Really hate Dark Brotherhood Guild

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:21 am

I've tried to get through this before, a couple of times, and gave up both times. It's just stomach-churning, most of it.

However, I thought I'd give it another chance, and loaded up an old game with a lvl 45 Breton stealth/mage/combat char, who had accidentally killed someone she was trying to protect and thus had the blade of woe in her inventory.

Ok. I made myself play it through to the end. It's appalling. I actually felt physically sick most of the time I was playing it, and it was only iron determination that kept me playing. I'll never play it through again.

Does anyone else find this particular quest-line sickening? Or am I just an old woman?

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:31 am

No, you're not alone, it's meant to be sickening, they are evil scum of the earth after all!

I also had problems with the fighter's guild, similarly to your experience withe the DB, I've only gone through it once by forcing myself to. As my favourite fighter type in Oblivion is a Paladin, I can't go beyond the point where Oreyn demands that you break the Guildmaster's rules obviously. Even when I've gone beyond that point I reach a breaking point with the quest either at the torture scene, or at the point where you're forced to drink an unknown, but obviously dodgy narcotic. I guess I just have problems playing an evil character, I've done it just the once, finishing both the DB and Fighters Guild quests, and then topping it off with Endrek Saar's Servants of the Dawn mod.

SupaCat · Post by **SupaCat** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:35 am

No, I too found the Dark Brotherhood kind of sickening. I really don't know why, because how many people don't you kill in the game without thinking about it?

Maybe it's because of the music, which makes me kinda hate the game when in dungeons. Also, the ruthless killing of one an other, it seems so unbelievable. Also, because of the darkness in the headquarters, I had to use my Khajits nighteye which makes the screen go blue, and maybe this contributes to the sickening?

I guess that the evilniss in the campaign is so... Movie-evil liken you know, without any ray of good in it and since that is unnatural, you get sick, like in 'Clockwork Orange'.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:01 am

I have always had a very hard time playing an evil character in games, and usually I end up creating a persona which is a sort of projection of myself.
Whenever I've taken those silly online "which D&D alignment are you" quizzes I've always ended up as either chaotic good or chaotic neutral, depending on my mood and circumstances at the time. I suppose this is because I'm largely a well-intentioned person, but I have my own moral code which doesn't necessarily accord with that of mainstream society.

That being the case, for me, creating a character who kills without being provoked is very difficult but also interesting.
I actually did this the first time so I could play the Dark Brotherhood because I had read in many places that the quests were the best-written in the whole game. Having played it through, I tend to concur, so I'm pleased I gave it a chance. But.... in order to play a character that could commit such heinous and chilling acts I had to create a back story of horrific abuse and torment. She is a profoundly tortured character somewhat reminiscent of Viconia from BG2.

It has been a very interesting psychological journey to role play like this because it is extremely foreign to me, it's a little like when actors have to "get into the mind" of their character. I have been fascinated enough, though, to recreate the character in Morrowind, thus giving her more history... I downloaded the "In the Name of Sithis" mod, which adds the DB to the game, and she'll also go through the ranks of the Morag Tong. (and yes, I've justified that contradiction in my mind

)

As I said though, it would be impossible for me to play an assassin without creating a sordid history for her. This is probably because at some level I'm able to understand how people can be influenced by circumstance but I have no grasp at all of the utterly cold-blooded sociopath.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:18 am

There is a mod called Versus Dark Brotherhood which allows you to take on the evil assassins, as the name implies, you can find it here. I quite enjoyed it, the only problem I had with it is that you have to trigger Lucien's appearance to start the quest, but fortunately there are several bugged characters that are incorrectly labeled as innocents. One word of warning, the final encounter can be very tough, but it should be of course.

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:01 pm

I'm glad I'm not alone!

I don't think it was the music or atmospher or light levels that made it bad - it was coldbloodedly killing people who were either helpless or positively nice. My chars normally don't kill anything that doesn't attack first.

Why didn't I think of creating a tortured background for my char?

Such a good idea!
I once played a Dark Elf male in Online PnP D&D (if that isn't a contradiction in terms I don't know what is!); I normally played Healer types, very virtuous, and someone started a game in which we all had to play someone totally opposite to anything we'd played before - hence the dark elf male with no morals (though he had a good deal of commonsense and wasn't rabidly killing everything in sight as the opposite of my virtuous Healer should have been!) It was a lot of fun to get into the mindset, and he was my favourite character in the end! :laugh:

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:12 pm

galraen wrote:No, you're not alone, it's meant to be sickening, they are evil scum of the earth after all!

I also had problems with the fighter's guild, similarly to your experience withe the DB, I've only gone through it once by forcing myself to. As my favourite fighter type in Oblivion is a Paladin, I can't go beyond the point where Oreyn demands that you break the Guildmaster's rules obviously. Even when I've gone beyond that point I reach a breaking point with the quest either at the torture scene, or at the point where you're forced to drink an unknown, but obviously dodgy narcotic. I guess I just have problems playing an evil character, I've done it just the once, finishing both the DB and Fighters Guild quests, and then topping it off with Endrek Saar's Servants of the Dawn mod.

I've only played FG myself a couple of times.Even the first time through you KNOW at one point that something totally wrong is going to happen and you have to do it anyway... no, not for me, either.

Mage Guild is ok and I don't much mind Thieve's Guild because there is very little that I consider 'real' theft in it. Most of the stuff you need is available from the homes of two people who end up dead in other quests (1 Mages, 1 market-based individual quest) which, even though red-handed, don't seem like real stealing, because there are no family members to take over the property; and a haul of skooma from a barrel on the waterfront. The judicious pickpocketing of a couple of guards

will net you 2 silver bows, and you have all the loot you need to fence to complete the questline..

Invisable Man · Post by **Invisable Man** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:58 am

wow

wow this is wired i actually found the sickening and disturbing feel of the dark brotherhood to be quite well scripted and fun, but then agian i almost always play an evil character because its just so dam fun, well that was my opinion when going into the game, but thats why i liked the dark brotherhood it gave me everything i had hoped for, deception, killing, masercuring, it was more than i hoped for.

call me demented if you will but i found that claustrophobic and shadowy feel to be most entertaining

Kilted Savage · Post by **Kilted Savage** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:11 am

Very interesting and cool to see others had the same issue when playing this particular quest but you have to admit, Shadowmere is just too good to pass up.

What I found worked for me was to justify the killing of the various targets as "deserving". If you talk to Rufio in the first one, he admits to killing? a female in what almost sounds like a rape gone bad so he was easy for me. Then you have a pirate, and pirates were never like Orlando Bloom or Captain Jack Sparrow so I was ok with that one. Then there's the drug user that killed his supplier, the wizard working on becoming a lich and the only real questionable ones in my head were the staged accident/wood elf and the one in Chorrol with the fake murder and that was only because this guy had his own mother killed. It was all I could do not to kill him and fail the mission. Then you get to "cleanse" the sanctuary, killing off other assassins so that was acceptable as long as you don't become interested in them as NPCs and finally you're able to kill off plenty of the higher ups. That being said, yes the murder of that family was tough. REALLY tough but I found that if I didn't talk to any of them and did the deed at night so I didn't have to look at them, I was ok.

The other thing that allowed me to play through was that I'm a huge fan of David Eddings Belgariad and "Silk" was a thief and an assassin in those books and I tried to put that sort of persona in my character.

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:40 pm

Interesting to see how you dealt with it.

And yes, some of 'em it wasn't that difficult, true. No worse than killing bandits, I suppose. But the bandits attack you, so you have to defend yourself. Most of the DB assassinations were just that: assassinations. They didn't attack you first, you had to attack THEM. And most of 'em didn't stand a chance. And that mother and her children? That was sickening.
And I couldn't attack the assassins in the sanctuary, even though I knew they really were not very nice, because they all gave you some idea of their background, and so you knew why they became what they were. I'm afraid I took the cowards way out: I snitched all the poisoned apples from Lucian, (took all the food from the sanctuary when I realised they weren't going to eat 'em if there was anything else) and put the poisoned apples in the food cupboard in the sleeping quarters. I know my char killed 'em but it didn't feel so direct and personal...

AND it was something an assassin would do...

Marik333 · Post by **Marik333** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 3:07 pm

Playing characters that are so twisted gives me a bit of a thrill... sorta like watching The Ring and having somebody who's number doesn't show up on caller ID call you halfway through... Needless to say, they had to leave a message, and I had to turn all the lights on...

I always play through the 1st time as a "good" character, somebody who I like to think of as "me" if I was in their position... Nowadays, though, w/ more complex evil storylines, I find myself actually being able to identify w/ a lot of the darker characters, only b/c everybody experiences bad things, those dark characters just decided to act a certain way about it. 2nd playthrough is always my sinister, sadistic monster playthrough, and then, a few months later, I'll go back through as a good guy, just to do everything that I missed from doing it my 1st time through from that perspective.

As far as the DB questline goes, I absolutely LOVED it. Hardest thing for me was trying to figure out how to rationalize my dark elf killing a beggar for his sleeping roll when I had plenty of gold for an inn... And then the family. The mom was the hardest, the others at least weren't as downright smiley and nice to you. And one of them actually ticked me off to the point where I could rationalize them "deserving it".

MindFever · Post by **MindFever** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:22 pm

Psychological profile/Redemption aspect

Indeed... i agree.

Although i like to switch my character's path. I like the prospect of redemption played thru the game.If for one part,a character is good and the world brought him experiences that made him bitter,I like to play so that i can redeem myself during gameplay.Or i can just start being an assasin who found better things to do than killin people for money

What i've read from you folks it could be a nice psychological profile... no no,i dont think that anyone who enjoys being evil in this games is indeed a "demented sociopath" or anything like that.I just think that this could have an analitical quality in a psychological sense. I know why i like the prospect of redemption ... do you know why you like being good or evil?
Also i laughed when someone described allmost litelarly Chaotic-good as it was written in NWN 2

dont get me wrong, i didnt laugh in mockery... i laughed because i thought the same thing.

Take care people, this site ownz da b0x!

(yeah i know: whatever)

Marik333 · Post by **Marik333** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 7:18 pm

Lol, I did the exact opposite... I went back to the high elf mage that I played my "good guy" time through w/, and, after getting a few mods, made him a necromancer who stole the souls of all the people at every Mages' Guild possible, performed a ritual, and turned himself into a lich. Sort of a "fall from grace", considering I also trapped the souls of the Crusaders that I was the leader of, too.

Never tried the "redemption" angle... I'll have to try and find a way, now.

MindFever · Post by **MindFever** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 7:58 pm

lol,i laughed for a minute

) yeah,i know what you mean... actualy,possibly its the same thing i've been talking about. make up a story in your mind why you did this...it makes it more enjoyable a gameplay

if you wanna get technical that is...

People like to experiment with their opopsited in a "safe" way ...wich is role playing (in video games i mean...). But its a bit more complicated,since some could copy their actual emotional state and project it to their gameplay style... hehe, i dont wanna bore you but long story short: its fun doing "sh*t" inside a video game

lol

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:02 am

Well, you might find it 'fun' to play evil chars, but I really hate it!

MindFever · Post by **MindFever** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:14 am

woop,s opposited=opposites

it was kinda late when i wrote that...

Yeah,i dont realy like being an evil character too...but, if i force myself of doing it i like the prospect of redemption to be put in play. I never tried the Dark Brotherhood missions after the first one.Their base and philosophy is realy sick... good job though

Yan Gotoxy · Post by **Yan Gotoxy** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 4:57 pm

Well, ive tried the Dark Brotherhood quests, and for me, some of those quests, i didnt even know how ive done it! I was just determined to see how that would end... and i think the way it ends its the way it should end! Evil is always destroyed in most stories, but on this quest-line... its evil that destroys evil! its wierd. But there are some quests there that was like a "punch" in the heart, like the quest where you have to "cleanse" the sanctuary, just after the only seller of the DB appoligizes for his behaviour and said that wanted to be my friend, my "great" friend... and i had to kill him! And in the end, the betrayer wasnt any of those on the sanctuary! It was like "killing friends for nothing"! Since im kinda evil (not the full meaning of the word, of course lol), the rest of the missions were not really a "pain in the heart" but to kill a guy that just said "im sorry, i want to be your friend" it was...

i didnt found anymore quest like that so far and i hope i wont...

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:40 am

For some people - me included - the DB quest line is the hardest: not from point of view of difficulty of quests, but for moral unacceptability. Which is why I have only played it to the end once.

No, no other Guild quest line is like that. Though there is one very queasy-making quest in the Fighter's Guild. Which is why I only ever did it once.

I still JOIN the FG, but mostly only to get access to training. I get to a point in the quest line where I just stop.

Mage Guild is the least offensive. Thieve's Guild, you only have to steel yourself to do a bit of burglery of 2 houses of already dead people, pickpocket a couple of guards, and snitch some skooma from a trafficker's stash, and you've done all the bad stuff. The rest is all sneaky stuff and fun.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:00 am

The problem I face is that, in my view, the DB and Thieves Guild are the most interesting in terms of story, as well as the best-written...
The Fighter's is OK, and while the one horrible act makes you feel pretty awful, it is believable and makes you that much more eager to follow the plot line to its inevitable conclusion.
The Mage's Guild, IMO, is probably the most poorly executed of all, it's just not all that exciting or interesting. "Bland" sums it up rather well.

For the most part I find the side quests and miscellaneous quests to be much better in Oblivion than Morrowind; they have more depth (I view MW's main quest to be far better though). However, I'd actually rate the Mage's Guild in Oblivion as less interesting than its counterpart in Morrowind.

The other problem is that there are fewer joinable factions in Oblivion (no Great Houses, no Imperial Legion, no Imperial Cult.), so not joining the DB cuts play time even further...

I just get the sense that in Oblivion they went overwhelmingly for streamlining and sameness in every respect, and they cut a lot of corners as a result.

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:33 pm

Yes, the Mage Guild quest line is pretty bland after the first time you play it through. And yes, there is much more depth to DB and FG. But, DB just makes me cringe...
TG, on the other hand, is quite long, and once you have got to the GF's quests it gets nice because it involves a lot of sneaking around without being seen (I like doing that :laugh:, though you can also go at it bull-at-a-gate style in some places). It's my favourite guild in Oblivion.

I actually find a that a lot of the stuff you don't like, DG, is quite a relief after all the roaming around in Morrowind, looking for places, getting lost, frustrated, and downright disgusted. Often, even when I KNEW where a place was from previous times playing, I couldn't find it without a lot of searching around. Wasted a lot of time, imo. I know you like it that way!

But yeah, the main quest in Morrowind was much better.