'Skyrim' Player Discovers Dark Brotherhood Quest Had A "Right" Choice All Along

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still just full of surprises, even ten years later. The snow-capped mountains and icy wastes of Bethesda's iconic RPG are host to some of the most memorable quests - and hardest choices - in gaming. But it turns out one of the game's earliest moral dilemmas isn't nearly as complicated as we originally thought it was.

Anyone who's played Skyrim before will be familiar with the shadowy organisation known as The Dark Brotherhood. There isn't a player around who didn't leap at the chance to kill Grelod The Kind, the abusive matron of the orphanage in Riften. Carrying out this contract at the behest of a frightened child in Windhelm gets you on the Brotherhood's radar, and soon sees you face-to-face with their leader Astrid.

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Having been drugged, kidnapped, and brought out to a remote cabin in the middle of Skyrim to meet with Astrid, there are two immediate choices. The first is to kill Astrid, and then head to her hideout and destroy the rest of the Brotherhood. This is fine if you're a straight-laced hero, but it closes off the better and far more interesting questlines that become available if you go for option number two: join the assassins.

To join the Brotherhood, you have to pass Astrid's initiation. She presents you with three different captives, and tells you you'll have to kill one. While none of these guys are exactly saints, it turns out one is an actual wanted criminal. You can absolutely just kill all three if you're in the business of being as cruel as possible, but there's actually a much easier way to work out which of the three is the "right" choice to kill - in as much as killing someone is ever the right thing to do. The rules in video games are different, okay?

Reddit DarkSteveYT recently discovered that if the player uses the Clairvoyance spell while in the cabin, it'll immediately detect the criminal. It's likely not many of us were aware of this because Clairvoyance is kind of a shit spell that rarely - if ever - gets used by players. Still, it's great to see it finally get its time in the spotlight after all these years.

It's also worth noting that Astrid never tells you who the criminal was even if you manage to guess right and kill the captive with the bounty on their head, so this is the first time a lot of us are seeing which of the three was the shadiest all along. Boy did I get it wrong every single time.

Topics: GAMING, The Elder Scrolls, News, Skyrim, Bethesda