There were two.

Come Fly With Me was the first. The quest itself was a lot longer and more involved than I ever expected a side quest to be. On the way up to the facility, I shot the feral ghouls hanging around outside and thought this was just going to be a dungeon - go in, shoot a bunch of ghouls in the head and loot a safe. That seemed appropriate for what was basically a diversion in the main story to stretch its length out - "Oh, Manny won't update my quest log until I go clear out a building for him. Typical."

I get there and oh, there's Jason Bright and his delusional religious flock who want to get into ghoul heaven on a rocket ship. It's very amusing and I can see the moral choice coming: help the ghouls go on their fruitless Great Journey for good karma and a pittance of caps or just kill them and move the story on.

I'm always selfless and good to a fault when I play so I offer to help and Jason wants me to go kill the nightkin stalking around in the basement. "Oh, here's the dungeon bit. Clear the basement and loot the safe and come back." Except no, I get in there and there's two NPCs here I can help and even though they initially seem to be a binary choice: kill the nightkin to help the ghoul or help the nightkin and kill the ghoul, it appears to be possible to satisfy both parties and get everyone out alive - and surprisingly it's not just a quick speech check to do it.

Then there's a fetch quest portion but it doesn't just drop two markers on my map for the two buildings that contain the two components I need. During one portion I remember something Cliff Briscoe at the Novac shop said about toy rockets and on a whim I decide to talk to him first and to my surprise, there's an entire alternate path to this portion of the quest that bypasses the ordinary 'loot the dungeon' path the quest would normally take. Then I go pick up the second component and even though there's only one source for them, the NPC I talk to has half a dozen different options to acquire the parts from her that rewards several kinds of character build.

Finally I get back, hours after this seemingly small side quest started and face a moral dilemma of all things: Chris was misled by Jason this whole time because he was so useful to Jason's mission and I have the option to turn the tables on him. I talk to Jason and damn it if he isn't just the most charismatic person ever and completely sways my opinion on him by the time he's finished. Now I have to talk Chris out of wanting to sabotage the mission and it's actually not easy. I don't just walk up to him, click on "[Speech 20] Chris don't do this" and then he magically changes his mind. There's this lengthy conversation where you have to repeatedly coddle Chris while a second prompt, "yeah, let's sabotage them" is flashing at you. Daring you to just press it because it's easier. If you persevere though it works and you can have the whole launch go off without a hitch.

Then there's just one more little touch that I love. As you get up to the launch tower and get ready to send the Bright Brotherhood on their way there's a little prompt: with a good enough science skill you can adjust the rocket trajectory a little and hopefully help them land closer to their destination. It's clear that this isn't going to be the game changer, the one little thing you had to do right this entire quest that switches it from FAILURE to SUCCESS but having this little option here that acknowledged that my character was intended to be a smart, science-y sort and got a chance to prove it meant that I had a grin on my face even before the music started and that incredible launch sequence played out.

By the time I got back to Novac and my main quest journal entry updated, I was shocked because in all the time I spent helping out Jason Bright I had actually forgotten why I went up there in the first place. That one side quest felt more expansive than some main story missions in other games.

The second was That Lucky Old Sun. I was in the control room in the tower, about to make my choice of where to send the energy from the installation. I was already set on doing exactly what Ignacio wanted - sending the power to everyone. It fit perfectly with my selfless-to-a-fault character but the terminal mentioned something: the grid would struggle under this option but wouldn't if I sent it somewhere smaller like the Strip, like the NCR wants and reconsidered my initial choice and thought, "maybe this isn't actually the best option?"

That was great. There isn't a perfectly good way to choose how to distribute the power. I'm actually a little proud that I have never actually directed the power towards the orbital beam weapon because I can't ever bring myself to choose to hoard all of that power to myself when I've met so many needy people in the Mojave who could use it. It's a fantastic moral choice.