Why nobody talks about how good the Thieves Guild questline actually is

[WhiterunModder]

I'm on my third playthrough and just finished Speaking with Silence and it genuinely might be the best-paced faction quest in the game. Like, the Companions questline feels like it's just "go here, kill thing" until you're suddenly a werewolf, and the Dark Brotherhood has some incredible quests but the pacing is all over the place. But the Thieves Guild? It actually builds. You go from doing radiant jobs to breaking into the Goldenglow Estate, then you're pulling off actual heists, and by the time you're infiltrating the Thieves Guild headquarters itself the stakes feel earned.

And Mercer Frey as an antagonist is way more interesting than people give him credit for. He's not some grand evil wizard, he's just a guy who got greedy and paranoid. The betrayal actually lands because you've spent time with him.

The only thing holding it back is that the radiant jobs after you join can get tedious, but that's not really a questline problem, that's just how radiant jobs work. If you actually stick to the main quest thread it's paced really well.

Am I the only one who ranks this above the Dawnguard and Dragonborn faction stuff? I feel like it gets overshadowed because stealth archer is "cringe" or whatever but the actual story is solid.

 

[TamrielTactician]

I'd actually push back a bit here. Speaking with Silence is great, yeah, but I think the pacing argument falls apart once you factor in what comes after. The main quest thread itself is solid until you hit Mercer's betrayal, but then the endgame is basically "go to this dungeon, fight Mercer, done." Compared to something like Blindsighted where you're actually hunting him down with consequences, it feels rushed.

And Mercer as an antagonist - I get what you're saying, but he's also kind of a non-entity for most of the questline. He's just there. You don't really interact with him meaningfully until the betrayal, and by then it's almost over. The Dark Brotherhood does this better because you're actually building a relationship with your targets and the guild itself. With Mercer you're mostly just taking orders from Brynjolf.

That said, you're right that the Thieves Guild gets unfairly dunked on. The Goldenglow Estate job is genuinely fun, and the whole "infiltrate the guild" sequence is cool. I just think it's more about specific quests being well-designed than the overall arc being better than Dawnguard or Dragonborn. Those DLCs have way more content and their questlines don't really have the same "then what?" problem once you finish the main thread.

Radiant jobs being tedious is also kind of unavoidable, yeah, but they're way more noticeable in the Thieves Guild since the main quest is so short.