It happened before in Oblivion, and again now in Skyrim... The two lawful guilds, aligned with the Fighter and Mage heroic archetypes, are kinda lackluster in comparison to their less lawful counterparts, the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.

In Oblivion, the Fighters' Guild has to deal with... unfair competition. Woo. The characters are rather meh, the only interesting quirk being Modren Oreyn's rather... unskilled dabbling in painting.

In Skyrim, things get a little more interesting... the Companions actually have lore of interest; they are from the 500 Companions of Ysgramor. However, your meteoric rise in the ranks is... kinda jarring. You do one odd-job after being properly inducted and BAM, you get to partake in the little dark secret of the group's upper echelons (Since this forum is spoiler-free, I won't say what ). You also become Harbinger just as quicklly it seems.

The Mages' Guild in Oblivion... has a Necromancer Pogrom. The only justification for it is that it seems that Mannimarco and all necros are mustache-twirling cliche villains. None of the characters are really memorable.

In Skyrim, we have.. the College of Winterhold. The *VERY FIRST* mission involves you becoming destined to do something. Not much time at all feeling like a noob. And you don't even really need to be adept at magic, just have Novice-level understanding. And like the Companions, your rise to the top is meteoric.

Conversely, the Thieves' Guild. In Oblivion, we get quite a bit of lore on the Elder Scrolls themselves, and even get to steal one after going on a long line of Chekhov's Gun acquisition quests that help you do it. You actually have to *work* to unlock the next guild main quest. And who can forget everyone's pompously named incompetent guard captain, Hieronymus Lex?

In Skyrim, we get to have some more lore, in the form of the Thieves' patron daedric lord, *AND* you actually have to work to acquire the top spot. And even more importantly, there are more than a handful of uniquely voiced NPC in the guild; The Companions? Only Kodlak and Skjor have a unique(ish) voicetype. Winterhold? Only Ancano and Mirabelle. Here, we have Delvin, we have Vex, we have Brynjolf, we have... a spoilery character. Even their patron, Maven Black-Briar, is the only Jarl or potential Jarl that has a unique voicetype.

The Dark Brotherhood had some flair to it too, a much less bland hub than the two lawful guilds, quest lines with some story and nonlinear completion paths.

And Skyrim's? Your meteoric rise to the top of the guild is actually a point in the story; certain elements of the guild do not take kindly to it. And like the Thieves' Guild, there are many uniquely voiced characters: Astrid, Nazir, and of course, everyone's favorite creepy awesome guy, Cicero. And a few spoilery characters too have nonconventional voicetypes.

So what gives, BGS? Why are the lawful guilds so... so.... bland in comparison to the less lawful ones?

Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

In skyrim, Evil players get the better rewards than the goodies.. Chaotic good or neutrals can get by

This is a NO SPOILER thread, there's a sticky about it. But yeah, as your rightly pointed the mages quest is by far the worst imo and all the companions needed to do was add a few extra radiant quests inbetween the main story ones. Sure there are other misc quests you can do by other people in the guilds, but the tragicness and quickly-save-world-before-its-too-late style of the main ones make you feel like you need to do it in a hurry.

The guilds in question could stand to be longer, no doubt about it. But at the same time I don't want to have to do 25+ little radiant quests to be the boss. I'd say that 10 would be good though--and those ten have to be done before you start the main storyline so that there's a build-up to it. You'd have to do some of these quests alone and some with each meaningful individual member of the respective guilds. And then you'd quest with some of them again as the main story unfolds.

"Hey Newb, here's a newb job for you: Go beat up a guy who's being a PITA... Okay now that you're back from that we're going to send you to get one of the most important articfacts in the history of our guild".

I would rather they fix how guild members approach you once u vecome harbringer or the boss of a guild. Bc if they add all the inbetween stuff(more quest).. Whats the point when they talk to you like a dog?

I would agree with you on companions and college, and then take it a bit further to include thieves guild, dark brotherhood, and every single other quest line. In short, quest lines are weak sauce in this game.

If Enclave in Fallout 3 wasn't just target practice, i would suspect the quest writers at Bethesda are "evil"

But maybe they just have people better at their work working on the "evil" guilds Or if they are the same people, they are better at writing "evil" questlines.