IT Annoyed me greatly in oblivion how all the joinable groups were Downright good guys (even the thieves guild) The only exception to this was the dark brotherhood.. Which was stupidly "evil". There is no such thing as "evil" (except for maybe in star wars, the dark side makes you a [censored] for no reason)

The fighters guild (or Compainions) Should be corrupt. A few of the higher level quest givers should dish out dirty jobs Such as assasinations, Hijacking skooma shipments for mob bosses, Crushing (honest) competition and so on.

The thieves guild Should Realy have jobs that involve stealing or sabotaging Things from GOOD people. Not evil Guards or Cults. They should not care about murder on most missions. There should be a few missions where the player steals from an [censored] but there needs to be ballenced

The dark brotherhood.. Firstly..shut up about sithis. The db is supposed to be a secretive order of assasins.. Not loudmouthed Cult that does nothing but live in a dungeon under an abandoned house! Like the theives guild.. I want a mix of assassinating [censored]s and good people. There should also be Good reasoning on why the person hired the Db

Mages guild.. I am happy to collect mushrooms.. i wouldnt mind Giving someone An evil book to learn from. I do mind a faction war.


Necromancers/Conjurers- It always bothered me that these guys dont do anything Productive with their undead. Personaly id make them Cook,Clean,provide entertainment, help me in my studies and so on.

If a necromancer told me that they would make my corpse dance... i would ask them why. I dont expect a "cause im evil, killing people to raise their corpse for Guarding my lonely cave makes me happy" Realy i wouldnt mind A necromancer mentor.. WHY CANT I HAVE A NECROMANCER TEACHER? Necromancers are obviously going to Have Reasons for Being weirdo's in a cave and id like them explored


As for The church.. You should have nice missions like going on crusades against bad daedra and undead, Converting people to your faith, helping people etc. You should have bad missions. Like assasinating a heretic or Destroying A group of people with an opposing faith.

Not EVERYONE can be evil. The Dark Brotherhood and the Thieve's guild should be evil though, the Mage's guild is going to be a college for Christ's sake. The Companion's have a backstory of being awesome so we can't have them being Evil because they have high standards.

Daggerfall had cool quests that were either good/neutral/evil. Granted they were buggy beyond belief. I wonder if they could do this with their radiant story stuff.

Completely agree. The black and whiteness in Oblivion, especially in some of the guilds was just stupid. I'd love a mature, believeable world. Not disneyland like in Oblivion.

I want quests (all quests not just faction storylines) to have grey moral choices that arent the generic really good/really bad and in some cases there might even be a neutral option. Choices shouldnt be limited to such a black and white view. Oblivion didnt even manage that all the time. In some cases you were only presented one way to do the quests and dialogue options which was usually the generic good.

I completely agree. I hate how all these "morality" choices are so obvious like when the good side is "send and orphaned kitten to college."

There needs to be more ambiguity with the guilds or truly ambiguous guilds, like a mercenary group whos only concern is money. There was a group in OB, but I don't believe you could actually join them and they were labeled "evil". I really hope there is some true "grey" area in this next TES title.

I understand what you are saying, but when it comes to the Dark Brotherhood, the thing is that they actually ARE a cult. An assassin cult. While their overly gothic and "I CUT MY WRIST FOR SITHISSSSSS" mentality did sometimes get to me, I had to accept that this is a religious organization. I got over it pretty quickly, especially after I got my own Black Hand enchanted cloak at the end of the quest. I really loved that thing.

I think that the best way to handle it is not to change the Dark Brotherhood. I say just add another competing assassin organization. One that is more cold, calculating, and professional. More business-like ya know? In fact, I would more likely join them than the Dark Brotherhood, because my character never really cared that much about the whole Night Mother and Sithis thing. He just wanted to hone his craft, perfect his art, and make some mad gold in the process.

Competing with the Dark Brotherhood would be absolutely awesome. At least until they start coming after you....

I dunno about the thieves guild being totally evil. I actually liked how Bethesda balanced their mentalities in Morrowind and Bethesda. They weren't good or evil. They just did jobs. Some people in the guild were more rough and shady, while others were more noble and respectable thieves. In a thieves guild, such a balance of personalities and varied goals amongst members fits the concept best, IMO.

I liked the mostly good Thieves Guild in Oblivion.

Why can an organisation not have a noble cause? It's hardly unrealistic. Isn't that why we have charities and crap? The thieves guild let you steal from anyone, anyway, so it wasn't all "goody goody". They had a believable motive for when they were "good". It was mostly for the benefit of their own members anyway.

And the Dark Brotherhood were contract killers, they killed who they were contracted to. And they worshipped Sithis because they believed him to be an important god who wanted them to cause chaos through killing, so they did so. Crazy cults are real too!

It would be easy to argue that the Mages guild was corrupt, but it could have been presented better.

There was nothing wrong with how those two were done in Oblivion.

Personally, I'm tired of nearly everything these days being "grey" (dark, gritty, edgy, post-modern, ambiguous, "mature", etc).

It's nice to have some clear Good 'n Evil.


But, ignoring that....



Stopped reading right there.

Even beyond disagreeing about that in the "real" world - In the realm of Fantasy? Oh, heck yes, is there Evil?. It's a basic part of the entire genre.

I agree with this. At this point, I think grey worlds of morally grey greyness worlds where you can't do your grocery shopping without being presented with some ambiguous moral conundrum have become more trite than Good vs Evil.

So you want Oblivion style boring black and white guilds and quests with no difficult choices and laughable style (DB for example) to come back just because youre tired of games being grey, which they even arent unfortunately? I'm tired of games being black and white, "good" and "evil". Just because something gets tossed around a lot like grey, dark, gritty, ambiguous, mature etc moral choices and worlds and you get bored to it for some reason doesnt mean its bad. Thats how choices and fantasy worlds should be.

I also agree with op about there being no such thing as evil. An extremely stupid concept. Even in fantasy games. Choices being limited to "good" and "evil" make them bland, boring and cliched.

Yeah since charities are never crooked :rolleyes:

I think we should be able to play through most guilds as either a good or a bad guy. I would like to have the option to play as an honorable theif or a corrupt mage. I would deffinetly like to see more moral choices in side questlines. For example: during a College of Winterhold quest we could be tasked to find and destroy an ancient tome filled with forbidden magic, we would have the choice to destroy it or take its power for ourselves. There were lots of these moral choices in Fallout 3 and they were implemented wonderfully in that game, I hope that bethesda can intigrate them into Skyrim just as well.

While I agree that there was a little too much black and white... (seriously, the Fighters Guild forcing me to be an upstanding citizen or else? In Morrowind they were being run by a [censored] Cammona Tong lackey answering to a murderer, assassin, and slave-owning plantation lord.)... I don't think that there was anything wrong with the way that the Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, or Dark Brotherhood were portrayed.

The Mages Guild's biggest problem was that they were LITERALLY just a fighter's guild for mages. The BEST part of the entire Mages Guild quest, for me, was getting the recommendations! That's what being a mage should be like in the guild. The little stuff. The -magic-. If I wanted to do nothing but fight incessantly... I'd have joined the damn Fighters Guild!

The Dark Brotherhood in my opinion is flawless. It's the one faction in the game done exactly as it should have been. Even though some of the missions get a bit tedious, none of them are outright repetitive, and they all involve unique and interesting ways to accomplish your goal. To claim that they're TOO much about Sithis is absolutely absurd. They are -ENTIRELY- about Sithis. That's their whole purpose for existing. Their God and the rules of the Morag Tong ceased to mesh, so the cultists who became the Dark Brotherhood left, and spread throughout the rest of the Empire as killers for hire. Anyone who knows a modicum of TES lore knows this.

The Thieves Guild is also done perfectly. They are NOT bad guys. They are NOT good guys. They are selfish and elitist... a proud and smug group of silver-tongued rouges who, until going underground after a rather hard thumping by Imperial Law, have always relied upon their non-violent methods. They get people killed, they don't kill people. They outsmart and outmaneuver their opponents... they don't get into fights. They depend on this because it keeps them from being the target of the law. It keeps them from being stamped out. If they drew more attention to themselves... then there would -be- no Thieves Guild.


But yes... I'm all for organizations of corrupt intent done up in grimy shades of gray. I'd love to see more factions to join in general, of all walks. I'd love to be able to throw my lot in with some bandits... or take up the banner of a small knightly order. I'd love to be able to join a band of bloodthirsty reavers, wreaking havoc across all of Skyrim.

Still, I'm quite satisfied with the way that things have been done so far. I just hope to see improvement instead of more of the same.

Who the [censored] defines what's good and bad? You do for "YOURSELF". It's all from perspective. I might not be seeing a point here, but I hate how people try to exemplify evil and good in everyday life as well as videogames. Hitler was evil to some and a hero to others. America commits genocide on their own native populace, but we're still the "good guys". Not getting into politics as it is against the forum rules, so don't argue about my last two statements.

OT: I found evil and good in every guild on Oblivion. There is no right way to do everything.

What black and white in Oblivion?

If you think that the thieves guild were "good" then you should see the Bal Molager quests in Morrowind. Compared to them, the thieves guild quests in Oblivion are outright selfish (they are either way...)

And why the hell should the fighter's guild be more "corrupt"? Just because they were hinted at in Morrowind, it doesn't mean all of them should be. Hell, they're perfect as lawful neutral mercenaries.


Seriously, it's like people need giant "GOOD" and "EVIL" signs at everything to see the differences, no wonder so many games add these kind of choices that you can see from a mile away...

We are Brothers.

ahhh philosophy fail thread..

all points taken i wouldn't mind another questline about something considered truly "evil" by a lot of people. I just don't like when you can only pick one side.

Well, you see. When you're shopping morality is very important, let me explain the history of lemons and limes so the next time you are shopping and trying to decide between them you make the right choice and you don't just pick based on Vitamin C content.

The limes and oranges fought against the corrupt king Pineapollonius in the great war, who waged heavy export taxes on the Banana Republic. The lemons were hired as mercenaries to support him, but they couldn't be trusted because they worshiped the Mighty Avacado and they overthrew the kingdom after wiping out the First Citrus Battalion. It all comes down to whether you support freedom fighters or cultist mercenaries.

Wait... why did I even post this?

Thats exactly what choices shouldnt have and thats what Oblivion did. Most of the choices had giant signs pointing that this one's good and this one's bad. There shouldnt be obvious "good" and "evil" choices and there shouldnt be such obvious types of choices. Something more varied and grey. Much more interesting that way. Far more possibilities for role playing, character development and a much more believeable and mature world.

Agree with the OP completely.

Organizations are composed of individuals, each with their own motives and personalities. They did a great job of representing this in Morrowind (to my recollection), but in Oblivion I couldn't tell you the difference between the various fighters guild halls, other than they could provide different training. Having missions from the fighters guild or a church that my honorable character would not be willing to do would make the in-game organizations much more interesting.

And yeah, I agree, the evil organization should not be stupidly evil.

I don't think Black and White is worse than gray. It's really about the themes and what it rings. Both options in story telling have strengths and weaknesses. Black and White tend to work better in a purely escapist work of fiction, you don't have to feel guilty of who you're rooting for. Oblivion did this ok but there could have been more evil options for those that wanted it, but I loved the Thieves Guild in that one, they had a purpose. The thieves guild in Morrowind just felt kinda there, They were just about stealing to get money and really were there for stealth characters (My Nightblade ended up ignoring them and Joining House Hallalu for the stealth stuff, a much more interesting faction.).

Gray storytelling can be grittier and when it suits the theme, like a good Noir movie. But in games it really kinda just leaves me cold, I hate joining who i think is the good guys and jsut ending up doing something really Evil. I would really love it if a game did it well, use the blurring of the line between good and evil to make a point, but no games have the guts to use shades of gray to mean anything. It really tends to just be fore the sake of being edgy and has an accidental theme of Nihilism, the deal leaves a bad taste.

I think that you are missing the point.

I think we're talking about BLENDING the two here. Some white... some dark. Gray, instead of black-and-white. Right now, as it was in Oblivion, the factions have almost NO gray. The only gray faction is the Thieves Guild.

At least from -my- perspective, this is Jarring. Why are the Fighters Guild members ALL goody-two-shoes lawful citizens with nothing but noble hearts and a lust for killing wild creatures and bandits? The Fighters Guild is supposed to be a haven for warriors... not a place for wanna-be Town Guards who just couldn't make the grade. Oblivion's factions were all very cut and dried. Mages are good, Necromancers bad. Fighters are good. Blackwood is bad.

GOOD and BAD, as you have said, are subjective! They're undefinable!

Skyrim, in my mind, would be best served with factions represented as having both the 'just' and 'un-just' within their ranks. Not everyone becomes a doctor because he wants to heal. Some just want to make money. Some just want an excuse to get you out of your clothes. Others, they have a fascination with death... or pain... or suffering. I've met all three.

There are people out there who really do just try to do right by everyone. And then there are folks who'll screw you over just because they can.

This should be the case in Skyrim's factions, just as it has always been in Elder Scrolls factions. Some guys are the guys you want on your side... some are the guys you want to watch your back around.

I think you're getting the wrong message from this topic, mate. Maybe you should re-read it.

Some moral conundrums are good- Garrus' loyalty mission in ME2 is one of my favorite examples- but I don't want to have every single faction to be semi-corrupt just to avoid having anybody be noticeably good or evil.