Aww man... this guy RUINED the Thieves Guild for me....

Naginata said:

I just read the whole thing. Goddamn, is this guy spot-on or what! He brought up great points and made me laugh at the stupidity of the questline as well.

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Glad you read it! Told you it would give you some laughs

W'rkncacnter said:

It's nothing unique to the questline. . .

The college has a whole host of issues starting with trusting probably the most important mission in all of Tamriel (at that moment) to a newcomer who may or may not have any knowledge of magic. You are forced to join the college to gain access. . .required to track down an Elder Scroll (and obtain one of the stones of Barenziah). And the "expert" teachers assist in one mission which ends up with the player doing the heavy lifting anyway.

The companions forces you to become a werewolf in order to advance the questline. I've only run through it once so I can't remember any other issues it had.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game but it does have it's faults.

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Don't get me started on some of the problems in the other Guild quests.

For the record, I disagree with the author of the blog on the name "Nightingale".

First, not everything has to invoke a sense of dread or an image of power. Just like I don't name all of my characters Ham-fist Stone-crusher neither do secret societies need to be overt in their naming. The bird is small and nimble and fits the description of a thief.

Second, a Nightingale (bird) sings at night, which is typically dark. Thieves operate in the dark. One might even liken their actions to a form of intricate song (assuming he/she is not a bumbling fool).

Third, Nightingales were invoked by poets as a symbol of romance or love. If one reads the back-story of the first Nightingale (Drayvn) they will find out that the recorded story actually contains a bit of illicit romance between him and Queen Barenziah (ultimately resulting in his grand-daughter Karliah).

In addition, the nightingale's song is often looked upon as a lament (thank the Greeks). And personally, I would consider the life of a thief to ultimately be lamentful. Even more-so given the servitude to the ungrateful and vengeful Nocturnal.

So we have a nimble thief (Dravyn) who operates primarily in the darkness, seduces women, serves a disagreeable deity and ultimately leads a life that will most likely not end well. I think they are aptly named.

All the major questlines are somewhat railroaded and there's not really a lot of freedom in them. Aside from dealing with the Blades and Paarthunax I can't think of many examples where the PC gets a choice or even drives the story. Each of the major questlines has issues, but these are made even more obvious when you put them together and spot the recurring themes - betrayal by leader of the guild. Check. Newly arrived dude is the chosen one. Check. Major story ultimately has very few repercussions. Check.

Even worse are the interdependencies, especially for the TG. In order to complete one of the main storylines (and get a bonus that would be awesome in early game, but is tedious by the time you can get it- yay, I have more gems than I know what to do with) you have to join the College of Winterhold and visit the Dark Brotherhood (which means killing someone), along with buying expensive property in one city...

I was about to write that the TG, individually, is the worst in terms of matching the guild to the activities - not a lot of thieving is really going on; then I remembered that you don't have to cast more than 2 spells to become head of the college and the bard's quests are mere dungeon crawls. In fact, the only storyline that even kind of makes sense is the DB (until you've completed it - Dark Brotherhood Forever is a ridiculous idea).

There are ways to fix these problems and on my last play through I installed a mod for TG that forces you to do more of the radiant quests before the story continues. I actually enjoyed this a lot more - the story elements are blended into the fact that you are doing thief related tasks. This also meant that by the time I'd completed the story I was actually ready to be leader, having completed the 4 special quests (which are actually pretty good). One of the annoyances from my first play through is that Brynolf suggests you'll be leader, but once you deal with Mercer it never gets mentioned again (or even a clue about what else you need to do)

I think a lot of this comes down to pacing - in the default game the questlines share an issue where things have to happen right now - the story drives you on aggressively. By adding in a pause, requiring more radiant quests to be completed before preceding and keeping you doing proper guild activities it really gets you more involved and the "story" elements don't seem quite so ridiculous.

Mods doing the same for other factions, including adding pre-requisites and segregation between factions, really help with the immersion and can make being a member of the chosen guild or group a key part of the story. I'd definitely recommend using something like that. If you can't install mods then just pretend...

I'm torn on the article. I mean I can see some points, but not all. The worst part of the article was comparing a McDonald's manager getting arrested and Burger king taking over. WTF?!? A manager runs the operations and not the whole franchise. If the manager of McD's, BK, Wal-Mart gets arrested then it would fall to the assistant manager to keep things running. That assistant manager would be Mallus. It was also brought up that the guys family would take over, however, the dude was living at the meadery. So unless the family was elsewhere maybe there was no family left.

Bulldog said:

I'm torn on the article. I mean I can see some points, but not all. The worst part of the article was comparing a McDonald's manager getting arrested and Burger king taking over. WTF?!? A manager runs the operations and not the whole franchise. If the manager of McD's, BK, Wal-Mart gets arrested then it would fall to the assistant manager to keep things running. That assistant manager would be Mallus. It was also brought up that the guys family would take over, however, the dude was living at the meadery. So unless the family was elsewhere maybe there was no family left.

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I can see your point. I also disagree with that particular part of the article considering the fact that Sabjorn is not even manager of Honningbrew mead but the actual owner. Same with Maven. Mallus isn't even considered an assistant manager. He was just another worker that Sabjorn exploited to get free labor.

"I made the mistake of borrowing coin from Sabjorn. He's allowing me to pay it back, but he's working my fingers to the bone! He treats me like a slave... I have to do every nasty, dirty job in the meadery." - Mallus

After Sabjorn goes to prison Mallus then becomes the manager for the new Black-briar meadery.

The analogy this writer was trying to pull out is irreverent.

Bulldog said:

I'm torn on the article. I mean I can see some points, but not all. The worst part of the article was comparing a McDonald's manager getting arrested and Burger king taking over. WTF?!? A manager runs the operations and not the whole franchise. If the manager of McD's, BK, Wal-Mart gets arrested then it would fall to the assistant manager to keep things running. That assistant manager would be Mallus. It was also brought up that the guys family would take over, however, the dude was living at the meadery. So unless the family was elsewhere maybe there was no family left.

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He meant if the ENTIRE McDonalds in that particular location were to shut down due to health problems, it would be ridiculous for another company to take it over, knowing it has those health problems. I think, anyways.

I think I must have stopped paying attention somewhere along the line.

Where is this McDonald's with the health problems? I have a mother-in-law that loves McDonald's.

He had a point until he got to the part of talking to Calcelmo. I'm guessing that he completely ignored this.

"Perhaps there's something you can help me with. There's a giant spider in the ruins. The workers call her Nimhe the poisoned one. You deal with Nimhe and I'll give you access to my museum."

<That spider is as good as dead.>

"Enthusiasm! Good. Here's the key to the dig site."

I guess this guy didn't have the heart to kill Nimhe or else he would've gotten free access to the place without having to sneak in.

Also I was kind of annoyed at the part of him wondering how Brynjoff and co. were able to recognize Karliah on sight. Brynjoff, Devin and Vex aren't exactly spring chickens and they show it in the face. They would have to be at least 40 so it makes sense how they know Karliah since they were a part of the guild before the incident.

Interesting article, although there are a couple points I disagree with.
I'd really like to make a mod that would overhaul the different vanilla questlines with better writing. I can already think of a few adjustments that would allow me to keep the greatest amount of vanilla content for the thieves guild.

Naginata said:

He meant if the ENTIRE McDonalds in that particular location were to shut down due to health problems, it would be ridiculous for another company to take it over, knowing it has those health problems. I think, anyways.

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It happens all the time though. Take a restaurant for example. If the franchise closes due to say using meat that had been contaminated, it isn't unheard of for a different restaurant to come in a change stuff and reopen as something else.

I always knew the Thieves Guild story was broken, but I'd never really stopped to analyze it and notice all the little details that the writer of that blog did. Wow. It's so much worse than I'd thought.

Why he think that Dwemer made translation guide to falmer to modern day language, its Falmer to Dwemer guide.

I stopped reading at the Brynjolf part at the start. Makes too much sense to be wrong.

There are things that makes sense in his article. But one thing I don't agree on at all is the Nightingales being a terrible name. I think it's a great name and was one reason why I liked joining it. I didn't care too much about giving my soul to Nocturnal for the main reason that my dragonborn (all of them) have given their souls to so many different deities. I imagine all the different deadra fighting over him when he finally does die. or maybe he'll become a vampire so he never will die. The storyline of TG at the beginning really bothers me. I stopped playing for a while because I got bored with it. But I still enjoyed it from time to time.

Wow. He may have had a point, but he put a LOT of perks into pedantry. His claiming to be able to fix the story is unbelievably arrogant. Some very good points, some utter crap, all insufferably smug.