So far I've avoided this game (I have a hard time getting excited about sword & sorcery stuff in general--I think the last game of this sort I was really into was Ultima Underworld) but I guess sooner or later I'm going to have to give it a go. XBox, I guess, since it seems the PS3 version is troubled.

I think you're correct that the clear distinction between "main quest" and "side mission" is something that shouldn't be as apparent to users as it is (I'm playing "Assassin's Creed: Revelations" right now and there might as well be a wall between the main and side missions; the same goes for, well, every open world game I can think of). It sounds like Skyrim comes closer to blurring this, if the side missions are as rich and complex as the main quest. The next step, I guess, is to not make it clear what's what. (It also seems, from what I've read, that a lot of the side missions, at least, can be permanently failed in interesting ways--is that right? One thing I liked about L.A. Noire was how badly wrong you could get things while the world and story kept moving forward--but you get routed back to the same basic story no matter how terrible a detective you are). An obvious step forward would be having side missions be difficult to find; the "aha!" moment you describe when you realized you could fulfil one of the dead people's last wishes is something more games should have. I can't think of the last game that's given that to me, actually -- and it seems like designers are hesitant to put in content that users can't necessarily locate (unless it's those goddamned collection side missions, which, boo). No more blinking map icons!

I thought this was interesting, too -- I'm pretty compulsive about completing any quest that gets assigned to me. Getting rid of the journal sounds like it could be a useful step forward, if not for the assumption that players will forget what they are doing. Cancelling quests seems like at least a partial solution, but I guess players would want the ability to pick the quest back up if they change their minds.