The guilds feel so small..

[tnyrmn]

I know a lot has been said about the disappointing length of the guild quests in Skyrim, but a related problem occurred to me as well. The guilds appear to be really small institutions in Skyrim. In Oblivion the guilds really felt like large well structured organizations that were capable of exerting some power on the province. The fighters guild had dozens of people involved and a couple of guildhalls in different cities. The mages guild was arguably the most widespread with dozens of people at the arcane university alone as well as a guild hall in every major city. This really helped the mages guild feel like a powerful institution. Admittedly the dark brotherhood was similar in Oblivion as it is in Skyrim (really only one main location). The Thieves guild at least had fences and contacts throughout all the cities.

 

In Skyrim, the companions have one guild hall which consists of about 8 people, and they approach you almost immediately instead of you approaching them as a hopeful recruit. The college of winterhold is also a single building, and no one likes them. Both of these groups have zero contact with any other cities or organizations, they are essentially isolated and appear to have little impact on anything. The thieves guild seems like the only guild in Skyrim that has contact and interactions with cities besides their home turf (and thats largely a function of their job, you need homes to steal things from).

 

All of this is really disappointing, and it is really reflected in the isolated nature of the questlines as well (thieves guild and db excepted). I'm not sure who came up with this philosophy but it was a big miss and these guilds feel way less important than the ones in Oblivion. I realize there are some flavor issues going on here. Nords distrust magic so why would the mage college be prominent, and the old mages guild collapsed. I understand that, but well, they chose to make that part of the story and their decisions were limited around that setting. They could have chose something else, or they could simply say the imperial influence made magic practice more common and accepted over time. Why aren't their smaller winterhold college affiliated alchemy shops or something of that nature.

 

As for the companions, why do they not have guild halls in other cities? There is no reason not too, and they could have diversified the quests more. Maybe put Jorvasskr (sp) in a different city, and a smaller guild hall in whiterun, then they could have set up a few quests to get your foot in the door before being sent off to the big time. Just seems like another missed opportunity to make the game world more engaging.

[PsxMeUP]

The fact that magic is frowned upon could have been an excuse to make it more interesting, not a reason to make it small like it is now. There could have been secret mage dens throughout Skyrim, which could have been operating at the request of the emperor, and so on - much more interesting than what it is now. But we can always hope that the DLC will complete the game. Edited May 24, 2012 by PsxMeUP

[RedRavyn]

I'd rate the guilds in Skyrim as follows, from best to worst:

 

1. Thieves Guild
2. Dark Brotherhood
3. Companions
4. College of Winterhold
5. Bard's College

This is based upon not only the effort which Bethesda put into developing them, but also the general "feel" for those factions which I get from playing the game from various angles.

 

While I don't personally like the fact that Bethesda made the Thieves Guild little more than a band of thugs in Skyrim, they did make the questline reasonably expansive. The problem is that it suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. You wind up actually doing things that have only limited impact on the Thieves Guild, itself, because of the inclusion of the whole Nightingales story arc. This should have been an entirely separate organization, unrelated to the Thieves Guild, and the Thieves Guild should have been further developed on its own, as was done in Oblivion.

 

The Dark Brotherhood is also somewhat expansive, in that you get do to a lot of things all over Skyrim. It was a disappointment for me, though, and for the same reason that it was disappointing for me in Oblivion. The entire questline, like every other questline in both games, is basically "unfinished". Bethesda doesn't follow through with the logical consequences of attaining "guildmaster" status in any of the guilds. You're still out there, as Listener of the DB, doing all the hits, yourself.

 

The Companions aren't supposed to be another Fighters Guild, so I can see them having only one major presence in Jorrvaskr. However, they are much too small to be responsible for all the things they're supposed to be doing around Skyrim. It just doesn't make sense. Again, the Companions get off on a tangent with werewolf stuff that has no direct bearing on the Companions at all. Actual Companions-related quests are pretty much restricted to radiant "go kill this or go rescue this person" quests, and they go on forever ad nauseum. I do hope this isn't indicative of a new game design philosophy in which guilds are "splintered" and "dumbified" just because the developers are unable (or unwilling) to stick with a theme and develop it fully, but it looks like that's where we're headed.

 

The College of Winterhold should have a larger presence in Skyrim. I agree. That means more people there, and not "guild halls" scattered around the country, though. It doesn't seem so much a "college" as a backwater school that just happens to be headquartered in a large building. As in Oblivion, the questline stayed true to the whole concept of mages doing mage stuff, although I would have been more pleased had there been something like an "Archeology Guild" that was responsible for the Saarthal excavation, with the College sending in mages as advisers. That would make a lot more sense than having mage apprentices wielding pickaxes and shovels and having the knowledge and skill not to damage artifacts.

 

The Bard's College is the one total failure by the developers in the creation of guilds for Skyrim. What can I say, but that having a single, fairly short questline, and three even shorter (and buggy) side quests, with no advancement in the guild and no ability to sing, recite poetry, or play musical instruments for the time you put into it is a supreme disappointment? Actually I have an answer. Get Bethesda to fire a marketing department that was probably responsible for a premature release of Skyrim, which was likely one of the reasons that the Bard's College never got finished.

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

I haven't had any motivation to finish the main quest nevermind the guilds.. apart from Skyrim not seeing as epic as Oblivion i was disappointed with the Dark Brotherhood's sanctuary as i wanted the one from Cyrodill instead of a damp pit. And yeah the Bard's college is a joke why would i want to be a musician?