The early access RPG Entropy would be cool enough in a vacuum: Experimental, JRPG-style combat in a bizarre, fallen world. But it's also a second outing from the devs of one of my favorite RPGs in recent memory, Dread Delusion.

Dread Delusion was a first-person homage to the Elder Scrolls that, true to its inspirations, had some absolutely killer sidequests, like an ethical dilemma surrounding vegetarian zombies or a seemingly Blade Runner 2049-inspired investigation into a person erased from history (and their loved ones' memories). With Entropy's subgenre shift, I wondered if developer Lovely Hellplace would keep up this side stuff streak.

I needn't have worried: Speaking recently with lead developer James Wragg, he told me in no uncertain terms that he and the team can't help themselves. They love sidequests too much to not make them.

"Side quests are almost my reason for doing videogames in the first place," Wragg told me. "A big inspiration for Dread Delusion was playing Elder Scrolls games almost willfully ignoring the main quest, and getting lost in all the side content."

Wragg finds that RPGs really come alive in their side stories, partially because they're allowed to be strange, and to provide a contrast with the main plot. Wragg estimated that he wrote "about a third" of what's gone into Entropy, and that he likes to create outlines or broad strokes directions for areas and plotlines that other writers then fill in.

He praised Dread Delusion writer Harry Tuffs for bringing the zombified Kingdom of the Endless to life in exactly this way: "I knew the Endless were going to be like, vegetarian vampires," said Wragg, "and I gave this to Harry, and he made it way better than my original dumb ideas."

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