
Bethesda games are the obvious culprit, but honestly any open-world RPG with a complex quest flag system has done this to me at least once. And yes, it maps perfectly onto the experience of submitting a planning objection, receiving written confirmation that it has been received, and then receiving a second letter two months later asking you to resubmit because the original form used the wrong reference number. The number that they gave you. On the form they sent.
For a broader look at how video game worlds handle bureaucratic chaos, our breakdown of which video game cities would fail a UK fire safety inspection is a genuinely cathartic read. Some of those cities would make your local planning committee weep.
The NPC who sends you to a different NPC
You ask the guard where to find the guild. He says to talk to the innkeeper. The innkeeper says to talk to the travelling merchant who passes through on Tuesdays. It is Wednesday. You return the following Tuesday. The merchant says the guild moved to the next town. In the next town, the first NPC you find says to talk to the guard.
I’ve lived this. I spent three weeks trying to get an answer about a missed bin collection that went: council website (directs to phone line), phone line (directs to online portal), online portal (says to contact your local ward councillor), ward councillor’s office (auto-reply pointing back to the council website). At no point did anyone collect the bins. My wheelie bin became a monument to circular logic.
The video game characters who’d be flagged by Ofcom on a UK chat show article touched on this kind of NPC uselessness, and honestly some of those characters would make better council representatives than the actual system. Duke Nukem would at least give you a direct answer, even if that answer was unbroadcastable.
The timed quest that expires before you can complete it
You have seven in-game days to deliver a parcel across the map. The parcel-giver does not mention that three of those days will be consumed by a mandatory story cutscene. You get to the destination on day six. The quest has failed. The NPC who issued it says nothing and stands there smiling. You reload. The cutscene is unskippable.
The council equivalent: you receive a letter saying you have 21 days to respond to a licensing consultation. The letter was postmarked 17 days ago. You go online to respond. The consultation closed yesterday. There is a phone number. It rings out. There is a note on the website that says “for further information, please attend the next public meeting”. The next public meeting was last Thursday.
According to GOV.UK’s Freedom of Information guidance, public bodies must respond to FOI requests within 20 working days. In practice, submitting an FOI about why your local council’s consultation system is broken feels only marginally less absurd than retrying a failed timed quest by reloading a save from three hours ago.
The reward that isn’t worth the quest
You’ve done it. After seventeen steps, four redirects, two dead NPCs, one reset objective, and a unskippable cutscene, the quest resolves. Your reward is 40 gold coins and a piece of leather armour you outlevelled six hours ago. The questgiver says “you have my thanks”. He does not mean it. You can see it in his procedurally generated eyes.
The council version: after six weeks of emails, two phone calls, one formal written complaint, and a subject access request, you receive a letter confirming that the streetlamp has been logged for repair “within the next financial year”. The lamp is still broken. It is November.
I’ve spent time reading about how game designers deliberately structure friction into sidequests to extend playtime, and I believe local council complaints departments have studied the same literature. Possibly the same spreadsheet. There is something almost impressive about a system so perfectly calibrated to exhaust the person using it without ever technically failing.
The quest that asks you to wait
“Return in three days.” That’s it. That’s the quest update. You return in three days. “I’m not ready yet, come back tomorrow.” You come back tomorrow. “The person you need to speak to has gone home for the evening.” It is 11am. You come back. They have gone on holiday for a fortnight.
My local council’s complaints team once told me to expect a response within ten working days. On day eleven, I chased up. I was told the original email had not been received and I should resubmit. I resubmitted. On day twelve I received the original auto-reply from day one, confirming receipt. On day twenty-three I received a reply. It asked me to clarify what my complaint was about. The original complaint was six paragraphs long and included photographs.
For pure structural comedy, the movie heists falling apart at a UK car park barrier piece captures the same energy: elaborate systems, confident protagonists, completely undone by a mundane British obstacle nobody thought to plan for. Swap the barrier for a council ticketing system and you’ve got my life from April to June last year.
So what does this mean for us?
Honestly, I think games have been training us for council complaints processes for decades and nobody told us. Every fetch quest was practice. Every reset objective was a drill. Every NPC who says “I’d love to help but you need to speak to Gerald” is preparing you for the moment Gerald’s voicemail says to email Sandra and Sandra’s out-of-office points you back to the main switchboard.
The difference is that in games, you can reload a save. In real life, the bin just stays full, the lamp stays dark, and the noise from next door continues unabated at 1am on a Tuesday whilst the council’s automated system cheerfully informs you that your reference number has been updated.
Game developers: I’m not complaining. Well. I am. But keep going. You’re clearly the only ones who understand how this country actually works.
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