Thus always to vandals!

I love this quest.

You're in Skyrim. Undead are all around and the events of Oblivion are still discussed here and there. The house is abandoned, and no one has been seen going in or out. You're not trespassing as much as you're investigating, much like how you "broke" into the house in Morthal. It doesn't affect your moral standing in the least. Oh, and let's not forget what Markarth really is, either. I doubt the guards, or anyone else would have helped even if the Vigilant had proof that something foul was going on. Maybe you're a master illusionist too, and for whatever reason you thought you would be able to reason with the Vigilant inside if he were really going to kill innocents (but lets also not forget that "innocents" in this game tend to attack you, a lot).

Being trapped in the house and forced to kill someone you had just decided to help is a problem a lot of people have with this quest already, but since Molag Bal is a powerful Daedric prince, there's really nothing much we can do. We have to kill him to defend ourselves, which, again, does not affect our moral standing.

Molag Bal mentions his intentions for a priest of Boethiah, and tasks you with saving him (as for his other motives.. lets find this guy and warn him). Even if you didn't actually want to have him confront Molag Bal, you'd still want to go out of your way to safe another life, no matter how corrupt. Maybe it could be seen as a penance for having killed the Vigilant? So you go off to find and save this man. However, upon finding and saving him, the only dialogue option you have is to tell him of Molag Bal, which causes him to rush off to Markarth. Now, I don't know about you, but when someone is about to jump out of a building or step in front of a bus, I'd like to think I would try and stop them. This is no different. So, you go back to the house to try and make sure the priest doesn't get killed (of course, you were just in that house and forced to kill the Vigilant, but lets not forget he attacked you and there actually may have been a way out -- either way, you may not be thinking rationally and simply wish to do anything you could possibly do to make sure it doesn't end badly.. again). [censored], now you're trapped once again and tasked with killing a man, innocent in your point of view, by beating him with a rusty mace. Yay.

There are so many things Bethesda could have done with this. You should have been able to warn the priest in such a way that he did not wish to go back to the house. You could have desecrated the altar yourself. You could have broken the "cage" the man was in and tried to flee (you're the [censored] Dragonborn). You could have "locked" the house after leaving initially. Hell, you could have done a lot to prevent all that from happening, but Bethesda simply did not give you the tools to do so. They did in other quests, such as the one from Dawnstar, so it's not as though Bethesda was incapable of doing it. They simply chose not to, and that was a mistake on their part.

Confining our actions to what's possible in-game is completely moot. The entire point of this thread (as I see it) is to discuss what Bethesda could have done differently, which is to say.. a lot.


Oh, and before anyone chimes in with, "He's a Daedric prince! You have to do what he says, or else!" - we stood up to and demanded Clavicus Vile take back his dog, pissed off Azura, ignored both Vaermina and Hermaeus Mora, and sided against both Hircine and Mehrunes Dagon. Why the hell can we not tell Molag Bal to lick our boots as well?

Very good anolaysis on something nobody even thought of debating.

Old man with a rusted mace?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9lcJJuHPEs&feature=player_detailpage#t=58s

The guards are corrupt and the citizens are cannibals. You have every reason to investigate that house, and they have no reason to help you or the Vigilant. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it turned out they all knew what was in there.

I'd actually object to you being able to resist a powerful Daedric lord once the priest is within his grasp. Yes, you are the Dragonborn, but even then you are nothing before the might of an entity like Molag Bal.




You'd only know they are Cannibals if you have agreed to help out a Daedric lord before. So really, helping another one shouldn't pose any more moral problems even if you think that this time there is also a "good" way out.

You state your case very well, but in the end, what your argument boils down to is, you want there to be a "good" ending possible to everything.

I have to disagree. I LOVE the fact that sometimes, you just can't make everything work out for the best, and I believe there should always be some quests in a game like that. Given that this quest, and many others, have you dealing with evil creatures, these SHOULD be the type of quests where there's no "lawful good" option. I'd have been fine with EVERY Daedric quest being that way, but I'm glad at least this one is.

Going by your moral standards then, it is perfectly fine for me to track down a burglar and do whatever I like with them (included killing them on mere accusations and "infromation" I aquired from random strangers) if the police tell me that they were not or could not track them themselves?

A burglar? The Vigilant suspects there are Daedra in the house, or at least some Daedric worship going on, not just some petty thieves. And you never explicitly state you're going to help him kill innocent people. You're merely going to help him investigate. Nothing would have been stopping you from disagreeing with his actions once inside the house. Except Molag Bal, anyway.

And why not? How many quests are there with only a good ending compared to those with only a bad one? Seems a little restrictive to me, considering Todd Howard himself stated he wanted to create games that allowed people to play the way they wish. An easy solution would have at least been for Bethesda to allow the player to end the quest by telling Molag Bal to [censored] off and save the priest without him running right back to the shrine. He'd probably be killed eventually, but at least you'd be able to warn him without knowing he's venturing off to his death.

There are quite a few signs that point to something being a bit off in Markarth, but you're right. However, you don't have to side with the Daedric prince in that case. You can actually save the priest and kill the cannibals.

I understand that some people enjoy being forced down a path like this but it seems unrealistic that your character would have no alternative to doing exactly what Bal tells you to do other than ignoring the quest in your log. Even if a good path doesn't work our right, you aren't even given a chance to try anything else, it's just "Yes, I shall serve you" or "I'll think about it".

I was putting it into modern, realistic terms as there are no daedra.

You're going in there to do what you want with anyone who might of been in there, with somebody who could be lieing to you. He could make any old slosh up about how something could of been a daedric symbol and how this person should be killed for daedric worship for all you know... Without the hindsight of what happens in the quest there was no reason to trust the vigilant. A familly may of lived there for all you know, a familly that the vigilant could of hated because of reason x, y, z and he could of tricked you into killing them for said deadric worship. Again, no hindsight here.

You didn't mean to support people roleplaying a stupid guy when you said good guy did you?

"I'll think about it indefinitely," as we're given no way to even remove the quests from our log to as to wash our hands of them.

Might also be worth mentioning at this time what the daedra would do to you if you turned away from them or even went against what they said.

Like I said, you never explicitly state you're going to help him murder anyone. You're only going to help him investigate. Besides, the house is abandoned. That much is made pretty clear.

I also wouldn't compare a burglar to Daedra or Daedric worshipers. They tend to be rather violent in Skyrim, whereas a burglar in real life is just a thief. A serial murderer or cult dedicated to one would be better, and if I were a powerful guy in real life with nothing to fear, why not?

I don't know what makes you think Molag Bal is the Daedric prince you don't want to piss off. They're all pretty bad, and we're able to go against what many of them say or tell us without consequence.

Then what were you going to help him do? If you got in there and he pointed at what was really a familly heirloom and told you it was a daedric worship symbol, you probably wouldn't know either way. He would not need your help in simply opening the door. And why is it so clear its abandoned? Because the vigilant told you? Again you are putting too much trust into someone else you never met. The only other sign it is abandoned before you enter the house is one other person admiting they didn't see anyone go in or out, but I've never seen anyone go in or out of the house opposite my work place, doesn't suddenly mean a crazed murderer is in there and I should break in.

And forget my metaphor, I was trying to get the point across that it is wrong to break into what could be somebodies home and do whatever you like with them and thier property on the basis that somebody else you never met before told you that they think something is going on. If you really beleive this is something a "good guy" would do then I would question your perception of good.

Some are worse than others. Meridia, and to some extent Azrua both aren't really that evil. Hiricine also isn't really that evil in comparison. Molag and Mehrunes are good examples of what could be the two worst daedric princes. Either way, you don't want any of them on your back, as they all can do bad things to you that you wouldn't wish upon your enemies, both during and after your life.

I'm fairly certain the house was actually labeled in-game as "Abandoned House". And have you ever met a Vigilant of Stendarr outside Markarth? They aren't the smartest bunch of people, so I'm fairly certain the player wouldn't be "tricked" into thinking a normal item was actually a symbol of Daedric worship. On my character, I would have simply left the house if nothing inside made me think something bad had been going on. If there were an innocent bunch of people inside and the Vigilant started attacking them, I would have dealt with him as well.

Considering the amount of assassins that could be coming after us already, it wouldn't matter much. And you can defy Mehrunes. The consequence? Being attacked by two Dremora who would have attacked you even if you sided with him.

Agreed. Its about the game design. Being an RPG, it seems like poor design to not give an option to RP a character's choice. (And saying "well, you could have done such-and-such" prior to the final killing is irrelevant since the OP's point is how the player experiences this (or any quest) on their first playthrough, without spoilers. There are choices offered to exit little fetch quests but not this quest!

Thats because the vigilant asks you about it when your just outside of it, in other words after he claimed the house was abandoned in the dialogue he has with you right infront of it the player came to know it as that. Unless you have physic powers you could not tell before you entered that it really was abandoned. Also, I wasn't talking about anything like plates, I mean if you were being tricked by the vigilant to kill someone then the vigilant would have a reason to send you against them (IE, the vigilant knew who they were, maybe he lived with them) He could of known that they had a weird candlestick that looked different to all the other candlesticks in skyrim, and as such when you helped him investigate, would of pointed it out and said how it was a super-secret deadric worship symbol, and told you because of that they must of been worth killing. Again, this is BEFORE you enter the house and get locked in.

As an RPG, you can't always do every quest in the best possible way. Sometimes you have to live with what you did, and sometimes you can't always change the outcome of things. Bad things happen.

Except it's an RPG that was developed by Bethesda, where you as the main character are the be-all and end-all of the game world, and likely the most powerful being within it (not necessarily in a physical or magical sense, but the world revolves around you and only you have the ability to shape it as you please). To think that the Dragonborn has the power to defeat the son of Akatosh, chief deity of the Nine Divines, and save the entire world, but cannot refuse to help a Daedric prince.. well, I'm not sure what to think anymore.

I love the daedric quests, to me this is just a game to be enjoyed.

I laughed when I finished House of Horrors, honestly. Killing Logrolf was pretty satisfying for me.

I loved it when I put an arrow into the back of the head "The Champion of Boethiah" while he was sitting at his table eating a piece of bread.

I especially loved Namira's quest.

I'm not a sick or twisted person, but daedric quests are just good fun and they're good for a laugh most of the time. To be fair, there really aren't that many options for a "good" character in the game. Bethesda knows its customer base, they know most of us are heartless bastards in Tamriel and they cater to that.

It isn't so much that they're catering to their fans as much as they're catering to their new target audience -- you're not exactly an agent of mercy in CoD, or pretty much any other mainstream game (franchise).

Good to see religious persecution is still so strong and that so many consider religious persecution against people whom there is no evidence of misdeed is considered "good guy" behaviour. "What!? They worship something different than me? Kill them!"-Not a 'good guy' in my book.