This isn't even a sidequest -- it's part of the main quest -- but in Genshin Impact there's a sequence where you have to go around the city talking to people to make proper funeral preparations for a special ceremony that...ultimately doesn't matter. Sure, it's the funeral for the nation's patron god, but the reason you're doing it and what follows after, make zero difference at all. So you end up talking to various merchants about floral arrangements, you have to gather special perfume ingredients that involve doing things like singing to marsh flowers, and at the conclusion of it the antagonists are just like "yeah, we're going to hatch our bad guy plot now" and you've done virtually nothing to stop it.
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.