So is there any group I am missing here? Every little "clique" seems to be leaning towards being evil in the game. Not everyone finds it 'cool' to be a little bad rebel.

Companions = Smelly werewolves, I thought they were the one group that would be good and honorable but instead they are just canine mercenaries.
Dark Brotherhood = Murderers, sociopaths
Thieves Guild = Enough said in the name itself. Group for rats.
Boethia Follower = Have to sacrifice an innocent person on an altar
The Blades = Couple of fools led by anger and they want a good dragon dead

Only clique you join that is actually not evil is the College of Winterhold, and thats for mages only.
The Greybeards dont count as you just learn a few shouts from them, not really a place where you can hang out and get quests.

Not to mention they constantly force you to accept quests or do things you dont want to. Like accepting the thieves guild quest, and when I killed all the Boethia followers I was forced to become the main follower afterwards (no option to say no)

I think it depends on your views of ''good and ''evil''. I believe the companions good because they use a power like becoming a to help and save people. Every faction is morally grey there is no black and white.


*massive spoiler alert wrong section

Only thing that comes to mind are the quests for the temples of Dibella, Kynareth and Mara. Which aren't really a faction and are really quite short, but ... ah well, not much difference to the other factions then.

There is nothing evil about the Companions, and they are quite honorable. There is also nothing really inherently evil about being a werewolf either.

You can just walk away though, just exit the conversation without a response.

I'd only consider the DB and the Daedric cults to be "evil" from the pov of a typical inhabitant of tamriel, the rest are shades of gray.
Its a pity that more quests don't give you choices but sometimes your choices should prevent you advancing a questline.

Well I thought the same till I started hearing all of them say stuff like "As long as the money is good, well help them" sounds more like mercenaries and good-doers

Thieves guild is all about cheating/robbing peoples stuff and forcing others to pay a "tax". Its kind of like an annoying gang of tough guys nobody wants around

Depends how you look at things I think.

Some daedric quests offer good and evil ways of resolving them - some aren't easy to nail down as one or the other and some are so dark that the only "good" option is to avoid traffic with such beings.

Meridia is pretty "good."
Sheogorath is just a fun loving guy - and his quest is not particularly evil
Vaermina's quest has good and evil ending options.
Mehrunes Dagon - related quest also has a non-evil ending option.

Really the way to do-good and help people of skyrim is to actually take it upon yourself and go out amongst them helping. Becoming Thane in most (not so much Morthal depending on how you view the forsworn) can be a helpful way to guide-yourself to good deeds. Who knows, you might end up slaying an ancient undead fiend with I think 10 or so in-game books devoted to them and save an entire chunk of the province in what you thought was a just a "Clear bad guy type a from dungeon x" quest.

well i dont think any faction should be inhumanely pure and righteous, but you do have a point. the companions are basically mercs and glory-hounds (haha...puns), any good they do is unintentional; they just want money and a good fight. the college is rather neutral, the DB obviously evil and the thieves guild probably even more evil; the DB is campy and lighthearted and just wants you to kill people, but the thieves guild starting out is like "go savagely beat people for money. what? we do it all the time. its not weird...". they have an ironically darker tone.

all there is is the laughably short and unsatisfying main quest. the civil war can be seen as good depending on your outlook, but why cant we just join the vigilants of stendarr to just go purge some daedra from the world or something?

As I said shades of gray. If you call them evil what are professional assassains, cults devoted to destroying the world etc?

The College of Winterhold is not evil, the companions arent evil too, the most evil jobs that u get from the companions are to rough somebody up(fist fight them) they have alot of quests requiring u to kill bandits, or rescue hostages, also being a werewolf is not evil by itself. Joining the war on either side is not evil too, thats just what war is like, its only up to u to decide wich side is better from your point of view for skyrim(if you really insist on being a messiah). Thieves guild quests arent evil too in my opinion - they dont kill thats their first rule if u kill someone u dont get paid, they are actually in the gray area. The only evil factions are the dark brotherhood and most of the daedric lords. Some not evil daedric princes are Meridia, Sheogorath, Sanguine isnt evil too hes basically just a guy who likes to party hard haha

They do have to cover the bills, y'know. (And really, the nature of the jobs they take is such that hazard pay is expected.)

But the main thing is that the missions they undertake on behalf of clients is honorable in some fashion - it's not like they accept jobs to massacre innocents or similarly unscrupulous stuff.

So yes, they're mercenaries, but they have standards (and a reputation to maintain) that most mercenaries don't.

i wouldn't say the Imperials were evil, just dumb. For the Empire!

Its unfortunate that you can't join the Psijic order or the Vigilant of Stendarr. Those are the two factions I want to join on my good mage.

This.

Join the Bard's College, no homo mate.

Skyrim is a pretty grim(dark?) province. People may claim to be honorable, but survival always comes first.

Chivalry and polite conversation is for milkdrinking imperials

e: Or as the pundits would say; I used to be good guy, then I took an arrow to the knee!

Does it really matter if they are "evil"? Like others have said, I don't think the Companions are, the fact that they are werewolves doesn't make them evil. I'm trying to complete the quests for every faction. I have finished The Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and I am on my way to finishing the Companions Questline. Obviously, the morals of the first two factions I joined are questionable, but in Skyrim, there's really no downside. You get a ton of great items, there's little bounty, there's no "karma" factor, and if nobody sees the crime, it's like it didn't happen. So if you want your character to be "good" because that's just how you play, you will have trouble finding "good" factions. But if you only want him to be good because your worried about the in-game effects of a "bad" character, there arn't really any.

I think he means RP-wise, not because he's not sure he can get away with it in interactions with NPCs. It's pretty jarring for your RP to keep thinking of your character as good when he's in the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

doesn't really work like that though
I unknowingly got an invite by the thieves guild
and just going to the bar where they hang out was enough to get me noted as a member later on in the game