The Elder Scrolls franchise can let you do a lot of play styles.

And one of these play styles is being able to play as a Stealthy Thief or Sneaky Assassin type of character. And the games have factions that encourages this kind of gameplay like the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.

I have never played a Stealthy type of class in any of the Elder Scrolls games or RPGs that has factors it like Fable or Vampire: Bloodlines, with the exception of Deus Ex which pretty much encourages Stealth.

But this is about the Elder Scrolls and so I am asking, which of the games has the best Stealth based gameplay, the one that is closest to playing like the Thief games?

My favourite for stealth was probably Oblivion. I had a build that allowed to run silently, while invisible, and gloves that dealt 10 times backstab damage. The build completely broke the gameplay since it pretty much made my character invincible.

Doesn't make it close to Thief but it was fun.

I'm going to laugh.

Hard.

Stealth is to Elder Scrolls as physical combat is to Magika.

Example: A thief, wearing no clothes is allowed to get away because the people are polite enough to point that out.

Any of morrowind, oblivion, or Skyrim (possibly the prior ones, it’s too long ago for me to remember). Essentially they are all similar, get gear, upgrade those skills. ES is all about the mods you put in, no reason to play vanilla (at least on oblivion it’s highly recommended not too). I always tend to play that type of character, general dark elf, high thief skills, high bow. Try to do the thieves guild quests early as they can make life easier ie. opening fences. I am actually downloading juantons mod list for Skyrim sse currently with an aim to go through it again, though i tend to burn out adding the mods before playing! Do bear in mind playing a later game first might put you off playing an earlier one. And it’s possible to over power level, in morrowind I could pick the palace lock (required 100) quite early into the game which made it a bit pointless. Oh, and any of them you end up so powerful nothing can really stop you towards the end anyways, so stealth becomes less needed.

Certainly not Arena : thieves could simply NOT hide and sneak. Only magic could make you invisible temporarily.

Invisibility was also worthless in Daggerfall, too.

Because Daggerfall is broken, you see...

In Morrowind (the first Elder Scrolls I ever played may it's glory be eternal) my Breton Scout was so good at stealth that he could literary "kneel" before this dude and pickpocket all the goods he has just sold him. xD

But generally stealth is done little better in Oblivion and Skyrim as much as my memory can compare at this moment.

Hmmm assuming you get your stealth ability high enough... Skyrim and Morrowind. Not sure about Oblivion, had too many issues...

Or.... open the console and give yourself whatever stats you want.

I had a lot of fun as a stealthy archer in Skyrim. I don't think any of the ones before that felt good with archery, personally. I don't think I ever played a stealthy dagger type in Oblivion, but Skyrim's combat is so much better I'm sure that's better there too.

Morrowind is my favorite TES game but combat in general sucks in it.

Yes, but I found it easier and quicker to make a bat file for the little cheats. Admitting, the first time was all sneak and back off ,sneak and back off until it improved the stat.

Skyrim probably. It's the only TES game which introduces perks and there's a whole tree for stealthy characters.

Yes. Yes, arguably so...

Lol, oh gosh that video was funny.