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[Neonivek]

I think it's just easier to make a quality quest line for a thieves guild than a fighter's guild.  Mages should be a good bet for quality, but maybe they just dropped the ball this time.  There's not a whole lot you can do with a fighter's guild though.

Mages guild did drop the ball

The previous games had to fighting almost dietific beings, albiet Oblivion's was also somewhat of a let down but at least there was some build up.

This game however? Sort of a letdown. Heck you can go through it and you don't even feel more magical... At least Oblivion made it feel magical.

[nenjin]

Considering you can poison bows, they can end up being more versatile than destruction and have WAY higher damage because it's totally uncapped through smithing and perks.

So you make a bow that does fire/something else, put a paralyzation/weakness to fire poison on it, and the target isn't just stumbled, it's completely paralyzed and 70% weaker to every shot of your 1700 damage bow.

There's just o little to sink your teeth into when it comes to magic, by comparison. Maybe it's almost better to do your first play through as a spellcaster, and save all the war axe/heavy armor/warrior stuff for your second.

There's not a whole lot you can do with a fighter's guild though.

Well, it's clear they thought the same thing. Because instead of going the straight fighter's guild route, they made it more about a Nordic society of warrior heroes. What you do with that storyline is totally open. I think it was an issue of execution and passion in the case of the other two guilds. I haven't played them but that's my sense. Which is why I'm surprised at how the Companions Questline shakes out. It's obvious they were about the Nordic theme. Why it underdelivers...who knows. Maybe it suffered the fate of a lot of intro quests, where it blows its load too quickly. The whole:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Schmuck to leader in three days

Seems symptomatic of that. Anyways, in the end I think it was just poor execution. And the Mages Guild....man, I don't know how you foul that that up. It's the one place where players give you permission to totally break with the theme for a while, go to another plane, get turned into a chicken...something.

Heck you can go through it and you don't even feel more magical... At least Oblivion made it feel magical.

I think its an over-reliance on the both the shouts and the Dovhakin main quest delivering a lot of the epic moments. If you avoid the main quest like the plague, there's a lot of good but sort of mundane TES experiences out there. I've felt sort of underwhelmed by 3 of the 5 Daedra Encounters I've had. Oblivion seems to have spread the epic out a little more evenly....probably because it wasn't relying on Dragons to deliver awesome at regular intervals.

I miss Wisps though. And yes I've fought a Wisp Mother. Wisps in Oblivion used to terrify me.

[Neonivek]

Hmm I was about to say I think I know a game that did Nordic better...

But I was wrong since it was Celtic.

[Onlyhestands]

I think it's just easier to make a quality quest line for a thieves guild than a fighter's guild.  Mages should be a good bet for quality, but maybe they just dropped the ball this time.  There's not a whole lot you can do with a fighter's guild though.

Not to be the rose tinted nostalgic, but the Fighter's guild was pretty awesome in Morrowind.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You find most of the higher-ups are corrupt (dealings with the Camonna Tong, basically Vvardenfell mafia) and your quests go from being go and kill this monster to kill this person for dubious reasons. You can discuss the missions with one of the only non-corrupt bosses and he gives you advice on how to avoid some of these nasty obligations. The alliance with the Camonna tong leads to an undeclared war with the thieves guild.

Some actually political intrigue would have been awesome, the

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

searching for a cure for lycanthropy

was ok but not terribly compelling. Plus the guilds are way to short in Skyrim.

[Neonivek]

Goodness you are right.

I remember when guilds were an entire quest line often requiring you to make decisions and investigate.

Guilds are basically 2 or MAYBE 3 quests that are going from A to B. Except for the first quest where they will just infodump you.

[Onlyhestands]

Goodness you are right.

I remember when guilds were an entire quest line.

Guilds are basically 2 or MAYBE 3 quests.

It's really too bad, I'm not sure what the actual game area is but Skyrim at-least feels like it dwarfs Morrowind and Oblivion in sheer size. There was so much interesting stuff that could have been with done with guilds.
To be honest I haven't played a whole hell of a lot (juggling college, work, music, and hunting) so I cant give a definite opinion on everything.

[Bdthemag]

The thieves guild quest intro is pathetic, the guy basically goes "WELP, YOU DID A GOOD JOB STEALING THAT UNIMPORTANT MINOR ITEM. COME JOIN THE THIEVES GUILD AND WE'LL GIVE YOU A HIGH VALUE CONTRACT TO DO!"

You even get to join them if you fail at stealing the item.

[Rose]

Then you join them and find out that they really are pathetic, and need serious help to not suck.

[nenjin]

Guilds are basically 2 or MAYBE 3 quests that are going from A to B. Except for the first quest where they will just infodump you.

I'm going to gush just a little about the TG questline.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So it doesn't start off strong. You hear early on exactly where to find the TG.

When you get to Riften it starts to pick up. If you start asking questions about the TG often enough (or maybe its just scripted to happen), the leader of the TG approaches you directly and says "You want in? Meet me in the marketplace." Immediately tells you to do a job, right there, where you ruin a merchant and get him put in jail. It's a moral judgment call I actually struggled with. Eventually I realized there was no alternative route and do the job. Then you're told. "Come find us in the sewer bar room." They don't mention the guys between you and the sewer bar are baddies. But that's the thing. You're not told. Half the time I thought they were guild members (since they had names other than "Low-life") and spent 20 minutes trying to sneak past them. Finally realized that was impossible, so I kill them... get to the guild hall and finally the info drop happens and you're clued in. Then it's at least three major thief quests before a big plot point, another three after that to the Nightingale's Plot point, and then a mission or two after that. PLUS the 4 the major "side-job" missions per cities.

I mean, it's a whole lot of quest that's delivered with some finesse. It may not account for different choices (like killing that scum Maven and making the Thieves Guild independent of her rotten family, or killing the Thieves Guild itself), but it wasn't as simple as "walk into generic guild house, talk to guy, get contract to kill something." Which is how almost every game with any guild organization starts.

All in all, I thought it was done well and I daresay was produced by someone who actually likes Rogues. Because they got what makes it cool to be one pretty much across the board. Secret hideouts, hoods, pure stealth, conspiracy, loot, trophies, tough heists where you're proud of your skills...it nailed the atmosphere. It's not HARD to do so, but it's also easy to do it completely wrong too. If the actual plot line is shaky and you aren't exactly in love with your guild mates....meh. Can't remember many RPGs where I was so attached to my guild and what it's about that I remember the names of the people in it.

Then you join them and find out that they really are pathetic, and need serious help to not suck.

This I can understand. They come off as a little whiny about their problems and when you find out the game's reasons for it being that way....you're like.....what kind of tough guys are you? That's the part where the quest line falls apart and stops it from being a "great" quest series, and makes it just a standard Beth quest. But compared to the other guilds, it's probably the best. And am I alone, or did I not find Oblivion's TG quests all that great? They may have been "righteous" and the Gray Fox mask and stuff may have been cool. But the Gray Fox TG was shabby and poor even when you've finished it. At least the Skyrim TG has all the stuff surrounding the guild (including the upgrades, useless as they are) so you feel like you've built something up. That was ultimately what they were going for. I think they accomplished it, at the C+ to B level.

"WELP, YOU DID A GOOD JOB STEALING THAT UNIMPORTANT MINOR ITEM. COME JOIN THE THIEVES GUILD AND WE'LL GIVE YOU A HIGH VALUE CONTRACT TO DO!"

You talking...the job in the Marketplace or Honningbrew Meadery or...? Which one? You actually failed to finish one of those jobs?

[Rose]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I wouldn't really call it a fail in the questline. Those guys are too lazy to get off their own asses and do the jobs themselves, and they're reaching for any excuse other than themselves for why the guild is in the shits.

[nenjin]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My reaction was...."Ok, you're the smear wing of the most powerful family in Riften. And all it took was the death of the guild leader and someone messing with two of Maven's business interests to shake these tough guys to their core? All the while the real threat is stealing gold out from under their nose and they're too stupid to trust the one competent Nightingale left?

Some operators. Real free thinkers, these guys.

And seriously, spend some money on some wall hangings, it smells like shit in here but it doesn't mean it has to look that way.

I also like the fact there are about 4 more guild members than are really necessary. Almost everyone in the cistern has zero role in anything going on, and is there to provide some dialog when you join and to train you in a specific skill. Not that I mind NPCs to fill out the scenery and stuff, it's just that with the manpower they're showing it seems like they get fuck all done by themselves. You never even hear anyone other than Brynolf say stuff like "Soandso scouted a location and....." It's always about what they did in the past, never about what they're actively doing during the player's tenure.

[Rose]

Exactly, they're all sitting on their asses all day moaning about how the thieves guild isn't as good as it used to be when they had a proper leader, rather than going out and fixing things. I call that dumbass hangers on, not bad writing.

[Cthulhu]

I wasn't able to steal the ring for Brynjolf's first job.  It was right there in front of everybody and I was fresh off the boat and wasn't playing a stealth race (I picked Dunmer, because why not?).  In fact, I couldn't even get through the ratway, I had to polish my skills doing "freelance" work until my guy was good enough to reach them.

The problem with the guilds in Morrowind was there were so many quests, and a lot of them were so mundane.  I don't remember ever fully completing any of the faction quest lines in Morrowind.  I vaguely remember the Camonna Tong thing in Morrowind's fighters guild quest, but not really.  They all felt like they were going to go on forever and ever, and it was just a slog, especially since my style of playing back when I first got Morrowind (Play a few hours, get an idea for a cool new character, play a few hours on him, get a different idea, etc.) basically ruined the beginning of the game for me.  Like I said in an earlier post, the first ten hours or so of Morrowind were tread so flat it was almost more than I could bear to drag myself through them.

Also, I noticed Skyrim still hasn't figured out how to make rain respect overhangs.  In Morrowind and Oblivion seeing it rain when I was under cover bugged me.  Now it's kind of endearing, a quirk of the series that will never go away.  Tamriel is a magical land where dragons are real and water is made of neutrinos.

[nenjin]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"I'm gonna find Mercer and kill him!"

"Not sitting around in the Cistern you won't, you freakin' slacker."

You may not think it's bad writing. But ask yourself, how much more convincing would it have been to script EVERYONE in the cistern to disappear as though they're out searching for Mercer....instead of cowering in terror of one man's apparently mystical ability to walk into a den of thieves and kill 9 people. Who is he, a player character? And no one told me?!

I couldn't fucking believe the lines I was hearing. "I have to stay sharp, in case Mercer shows up."

"Can't talk, have to stay on the look out."

Christ, what kind of thieves are these?

I call that bad writing. Or bad characterization. That's the part where I emotionally disconnected.

I wasn't able to steal the ring for Brynjolf's first job.  It was right there in front of everybody and I was fresh off the boat and wasn't playing a stealth race (I picked Dunmer, because why not?).

Ah. I got there at level 12 so I was thoroughly seasoned. I should have gone straight to Riften when I knew they were there. But I'm a believer of walking the path before you give in to fast travel. And that netted me 12 levels. I've only played Dunmer rogues since Morrowind, because I hate how the Altmer look. I'll reload as many times as it takes. Like combat, the thief game is more fun for me when it's hard. Having the Shadow Sign helps a lot too.

Morrowind Quests

You're not alone. While I appreciate the subtlety of the House Faction quests, a lot of it was lost on me because I'm not neck deep in TES lore or in love with it. And I hated Morrowind's visual aesthetic. (It will forever be "the sword and sorcery game that takes place on Tatooine" to me.) I love the Daedra but that's about it.

So MANY Morrowind quests felt like a slog to me, backed up by a lot of quest lore I was never going to read. I think Bethesda got that message and tried to make quests more....accessible in Oblivion, relying less on the player reading books to get context and more on their voice actors. Which turned out to make them better popcorn fair but not worth a second look or a deeper read. Skyrim quests feel like they're striking a better balance in that regard. But because production values are so high for Skyrim....I think there's a huge gap between the quests that got attention and the quests that were necessary to fill things out. The Mages' Guild, for example.

In the end, that's why I'm really satisfied with the TG quest line. In the midst of dragons, barbarians running around in furs with axes, the civil war, huge stone tombs and epic mountain vistas...the TG delivers exactly what a thief player wants (a guild you're proud of aside.....) in terms of content and you don't feel like you're getting a lesser experience than all the other stuff out there. There's a structure for thieving that is good until surpass the cash barrier and it's just meaty. Can't complain about that when Mages would rather set fire to their own college than quest for it.

[Kilroy the Grand]

The problem with the guilds in Morrowind was there were so many quests, and a lot of them were so mundane.  I don't remember ever fully completing any of the faction quest lines in Morrowind.  I vaguely remember the Camonna Tong thing in Morrowind's fighters guild quest, but not really.  They all felt like they were going to go on forever and ever, and it was just a slog, especially since my style of playing back when I first got Morrowind (Play a few hours, get an idea for a cool new character, play a few hours on him, get a different idea, etc.) basically ruined the beginning of the game for me.  Like I said in an earlier post, the first ten hours or so of Morrowind were tread so flat it was almost more than I could bear to drag myself through them.

I liked them, you had a wider variety of quests to do, as you progressed in the appropriote skills more unlocked. Man back then the Thieves guild were some of the most moral people in the game. righting wrongs and stealin for the rich.