No One Escapes Cidhna Mine actually makes sense if you side with the guards first

[TamrielTactician]

just realized I've been doing this quest backwards for like three playthroughs. if you talk to the guards outside the mine before going in, the whole thing flows way better and doesn't trigger the broken dialogue stuff people complain about.

I kept getting stuck because I'd go straight to Madanach and then the guards would have nothing to say, or the escape sequence would bug out. but this time I actually talked to the Markarth guard captain first, got the actual briefing, THEN went in to talk to Madanach. everything progressed smoothly and the end actually felt earned instead of janky.

also the pacing is way better. you're not just wandering around a mine talking to a forsworn leader with no context. you actually know what you're walking into. has anyone else noticed this or am I just late to the party?

 

[RiftenWanderer]

yeah you're definitely not alone on this but I think you might be giving the quest a bit too much credit lol. I did it that way on my last playthrough and yeah, the dialogue flows better, but the quest design itself is still kind of a mess? like the whole thing feels like it's trying to do two completely different quests at once - the "investigate the murder" angle and the "prison break" angle - and they don't really mesh together.

talking to the guards first helps with pacing for sure, but imo the real issue is that the quest doesn't actually care which side you pick. you can side with Madanach, get him out, and then the guards are just... cool with it? or you can side with the guards and nobody really reacts to you freeing a bunch of forsworn prisoners. it's less that the quest makes sense now and more that you're just hitting the beats in the right order so it feels less broken.

that said I do appreciate that you can actually approach it differently instead of just having one "correct" path, so maybe that's what you mean by it making sense. what happens if you go back to Markarth after siding with Madanach? I don't think I've actually finished it that way.