A hero, a murderer and thief

[Daded]

If you join all the guilds you'll probably be considerred sometimes as a good guy and some other times as a bad guy.

I remember in Skyrim when a i talk to a NPC that knew all my title, he was like "Hello dear friend, i am so grateful for your help, i will never forget it" and in an other interaction 5 seconds later he was like "you are a very bad person, i hate you".

Is it the same in Oblivion ?

I like to be appreciate by NPC and to do good thing but if i do only good thing i can't play The elder scrolls as it is supposed to be played or i can't play the entire game. Be a good guy in TES is a limitation.

How about you ?

[Thomas D.]

And if you finish shivering isle you become the Mad God so its quite fitting isnt it?

[Treusch]

My experience with the Elder scrolls is I often do many playthroughs.

Usually for later playthroughs I will role play more with my character and only join guilds that align with my character.

Bethesda tries to allow the player to do whatever they want. So you can decide if you want to restrict yourself from certain parts of it makes it a more authentic experience.

[Scraps]

In all fairness, even the Thieves Guild is more "chaotic good" than anything. If you think Robin Hood is good, then Thieves Guild can be easy to justify.

But Dark Brotherhood is extremely Saturday-Morning-Villain and they don't make an attempt at making them morally grey like Morrowind's Morag Tong. Or even Skyrim having a conflict between business and religious practice. It's campy fun, but objectively evil.

EDIT: regarding NPC comments, it primarily is determined by their disposition towards you, which in turn, is initially determined by a few factors. The Player's Personality, the NPC's Responsibility value, and the player's fame and infamy. Higher fame and personality means npcs will like you more by default. Infamy makes npcs dislike you more, but if their Responsibility is low, infamy won't effect them nearly as much.

This makes Oblivion NPCs relatively consistent with their comments towards the player, while guild-related comments tend to be contained to members of the faction