@kickerwrites: this is true and fair (though I've never interpreted Mercer's obsession as skulking over unrequited interest; rather, she's a loose end that he wants to be rid of once and for all). There's no denying that Mercer Frey is a terrible human being and not very good at covering his tracks. My original post was mostly in jest, a throwback to the first time I played Skyrim when I spent most of the Snow Veil Sanctum quest bemoaning the fact that he wasn't listed as a marriage option on the wiki and that it had to be a mistake and that I was definitely going to run away into the sunset with him once the questline was over (right up until the point that he stabbed me). THAT SAID, I still do think that the questline kind of shoehorns you into taking the moral high ground. Like, we are talking about the Thieves Guild. They ask you to avenge Gallus, they're upset about Mercer's betrayal, they want to restore their honor and respectability, but they're also the ones regularly sending you out to steal family heirlooms from poor people and asking you to threaten smaller merchants who are just trying to make an honest living. Their claim to the moral high ground is shaky, at best. Mercer doesn't give you much of a choice, true, but that's something that could easily be adjusted with some dialogue options that earn his trust and an encounter with him (sometime in between when he stabs you and when you join the Nightingales) in which he sees you're stronger than anticipated and offers you the chance to screw the guild over together. I just think that, as an RpG, the major questlines in the game should have given the player more options to be a truly reprehensible dick. For the role-playing experience. also, the accents thing is true, but 1) I'm an eternal sucker for Stephen Russell's voice, and 2) where does Brynjolf's accent come from? Nobody else in the game has that accent. Where is he from that he would have that accent when nobody else does? Did he make it up? Why won't he answer any questions about his past? Where do the lies end, Brynjolf?
