Just wondering: why do you think the best items are given to the player only after “evil” quests? For example, many of the best items are available only after completing the Daedric quests; I have blunt weapons as one of the main skills for my current character, but for now the only easy way to get a decent mace is to do a really dirty deed for Molag Bal.

So I was wondering : does anyone agree about the game being somehow unfair to “good guy” players, meaning that they are forced to either play “evil” quests or skip a considerable portion of the game? Why no “good” alternative to the Daedric quests?

It's not like I am complaining, the game is good anyway, but I noticed that today evil is far more popular than good in fantasy fiction. You can't even get rid of the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion without installing a mod. I used to like playing "bad guys" too, but now the games have become much more realistic.

I'm not sure I agree with the premise. There's a mace (Calliben's Grim Retort) that can be acquired as early as Level 1, that actually does more damage than Molag Bal's mace. Rockshatter and Hatred's Heart are also better, in my opinion, especially at higher level. All of those can be gotten without doing evil (well, you'd have to not complete the quest to keep Rockshatter, but then it has the advantage of being zero weight.)

Mmm... I don't know about that.

Yes - the quest for Molag Bal is most assuredly evil - arguably the single most evil act you'll be asked to do in the game. But the Mace of Molag Bal isn't the be-all/end-all of maces in the game.

In fact, the most powerful weapon you can get at the beginning of the game without using exploits is a mace - Calliben's Grim Retort. It's a nicely enchanted Elven mace that's free for the taking at the end of an early quest.

And it's a fact, not only with maces but with all weapons, that you can enchant something on your own that's better than any pre-enchanted weapon, Daedric or otherwise, in the entire game. Just do the Mages Guild recommendation quests so you can get into the AU and get access to the enchantment altars and all the pre-enchanted weapons in the game will be relegated to mere trinkets.

Regarding good vs. evil, in general terms, I think the game has a pretty good balance all in all, but yeah - it arguably comes down a bit more on the "evil" side. I don't mind that much though - black and white morality beats the hell out of the preciously contrived gray and gray morality that's become the hipster norm in games since. And it at least makes it possible to play a character who is decidedly either good or evil, instead of being stuck playing just another morally gray one. Yeah - if you play a good one, that means you pretty much have to pass up all the Daedric quests, but that's fine really. That goes back to my first point - the weapons really aren't that great anyway, and once you get access to the enchanting altars, it takes all of about five minutes, a filled soul gem and your weapon of choice to make something that's better anyway.

I think I probably disagree as well. I think Azura's Star is one of the best quest rewards in the game and that quest looks, smells and feels 'good' to me. Likewise, Meridia's quest feels 'good' as well, along with a couple other Daedric ones.

For blunt users, I don't see anything evil about the quest to get Volendrung.

For blade users, Chillrend and Honorblade feel like 'good' quests, while Umbra and Goldbrand - not so much.

For bow users, despite the name I don't think there's anything evil about getting Hatred's Soul. And it knocks the socks off of any quest reward bow from the SI or DB.

Regarding the game overall, I think that if anything there is a bias toward good characters. Too much infamy conflicts with chapel healing for example. Certainly the centerpiece of the game (Main Quest) is 'good'. I view the MG and FG questlines as more good than evil. The TG is arguably neutral when you view how they frown on killing and the 'nobility' of the final outcome. The DLC KOTN is clearly a 'good' questline (with some pretty snazzy reward items). I view the SI expansion as, overall, 'evil'. In some cases, the labels of good or evil is debatable (like SI and TG, and a couple other of the Daedric quests like Vaermina's) - and that is a good thing.

Given the Main Quest, I think that, although OB is a beautifully open sand box, those interested in being a noble hero that arises to save the world can find that very much alive and well.

Maybe I haven't explored the game well then, since I never heard about most of the items you listed. I am ashamed to say, but I started to "seriously" play Oblivion only a couple of months ago, I have never made it to the end before, so I can still be considered a "newbie" in a sense. So it's good to hear there are "good" equipment quests.

Especially thanks for the tip about Calliben's Grim Retort. But doesn't it get marked as a "stolen" item when I get it? After all, robbing tombs isn't really a morally "good" action, even though I occasionally do it nevertheless.

Good point.

True.

Which is why Claudia was upset when she finished the quest, stuck the Cowl in a trunk and walked away from the Guild, only to discover that everyone in Cyrodiil thought she was some sort of horrible person. Here she'd just done a really nice thing for some really nice people and was quite proud of herself and it was as if nobody else even knew - all the knew was "thief - bad."

Which is part of why Claudia jumped at the chance to redeem herself in the eyes of the public by doing that one.

Gonna get philosophical here for a bit - SI is amoral, which is arguably "evil" but sort of not really. That's part of the point, I presume. Sheogorath isn't really good or evil in the traditional sense - he just doesn't care either way. His only measure is whether it would amuse him to do something - whether another might consider that something "good" or "evil" just doesn't enter into it at all. It could be argued that that amorality is a sort of "evil," but that's countered by the fact that Sheogorath would be just as likely to do good if it amused him to do so. Though it is certainly true that he seems to be more generally amused by things that others would consider evil. So yeah - in the end, it's debatable, which is fine.

And yeah - as I think about it more, in light of your post, I think you're probably right - it's more likely true that the game tends to come down a bit more on the side of "good" than "evil," all in all, particularly if one considers details like altar healing, the effect of disposition on getting information and dealing with merchants, most of the side quests...

Why the single? Just to make a couple of examples, Mephala's quest is also very much evil, the whole Dark Brotherhood questline seems to be evil as well, although I never played it.

Well, you loot the dead anyway, right? And you "find" Calliben's Grim Retort in the process of doing a "good" quest (and, no, it's not a stolen item.)

Anyway, as gpstr pointed out, self-enchanted stuff is better than most of the junk the game gives you. Even if you don't do the Mages Guild, you can enchant with sigil stones. As an example, you can pick up a silver war axe early in the Main Quest; enchant it with a Subjacent (level 5) sigil stone of Shock (or whatever) Damage, and it will do nearly as much damage per hit as Molag Bal's mace. With a higher-level stone, and a better weapon, the damage will go far higher.

Mephala's quest is pretty bad, but what you end up doing is bringing out resentments that were already bubbling under the surface. And really, much of the DB questline is closer to neutral - many of the targets are pretty scummy anyway, so killing them can almost be seen to be a net gain for the world. But in Molag Bal's quest, you have to pretty much utterly destroy an entirely innocent man merely to torment him, merely because Molag Bal considers the mere existence of such a good man to be an affront. It's not just evil as a side-effect - the entire point of the quest is specifically to bring more evil into the world.

Well, I guess I'm going to have to take exception to this. I don't think morally ambiguous game choices are so-called "hipster."

I think old-style Manichean, either/or, "good vs evil" is a primitive way of looking at the world. It is not only primitive thinking, I believe this way of thinking is dangerous. Simplistic black-and-white, them-or-us, love-it-or-leave-it categories have been the cause of much of the world's misery down through the ages. The sooner humanity abandons this way of thinking the better, in my opinion.

I cordially dislike Bioware's typically "good/evil" choices. They way they write their games does not conform to my experience of life. My experience of life is that a great many of the acts we take in life can be both beneficial and harmful, at the same time, in different ways.

My aim in roleplaying is to find anologues to life. And if my experience of life is that it is rich and varied, not always comprehensible, not always easy to categorize, not always moral or immoral in every case, then I want my roleplaying to reflect that. True roleplaying, in my opinion, should be an accurate reflection of the way each of us see life. And I see life as more complex than mere "good" and "evil."

I think it is a good thing for the game to ask players to role-play and to think about what their characters are doing. There are some actions that are "gray," and others that are not--and of course different people will draw the line at different places. I do not play "evil" characters. For me, that means not joining the DB, and not doing some of the Daedra quests (so I will never get the Oghma Infinium, alas). There are some single quests I avoid--for example "The Siren's Deception," which I think Bethesda badly mishandled [SPOILER AHEAD]: it starts as a lighthearted scam of three women seducing a few men and those embarrassed men leaving some personal items behind and ends with a nasty fight in which the player--unless he wants just to run away--must kill all three women. How much nicer this quest would be if it were possible to end it by just arresting the women, for example.) / I am still learning the game so no doubt there are quests I don't know about that I'll have to decide on.

Well, I personally play games to experience something completely different from reality, so good old-fashioned "triumph of good over evil" appeals to me much more than deep philosophical reflections about the ambiguous ways of real life, especially when we are talking about games. I guess I am not cynical enough to stop dreaming about "good" and "happy" fairy tales, nor do I wish to become cynical enough.

I've gone back and forth on this. For a long while, I didn't play "evil" characters either. Then I created a character who was a badly damaged ex-slave, who had come to see the world as a hateful place, and I came to understand that it didn't matter whether I thought the quest was evil; what mattered was how my character saw it.

The game itself, by some measures, is "evil." As you pointed out, the solution to nearly every game problem is "kill somebody." Oddly, several of the most evil quests in the game involve not killing; the above mentioned Molag Bal quest being a good example (and I could cite several others.)