A discussion popped up about those legendary lengthy ass RPG quests. Because of popular demand, I'm going to post a great example from Breath of Fire 1.

1)The heroes need to get across a river. The bridge is broken. But the villagers nearby won't fix the bridge until you undam the river. The river has been dammed by a huge rock.Why you need a bridge to get across a dry river bed we don't know.

2)In order to move the rock you need the Stone Robot that lies to the north of the village. However, the Stone Robot needs a key to activate. The key is supposedly in some other town.

3)Our heroes go to the other town to find the key. Seems the town is having a bit of a zombie problem. The elder won't hand the key over until you fix the zombie problem. The zombie problem has been caused by someone poisoning the groun. You can unpoison it using some water from a cave to the south. However, in order to get enough water, you need some magic bottle. The magic bottle is held by a old woman in the town.

4)The hero goes to the old woman. She won't hand the bottle over until she is allowed to speak to her zombie husband. You must go into the town at night and push a grave marker out of the way or something. She talks to him, gives you the bottle. Now we are getting somewhere....

5)Heroes go to the cave to the south that has the purifying water. Seems this "cave" is a damn dungeon. Well one dungeon exploration and boss later, our magic bottle has been filled with water. We go back to town and fix the zombie problem. The elder prepares to gives us the key........BUT he actually doesn't have it. It's stored in some crazy ass floating sky fortress that hovers above the town. He gives you what you need to get in (I don't remember what it was).

6)After you complete a long and annoying dungeon you finally have that damn robot key. Time to walk back to the original village and the robot. You get in the robot.......BUT the robot is a dungeon inside and the badguys have taken it over. After you clean the place out, you get in the robot, undam the river. And everything is just great. Time to get across that river!

I would have just left with the robot, without undaming the river. Shit. I have a giant ROBOT! Who cares about their stupid-ass river?