Over so often in these hallowed forums I read the complaints of disgruntled players who think Skyrim was dumbed down, the quests are easy or that the guilds have almost no depths to them, especially concerning advancement and how you do a couple of dozen quests and then you are the big kahuna, grandmaster or Bandit king or whatever.

I tend to agree on some points, disagree on others but overall I enjoy Skyrim quite a lot actually, and most of my issues with the game have been solved by mods anyway so no big deal.

This weekend I was without my gaming PC, but my laptop is capable enough to run Daggerfall and Morrowind, so I decided to play a straight up thief character (no magic or archery skills) for a change; it proved to be fun so I decided to try the Thieves guild in Skyrim too. I usually play sneaky assassins so I decided to use my existing character for those quests. I went on with it, get this steal that, but remembering just how weak my thief character in the other games was I decided to try to actually play (not roleplay) my “kill anyone in my way” assassin as a sneaky thief, and lo and behold there it was.

The whole “you don’t have to be a magic user to beat their guild quests” was there for thieves too; you don’t actually have to be good at sneaking, maybe you use a couple of muffle spells to sneak around or an invisibility poison, and if it gets too tough pull out your sword a whack some baddies; the vast majority of the quests are meant to be beaten by almost any class right?

But then again are you not supposed to be playing a certain type of character to do a certain quest? If you join the thieves’ guild you either have the skills to sneak around, the spells, the potions or an item to make up for it; maybe you just want to be a thief or find their quests fun…otherwise the only one who is getting cheated is yourself.

Sure, the game gives you all the freedom to do any quest, join any guild and advance in them but it is up to you the gamer to take that freedom and use it wisely by not spoiling your game, Wannabe a thief; then do sneaky stuff…don’t complain that the game doesn’t force you to do it or fail, play like you want to play you know?

I tried being sneaky in non guild missions, actually not killing anybody that wasn’t necessary, picking locks instead of looking for keys, or pick pocketing those from sleeping mini bosses in forts and dungeons and it was even better than in the older games because here you can make noise with an arrow (Thief style) and while they go to investigate you sneak into their guarded rooms.

I must admit I still prefer my “no prisoners” approach to sneaking around and backstabbing everybody I can…but it is nice to have that great freedom to actually changing play styles even with a same character and having a different experience with it.

I rather have a game that gives me more freedom to play like I want to plat rather than how the devs decided to allow me to play you know?

that text hurts my eyes