Oblivion and Skyrim have completely different types of thieves guilds – how The Elder Scrolls changed its attitude toward crime

Factions in RPGs rarely amount to just a set of quests. A guild is a way to explore a world from the inside, through the profession and morality of the people who survive in it.

And sometimes the same organization ends up with such different personalities across two games that people can debate it for years.

The Thieves Guild in Oblivion is an almost fairy-tale story. The Gray Fox, the endless chase with guard captain Hieronymus Lex, the rule against killing on the job, and the mandatory "tax" paid out to the poor.

The finale, stealing an Elder Scroll from the Imperial Palace, still counts as one of the best quests in the series, and it's pure Robin Hood with a dash of mythology mixed in.

The Skyrim version works completely differently. A broke gang holed up in the Riften sewers, shaking down merchants for protection, Mercer Frey betrayal, and a climb from rock bottom to controlling the whole province.

The atmosphere here leans noticeably closer to the Thief series, which isn't surprising: Mercer was voiced by Stephen Russell, the voice of Garrett, and Emil Pagliarulo, who worked as a level designer on Thief II: The Metal Age before joining Bethesda, wrote the criminal storylines for the studio.

Complaints about the northern guild make sense too. In Cyrodiil, half the population didn't even believe the Gray Fox was real, and joining required proving yourself first. In Riften, meanwhile, every other passerby knows about the thieves, Brynjolf recruits the player right in the marketplace, and some quests turn into dungeon crawling instead of actual heists.

One person put the difference this way:

Skyrim is a bunch of amateur thugs, in oblivion their operation is an actual clandestine network.

The Morrowind Thieves Guild, incidentally, managed to combine both approaches: routine grunt work alongside genuinely noble projects from Gentleman Jim Stacey at the top.

Some want elegance and myth, others want grit and racketeering, and the series just keeps delivering one or the other.