Dawnguard for Skyrim: No Sparkly Vamps Here

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High Priest Mikhal
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Dawnguard for Skyrim: No Sparkly Vamps Here

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Rating: 3.5/5
Good: New Dragon Shouts, new spells, new dragonbone weapons, better werewolf and vampire abilities, new Vampire Lord form and powers, CROSSBOWS!!!!!!!!!!
Bad: Bugs, major computer resource sink, bugs, "Werewolf Mastered" perk is not recognized by Steam when achieved without some song and dance to get it to work, did I mention bugs?
Ugly: More of the same, random vampire attacks in towns will kill non-essential NPCs and possibly ruin sidequests

The DLC for BethSoft's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been out on XBOX for two months and for PC and PS3 for a month. For those of us who've been playing TES games for a while some of it is a trip down memory lane. After stopping at Riverwood with whomever you chose to escape with, you're approached by a member of the Dawnguard who offers the quest, "Dawnguard." From there you can choose to side with the vampire hunters of the Dawnguard, even learning how to smith a dwarven crossbow and special bolts (fire, frost, and shock). Or join Harkon's vampires and become a master of the night. Regardless of which path, you eventually find the artifact Auriel's Bow (something that should be familiar to TES veterans) and can activate a special power to call down the sun like a death ray (to vampires) from above or use desecrated arrows to block out the sun entirely.

Both paths have their ups and downs, and regardless of which you can still become a Vampire Lord, use either Sunhallowed Elven Arrows for the sunbeam attack or Darkblooded Arrows to block it out. The introduction of crossbows after their removal from Oblivion has answered a lot of prayers for players who prefer stealthier approaches (landing a bolt in an enemy's head never gets old). Going with the vampires will unlock special amulets and rings that can augment your already awesome Vampire Lord abilities (which is U-G-L-Y! Take that, Twilight wannabe-vampires). The backstabbing politics of the vampiric court does seem to take a large number of cues from White-Wolf's Vampire: The Requiem and offers the meatier story, but if you like being a werewolf or just hate vampires, go with the Dawnguard.

Unfortunately it's both buggier than a termite mound and doesn't offer much in the way of anything terribly new (like Morrowind's Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions, or Oblivion's Shivering Isles). The most heinous is the "Drain Vitality" shout bug; if you haven't learned all of the "Marked For Death" words of power it will prevent you from learning more, or if you do learn them first it will add bugged forms of "Drain Vitality" to your list. For the PC there are some plug-ins that fix this and other serious problems. The lack of anything terribly new is another sticking point. Granted it's just downloadable content and not a full expansion, but there was potential that went unused by Bethesda--again. Throw in the fact that Steam doesn't always recognize it when you unlock all eleven werewolf perks and this DLC is just begging for a patch. Which doesn't look likely since Bethesda has already announced their next DLC: Hearthfire.

All in all, it's worth $20 if you have the PC version and can use things like the Drain Vitality Bug Fix and Unofficial Dawnguard Patch, both available free from from The Skyrim Nexus. Console users should wait and see if and when Bethesda does patch Dawnguard themselves.
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