Exploratory learning has become a widely applied, pedagogical concept. One approach to encourage exploratory knowledge creation are situated game experiences. Putting learners in quest-based environments can thereby support engagement through exploration and at the same time, allow for a variety of supportive learning strategies. However, examination of progress and investigation of success or motivational factors remain challenging in exploratory pedagogy. Evaluation in learning quests can interrupt the flow experience that supports engaging and successful learning in exploratory environments. This paper presents an approach for unobtrusive dialogic investigation in quest-based learning environments. Building on the results of an existing exploratory game quest to raise privacy awareness, the study conducts a dual between-subjects investigation to identify the motives of sharing fake news. The study, therefore, extends a mini-quest with a character to build a dialogic investigation for evaluating the intentions behind sharing of fake headlines. Concurrently, the impact on perception of flow and the robustness of the suggested dialogic inquiry is assessed by comparison to the prior non-dialogic evaluation. The results of the experiment with participating educators and students (N = 92) from two European universities confirm students more likely share fake news than educators and suggests hedonic rather than pragmatic motives as drivers of the sharing decision. The dialogic investigation with the mini-quest shows that students perceive fake news headlines as significantly funnier than educators while also spending less time reflecting if they are real or fake. Flow experience did not improve significantly by changing to dialogic questioning. However, positive tendencies in all flow sub-measures indicate that adding a character and inquiring with dialogue rather supports than breaks the sense fluency in exploratory learning quests. Implications for the design of analytical mini-quests as well as further research directions are outlined conclusively.