Skyrim's Thieves Guild Makes No Sense
Oh good, another faction that has fallen on hard times and needs rescuing. Another faction that will treat me like shit for a bit then gradually come to respect me as I do literally all the work. Another faction that will make me leader later this week. If you can't tell, I think the Thieves Guild is the best faction in the game, but coming from me that's like saying I think HPV is the best STD. Like if you gun-to-my-head forced me to pick one. Still makes zero sense though.
Riften absolutely slaps you in the face with The Thieves Guild like a wet fish when you first arrive in town. The guards will refuse you entry on every gate except for one that happens to be directly in front of like ten people who won't shut the fuck up about the Guild. Then Brynjolf stalks you and more or less forces you to join. Technically there are three ways it can go:
You're poor so you should join,
You're rich but you should join anyway,
You refuse to join... but you should join anyway when you change your mind.
Yes, No, Maybe = The exact same outcome, the classic Bethesda dialogue options. How does Brynjolf know how much gold you have? Well you see, "Wealth is [his] business!" despite the fact that the Guild is doing terribly and he lives in a toilet.
If by now you still feel like you have free will in this open world RPG and aren't just a spectator, try failing every task the Guild gives you from the get go and let the absolute absence of consequences wash over you. Fail to plant the necklace on Brand Shei, nah you can join anyway. Slaughter every single debtor who owes protection money, well at least you got the money, eh? Burn all the Goldenglow bee hives to cinders and destroy the business, we'll just put that down to beginner's luck, have another quest because apparently the 20 other guys we've got down here are somehow worse than you.
If open murder is such a massive no no for the Guild then why am I not in a jail cell for my endless "mistakes" by now. In fact, why are most of the quests in this faction dungeons where the no killing rule is suspended? Why have the rule at all?
Anyway, you've somehow progressed to the worst (and usually my last because it really is that bad) quest in the Guild. Dampened Spirits, the quest in which you poison a vat of mead, is the perfect example of bad Bethesda writing: Do something dumb, brag that it's smart:
So Maven and Mallus, who have spent weeks planning this by the way, are going to frame Sabjorn who owns the rival meadery Honingbrew of poisoning the Captain of the Whiterun Guard in order to put Mallus in charge, who would then run it for Maven. Let's ignore the fact that that is totally not how property law works and Mallus, an employee, would definitely not just be given the meadery on the spot, and that you just destroyed all of Maven's honey supply, and just focus on the job; the obvious way to do this would be for Mallus to poison the cup they serve to the Captain, right? Job done.
No you idiot! The obvious plan would be for Sabjorn to hire you, the complete stranger, to kill rats in his cellar that Mallus planted there (instead of getting his employee Mallus to do it or just do it himself), but instead you dump the rat poison into an entire vat of mead, then hope it magically teleports from the vat to the vintage bottle they are serving the Captain. DUH!
When this plan is explained to you, you have to say "Clever." There are literally no other dialogue options. So if you aren't roleplaying as a moron or a Nord this moment is pretty game breaking. It gets more confusing once the job is done however...
You did the "clever" plan and report back to Maven, she tells you to report the info back to the Guild, so you head straight to Mercer, the boss, and he tells you to piss off, he's busy standing at his desk glaring at nothing, so you go to Brynjolf instead, but somehow Brynjolf already knows the info that Maven sent you to tell him before you told him, and apparently so does Mercer who is furious and wants to talk to you, despite the fact he literally just told you he didn't want to talk to you... Mercer tells you to do the Gullum Ei quest and to speak to Brynjolf for more info so you go straight back to Brynjolf who already knows you're off to see Gullum Ei before you even mention him...
Feeling disoriented yet? You've just been tennis balled back and force passing messages between NPCs (and loading screens) who already have ALL the information and know exactly what you are going to say and withhold information you need to know for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Literally, Maven could have sent you to Gullum Ei as soon as you got back and nothing would be different.
So that's an overview of the set up of the guild, a typical quest, and the awkward in between quest interactions, let's talk about the overall storyline. The Guild has fallen on hard times because twenty years ago Mercer betrayed the old boss Gaius and his hot goth GF Karliah and stole the Skeleton Key from the goddess Nocturnal. Nocturnal has given the Guild a curse of bad luck and Karliah has been playing a game of shadows to ruin Mercer. Mercer's grand plan is to rob the Guild vault and complete Gaius' ultimate heist, to retrieve a valuable Falmer artifact.
Ok. TWENTY YEARS!? How old are these people supposed to be!? Were they tweens when this all went down? It took Karliah this long to figure out fucking with Maven would hurt the Guild? What's she been doing, developing Elder Scrolls 6?!? What exactly is Mercer stealing from the vault after twenty years of bad luck? And why now? Mercer really is striking when the iron is hot with this one! Twenty years to go get something that, by the way, isn't stealing from anyone, by Skyrim standards you're doing a dungeon dive for loot, this isn't a heist, this isn't a thieves guild thing, it's a typical fetch quest. And how come I never get cursed with bad luck when I literally never return the Skeleton Key because it's better than the actual Guild reward? Why does nobody freak out when I return to the Ragged Flagon after Mercer told them all I was dead? NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE!