Organized Crime Sidequest

When it comes to video games, the various sidequests and secondary missions will at least appear to fit with the genre of the game... but for some reason, the one consistent exception to this rule seems to involve organized crime.

Here, the high fantasy quest or the space opera adventure takes a hard-left turn into Grand Theft Auto when an individual or group connected to organized crime offers sidequests. This can feature anything from burglary to assassination, result in hefty payouts or a shocking but inevitable betrayal, and probably end up denting your Karma Meter if it exists. Whatever the case, players are liable to regard this trope's existence with extreme pragmatism and take part for easy cash and XP.

Of course, that's the player's motivation. Why the heroes of such games would bother taking time to serve as hired muscle for a gangster when they have more important things to do is unknown, hence the two main qualifying factors of the trope:

First, this has to be from a game outside the crime genre, hence why it's often so jarring for people who were out to save the world to suddenly end up burying bodies for the Yakuza or something.

Secondly, missions such as these are strictly freelance. Regardless of its size or business, the crime syndicate is paying you for mercenary work. No matter how well you're paid, they'll never offer you the chance to join their ranks, and if they do, it will likely end in betrayal.

As for why any of this happens, one possible reason for this trope's existence is Worldbuilding: by having the heroes come into contact with the shadow economy, the game's developers give their setting extra grit and "realism" by illustrating what's going on behind its acceptable public facade. However, it can also be used to emphasize the fact that the heroes are often "on their own" and have to secure resources and support for their quest from any source, including illegal ones.

A Sub-Trope of the Out-of-Genre Experience. May overlap with the Assassination Sidequest, but not always — after all, there's more to organized crime than just contract killing.

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Examples

Action-Adventure Game

• Second Sight: The "Street Life" mission can give John Vattic the opportunity to deliver a package of "tulips from Amsterdam" on behalf of a local gang who've been pinned down by the NSE agents prowling the streets. This has absolutely nothing to do with psychic powers, the Government Conspiracy, or Vattic's efforts to uncover his past... but it does result in the gang tattooing Vattic with the Viper Mark as a reward, meaning that you won't have to kill your way through gang territory to reach Colonel Starke's hideout.

Eastern RPG

• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has some Lighter and Softer examples, as the resident Pianta crime syndicate is The Family for the Whole Family. The main quest involves a subplot involving tracking down the Don's former right-hand man, who's trying to elope with his daughter (which becomes a side plot throughout the game, where the couple are exiled, move to a tropical island and ultimately decide to return when the Don regrets his decision). In addition, several quests on the "Trouble Board" involve some fairly dodgy business, including delivering a mysterious package for someone who doesn't want to be seen out.

First-Person Shooter

• Dishonored: During the mission to rescue Emily from the Golden Cat and assassinate the Pendleton twins, the cosmic horror/political thriller slant of the game takes a turn towards crime fiction when local crime boss Slackjaw offers an optional quest: find an art dealer frequenting the Golden Cat and interrogate him for his safe combination. In exchange for this, Slackjaw's gang will dispose of the Pendleton twins for you — albeit non-lethally.
• Escape from Butcher Bay: In both the Single Max and Double Max levels of the eponymous Hellhole Prison, certain well-connected inmates offer Riddick the chance to assassinate rival contacts or even entire gangs. While these one-off missions have no relevance to Riddick's goal of breaking out — or the overarching sci-fi plot of the franchise, for that matter — they're a useful source of cash and smokes.

MMORPG

• The Secret World:
  • Played with during the visit to Egypt: the player can accept quests from the Kingdom, a crime syndicate of mummies secretly ruling the country from behind the scenes. Their emissary, Said, will task you with eliminating an ancient rival in the area before it becomes a potential problem for the Kingdom's interests.
  • In Tokyo, crazed Yakuza boss Daimon Kiyota offers several optional missions completely disconnected from the main plot arc, requiring you to perform a number of bewildering favors for his supernatural crime syndicate — including robbing a bank.
  • Also in Tokyo, you can perform side missions for the House In Exile, a Murder, Inc. staffed entirely by banished Oni. Among other things, you can help bump off their rivals among the mainstream Oni Houses, and even help their leader Inbeda kill his much-despised brother, a lieutenant in one of the Nine Houses.

Roguelike

• Sunless Sea:
  • In Fallen London, you can receive purely optional missions from the Blind Bruiser, a representative of a mysterious crime lord known only as the Cheery Man. Most of these missions involve you receiving generous gifts of money and fuel in exchange for trafficking extremely dangerous and/or illegal goods across the Unterzee, with dire consequences in store should you fail.
  • Similarly, highly unscrupulous ports such as the Isle of Cats allow you to purchase the highly illegal narcotic Red Honey and sell it to various interested parties in Khan's Heart, Venderblight, and even Fallen London — if you can smuggle it past the Revenue Men.
• Sunless Skies: As with the previous game, players can ignore their personal goals in favor of working as a smuggler, transporting contraband goods for shady clients all over the High Wilderness. Of course, in order to turn a profit, you'll need to outfit your locomotive with the necessary hidden compartments, most of which can only be bought from the smugglers in Albion... and before they'll do business with you, you'll need to help the Red Honey farmers in Titania find a way to transport their goods without getting caught by the authorities.

Simulation Game

• Wing Commander: Privateer: Throughout the game, the player can ignore the Space Opera-style main story missions in favor of assorted odd jobs across the galaxy, and quite a few of those opportunities can involve criminal dealings as a mercenary or pirate. However, even working as a merchant offers opportunities for illegal trade with the local Space Pirates, allowing you to smuggle everything from drugs to slaves — some of them drawn from ejected pilots you captured at the end of dogfights.

Western RPG

• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins:
    • In Denerim, asking the bartender at the Gnawed Noble Tavern for work will result in a Quest Board mission titled simply "Favors For Certain Interested Parties." Here, you're tasked with delivering payments, dumping unwanted bodies in wells, collecting blackmail material from sordid love letters, eliminating traitors, and even bumping off rival "interested parties" — none of which has anything to do with your High Fantasy quest to unite Ferelden and stop the Blight.
    • Also in Denerim, you can unexpectedly be hired by the Antivan Crows to carry out a number of assassinations on their behalf, though only if Zevran's attempt on your life has already come and gone ^note  though you don't need to spare or even recruit Zevran to get these missions.
    • A visit to Orzammar can allow you to make a deal with a Carta businessman and smuggle Lyrium to the Circle of Magi; not only is this optional, but it's easily the shortest of the three crime quests, being entirely one-off. For good measure, this quest has nothing to do with the succession crisis in Orzammar or the troubles in the Circle tower.
  • Dragon Age II: Early in the game, Hawke and their surviving sibling will sign on with a criminal group willing to pay their entrance fee to Kirkwall in exchange for a year of service — either Athenril's gang, or Meeran's Red Iron mercenary company. By the events of Act I, Hawke has parted ways with the group, but they still offer a purely optional secondary mission: Athenril needs a shipment of goods retrieved, while Meeran wants a nobleman assassinated. Both missions have hidden moral twists ^note a street urchin desperately needs the goods to care for his sister, the nobleman is being targeted by bigots because he sent humanitarian aid to Ferelden during the Blight and you have the option of doing the right thing — or doing the profitable thing. Either way, it doesn't impact the Deep Roads Expedition or any of the other central quests of the game.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: The Camonna Tong is the mafia-esque native Dunmer crime syndicate with a hand in Morrowind's smuggling, drug-running, and illegal slave trades. They're the mortal enemy of the Thieves' Guild, who they see as encroaching on their territory, and since the Player Character is an outlander, they do not offer membership. However, you can complete a one-off sidequest for them — delivering a drug mule slave (you can also take the slave to a group who helps slaves escape back to their home countries).
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 2: The city of New Reno is divided up between several organized crime families, which have a series of mutually exclusive side quests that involve joining one of the families (since joining one makes you an enemy of all the others). None of it is remotely related to the Chosen One's goal of finding the Garden Of Eden Creation Kit.
  • Fallout 3:
    • If you can't get crooked bar owner Colin Moriarty to reveal where James went — or hack the answers out of his computer — one possible way to earn the answers is to do a little debt-collecting work for him. For good measure, Moriarty is a consummate bastard who will screw over everyone he's in business with, so playing the mission his way qualifies as Evil Karma.
    • Players with the "Contract Killer" perk have the option of collecting on bounties offered by the mysterious Daniel Littlehorn of Littlehorn and Associates, earning a small but regular fee for the severed ears of anyone who threatens the barbaric post-apocalyptic status quo of the Capital Wasteland.
    • Especially vile player characters can capture NPCs for the slavers of Paradise Falls at a price of two hundred and fifty caps per victim. As with contract killing, this has no relevance to the main plot of finding James or restarting Project Purity, nor can you ever join this particular gang: it's just a unique way of making money and gaining evil karma.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • The mission "Aba Daba Honeymoon" reveals that the Great Khans raider tribe has been making drugs and selling them to various clients around the Mojave Wasteland. When their usual courier up getting crucified by Caesar's Legion, you step in to deliver the necessary packages of chems to the Khan's customers — most prominently the drug-crazed Fiends.
    • In "Debt Collector," the owner of a shady casino in Freeside tasks you with collecting money owed by three debtors, and later in the same mission, with hunting down and killing her treacherous former partner.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • While hiding from the Sith on Taris, the player can see Zax the Hutt for bounty-hunting missions, many of which have been issued by the Exchange. The targets include murderers, assassins, debtors, and even one unlucky waitress who fought back when a mobster tried to sexually assault her, but all of them are wanted dead, so killing them qualifies as Dark Side actions.
  • Also on Taris, the Rakghoul Plague kicks off a search for a Sith-developed cure for the disease, with the Exchange offering the biggest finder's fee. Once you've finished scavenging it from the bodies of Sith troopers in the Undercity, it's entirely possible to give the serum to a humble doctor who'll mass-produce it and make sure that everyone on Taris can be cured for free... or you can send it to Davik Kang, who'll make it into an expensive medical treatment that only the rich have access to. But hey, at least you get a generous cash reward!
  • A visit to Korriban will result in you being hired as a smuggler on behalf of some local criminals, first simply by delivering a package of Spice that was already being kept aboard the Ebon Hawk, then by transporting a mysterious box to a crime boss on Tatooine — though this will mean briefly abandoning your mission to infiltrate the Sith Academy and reach the next fragment of the Star Map. However, actually opening the box reveals that it's an ancient Mind Prison built by the same Abusive Precursors who built the Star Forge.
  • Taken to its logical conclusion in the Genoharadan missions: after you kill Calo Nord, you're given an invitation to join this secret society of assassins, provided you can prove yourself by hunting down and killing a number of extremely difficult targets across the galaxy — including a reclusive millionaire Con Artist, an Egomaniac Hunter who kills Krayt Dragons for fun, and a Shapeshifting Trickster turned Serial Killer. This will not only require you to temporarily abandon your search for the Star Forge and anything you were doing on Manaan but has nothing to do with stopping the Sith and it doesn't even send you after any Sith targets... and at the end of this questline, it turns out that the offer to join the Genoharadan was a total scam and you were just being used to assassinate the group's leaders so your contact could take over.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
  • During your stay on Citadel Station, players can participate in Samhan Dobo's illegal weapons smuggling scheme in a one-off mission that has nothing to do with the overarching plot of the game. However, it does net you access to Samhan's best stock.
  • While on Nar Shaddaa, an Exchange-affiliated merchant may recruit you to drive one of his rivals out of business, offering you advanced stock in return for your assistance. The rival has less stock and more scruples, not to mention no organized crime connections, but offers you more advanced stock if you can help improve matters on the other visitable planets in the game. Which one remains in business is entirely up to you.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • While on Omega, Shepherd is briefly enlisted by Aria T'Lok to serve as protection for her consigliere and former foe, the Patriarch. You can either simply eliminate the hitmen sent after him as per Aria's orders, respect the Patriarch's wish to die with dignity or restore the old krogan's honour by killing the assassins in his name. This has nothing to do with the mission to stop the Collectors, and indeed, Aria doesn't become relevant to the overarching plot until Mass Effect 3.
    • During Samara's recruitment mission on Illium, it's possible to uncover evidence that a shipping agent is stealing precious goods from a local crime lord by the name of Mr Thax. You can either turn a blind eye to this operation or forward the info to Thax — in which case, you'll later be visited by a surprisingly well-spoken krogan who will reward you for your help and remark that Mr Thax will be making "a series of polite calls."
  • Mass Effect 3: In one of the smaller sidequests to gather resources in the war against the Reapers, all three of the biggest merc gangs in the galaxy pledge their support to via Aria... provided you can help them with a few sordid criminal odd jobs first. Your ally in the Blood Pack wants his uncooperative boss assassinated, Eclipse wants Shepard to get its Ax-Crazy leader released from jail, and the Blue Suns want Shepard to assassinate a Turian general who's been disrupting their illegal activities. The latter two jobs have more moral alternatives, thankfully.
• Shadows Over Loathing: On Day 2, you get a surprise visit from the Don. That is, Donald Toblerone, who works for the mob. Should you accept his offer to do some jobs for the mob, throughout the game he'll call you to give you various tasks to do like cooking the books, make a guy sleep with the fishes, and laundering dirty money. Literally. He does send you out to do some hits, but they're all on evil vampires.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
  • In Downtown LA, buying enough merchandise from Fat Larry results in you being given a mission to retrieve a briefcase from a gang meeting in a nearby parking garage so Larry can sell it to one of his more important clients... and in an unusual twist, this has absolutely nothing to do with any of the city's Kindred politics, the Ankaran Sarcophagus, or vampires at all.
  • Also in Downtown LA, club owner Venus Dare can hire you as a hitman to get rid of the Russian Mob boss that she's indebted to, if only so she isn't forced to continue paying the rent as his glorified Sex Slave... or, if you can negotiate with said boss, you can eliminate Venus on his behalf in exchange for a bigger payoff. Once again, this is so divorced from the usual goings-on in the World of Darkness that it might as well belong to a different game.
  • In Chinatown, "The Hitman Impasse" mission results in you getting caught in a tug-of-war between two retired assassins who want access to a major cash reward that they agreed to share in their friendlier days. You're hired to kill one of the two and bring the survivor the victim's key in exchange for a cut of the money; as such, the bulk of the mission is spent on a hilarious game of back-and-forth as each of the two ex-Triad hitmen try to turn you against the other. However, if you feel like earning some humanity points, you can convince the two of them to reconcile and share the money.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Destroy All Humans! 2: Upon arriving in Takoshima City, Crypto's alien invader antics and war against the Soviet Union can be interrupted by an optional mission in which he can serve as a hitman for one of the Yakuza clans. For added fun, another mission will allow Crypto to assassinate the heads of both Yakuza clans on behalf of the KGB.

Non-Video Game Examples

Game Books

• In the Funfax INTER Active Secret Agent gamebook The Ring Of Thieves, the main focus of the story is a Da Vinci Code-style conspiracy by a Renaissance-era cult to resurrect their leader and take over the world. Early on, however, you need to ingratiate yourself with a group of cat burglars in order to make your way up the chain to the heart of the conspiracy, and they take you along for their mission to the Louvre — which rapidly turns into a sidequest in which you can steal one of the two desired paintings on your own or leave it there. However, performing too poorly during your time undercover and in the espionage missions that follow can result in you being sold to the police by Madame Furs, so skipping this particular sidequest can be disastrous if you're not careful.

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