Has anyone played Guild Wars 2? It's more of an mmo idea, but I was thinking it would work great for immersion purposes.
In GW2 they have dynamic events where you don't need a quest, you just walk by and participate in an event happening in the world. I'm not saying get rid of classic talk to NPCs and get a quest, but add this as well. For example, you could be walking along and realize a small village (one not important to the main storyline) is getting attacked by a horde of skeletons. You can help fight them off or not. If you don't, the village is destroyed and after a certain amount of game time, the village is rebuilt.