Blind Sighted is genuinely unsatisfying and I finally figured out why

[RiftenWanderer]

just replayed the Thieves Guild ending and man, that final quest really doesn't land the way it should. you spend like half the questline building up to this huge confrontation with Mercer Frey, all this tension about him being a traitor, and then the actual fight is just... him and you in a cave? no Guild members backing you up, no dramatic showdown in Riften, nothing. it feels like the questline just deflates right at the finish line.

compared to something like Forbidden Legend where every piece of the puzzle actually matters and the ending ties back to the whole thing, Blind Sighted just feels rushed. you get the artifact, there's a brief cutscene, and then you're Guild Master. the whole Karliah redemption arc gets resolved in like two dialogue options and suddenly you're running the Guild with someone the game barely developed.

idk, maybe I'm being too harsh on it. does anyone else feel like the Thieves Guild questline needed one more act or something to actually stick the landing?

 

[DragonbornVet]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. The Thieves Guild questline does have solid buildup - the whole Mercer betrayal, Karliah coming back, the skeleton key stuff - but then Blindsighted just kind of... ends it. You're right that there's no real payoff to all that tension.

That said, I think the actual problem is less about needing another act and more about Mercer as a final boss. The fight itself is underwhelming because he's just a dude with a sword and the Ebony Mail. You can cheese him in about thirty seconds if you know what you're doing, and even on a legit playthrough he's not particularly threatening compared to, say, Miraak or even some of the Daedric quest bosses. The whole "you and him in a cave" thing would work fine if the fight actually felt climactic, but it doesn't.

The Karliah thing I'll push back on a bit though. Yeah her dialogue is minimal, but she was literally gone for like a hundred years and then shows up as a ghost. The game can't exactly give her a full character arc in two quests. What's there works - she's competent, she's got history with Mercer, she makes sense as a co-leader. Could it be better? Sure. But I don't think she's underdeveloped so much as the questline just doesn't have room to breathe.

If anything, the real issue is that the Thieves Guild questline tries to do too much in too few quests. You've got the whole Goldmaster situation, the Radiant jobs, Mercer's betrayal, Karliah's return, and the Daedric artifact all crammed together. Something had to give, and apparently it was the ending.