Why won't fetch quests die? The horrible truth is: we need them

I have a high tolerance for fetch quests. If Genshin Impact wants me to exterminate the same group of hilichurls over and over to search for a vengeance-obsessed NPC's lost sword, then I'll do it—I've got time to kill. But when an RPG jams that kind of drudgery front and center into the main storyline or sends me down a long, tedious questline with the reward pushed to the very end, even I start to think: is this really the best they could come up with?

At their heart, almost every quest...