My Skyrim character is pretty powerful. I’ve managed to level up sufficiently so that the destructive magic on my left hand shoots fire that can dispatch reasonably hardened enemies in a second or two. In my right hand, I like to wield an enchanted, short-handled axe or one-handed sword.
Dawnguard is Skyrim’s first expansion and it offers Dragonborn heroes of Skyrim the chance to hunt vampires with a bunch of do-gooding officious crusaders or become a powerful vampire lord allied to a coven intent on destroying the sun. Either side should be exciting, presenting opportunities for new experiences and added powers. Unfortunately, neither branch of the DLC’s narrative truly delivers more than most of Skyrim’s long term residents will already have built for themselves.
The eponymous band of vampire slayers are tucked away, through a valley, in a large fort and led by one of the much-relied-upon character types for Bethesda’s action RPGs – the paranoid nut who turned out to be right.
The vampire cult is accessed after the expansion’s opening mission which tasks you with investigating a suspected vampirical excavation site. They live on a remote island stronghold and are led by the head of an old vampire dynasty who quickly offers you the chance to drink of him and have eternal life.
So, you pick sides, basically. Become a vampire or hunt the vampires. One side bestows upon you a sense of righteousness, some anti-vampire armour, a big dumb tank of a companion option and a crossbow which you could also grab in the opening mission. The other side turns you into a leathery winged specter of death that can reanimate the dead, move with exceptional speed, drain the life from your foes and turn into a flock of bats.
You’ll probably want to take chief vamp up on his offer, then.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite as good as it sounds. You’ll get a power, accessed through the menus with your magic and shouts. It allows you to transform into an animalistic, green skinned, sharp-clawed vampire lord. There’s a hindrance to this transformation in that the process takes a few seconds to complete and deforms your field of vision briefly. It’s not something that’s advisable mid-combat so you’ll end up having to make the decision as to which form you’ll take before each combat situation arises.
Perhaps I’ve grown a little too arrogant or comfortable with the way I play Skyrim but when I stood in front of a monstrous pale green, blood-sucking immortal with the choice between immortality and power or exile and a future as prey, my first instinct was that I’m a badass Nordic son of Skyrim and it’s not sensible to threaten me. I don’t really care if you offer to give me a couple of extra powers, I thought. I could probably clear this whole castle in a few minutes and take the contents of your chests back to Riften for sale. But I played along and took the vampire powers.
While in your altered state, you’ve got sharp and powerful claws for melee attacks and two different powers – one for each hand. You can absorb an enemy’s life force and you can reanimate corpses to fight on your behalf. Neither is particularly spectacular in practice but it does offer a little bit of variation to most player’s usual approach. You’ll also be able to move faster and, if the situation demands it, you can hit a button to transform into a flock of bats and rush away at previously impossible speeds. This is, of course, offset by suffering the ill-effects of sunlight that usually translate to a bit of a health hit and no regeneration if you’re up and around during daylight hours.
There’s another, less obvious hindrance to becoming a vampire lord. It turns out that powerful supernatural vampires can only view proceedings in the third person. While transformed, you lose the ability to look upon the world through my favoured viewpoint in the first person. This might not be a big deal to some but I’ve always found the third person view in Skyrim to be clunky to control and awkward to aim. This makes the new powers tricky to use as they need to be carefully targeted at enemies.
There are a couple of new and interesting enemy types to encounter, like the gargoyles, but they don’t crop up too often so that the bulk of combat is against the regular cast of nefarious bandits, savages, beasts and monsters that many of us have already spent upwards of 50 hours locked in mortal combat with. Obviously, vampires and their death hounds appear fairly often and there’s a new class of dragon that’s fantastic but generally, it’s more of the same Skyrim – although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it just isn’t quite different enough though.
At around 15 hours, there is a healthy chunk of extra game here but, once you’ve spent ten minutes adjusting to your new powers, novel and unique game experiences are largely absent. There are some new locations and the game takes a big stylistic swerve at around the halfway mark of the shared plot line (which is viewed from the two opposing viewpoints depending on the choice you made). In the end though, it all boils down to fetch quests, item collection and dungeon clearing.
That’s fine of course, it’s what the rest of Skyrim generally gets by on. But it would be nice to be offered something a little more imaginative from an expansion which had the potential to make bigger changes to how we played the game. Perhaps Skyrim itself is so huge and offers such variation that it becomes difficult to offer anything new in an expansion. While there are some enjoyable moments and some truly brilliant set pieces in Dawnguard, it doesn’t quite hit those beats with enough precision or regularity to warrant a glowing recommendation for those who are already well invested in Skyrim’s world and the character they’ve built themselves.
For relatively young adventurers, it will probably feel much more exciting and the new powers and weaponry will be a big advantage. But those players will already have another 50 hours or more of the game ahead of them, is it really tempting for them to embark on an expansion that adds another 15 hours?
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Alex C
The Shivering Isles add on for Oblivion was amazing. Sounds like this doesn’t quite stand up as well.
Great write up though.
Izorpo
The Shivering Isles was fantastic, Knights of the Nine not so much. Bethesda’s dlc is usually a bit hit and miss though – when they do it well it is amazing, when its bad its absolutely horrid (thinking Dead Money)
The Lone Steven
Bethesda wasn’t involved with the development of Fallout New Vegas and the DLC. Obsidain was and i found Dead Money to be decent but a bit flawed. :)
I loved the Shivering Isles as well as KOTN but i do wish that we got all of the add ons on the PS3 version as well.
tonycawley
Ah, a well written article that nicely weighs up the expansion for me. I wont be gettimg dawnguard, I’ve just had enough of Skyrim. The final 10 or so hours before platinum ping were a tedious chore that I only went through for that trophy. Still i enjoyed a good 120 hours of it, but have no interest in spening another 15 hours in that particular world.
RudeAwakening
This is exactly the same reason i wont be gettin Dawnguard.
Taylor Made
This looks awesome! Shame I sold that lag fest
E8_BALL_
I may make two new characters for this, there again maybe not.
I already have two, a Nord who uses magic only for restoration & a mage(gandalf,:) who purely uses magic. It’s a bit of a mountain to start from day1.
Looking forward to this new adventure, perk tress & the mounted combat when it arrives.
I’m itching to play Skyrim again, but have been holding off for Julys’ patch & undated PS3 DLC.
(Is timed exclusive just for a month? I hope so.
Also, will you automatically loose ability for werewolf transformation?)
SH Number 7/Mini-Lipscombe
If you take the choice to be a vampire you lose the power to be a werewolf. But if you play as a Dawnguard then you can play as a werewolf, and they’ve added to the skill tree in that as well.
SH Number 7/Mini-Lipscombe
*They’ve added A skill tree to being a werewolf. Similar to the vampire one, but I don’t know what the abilities are yet I just completed it as a vamp, so I’m going to use my nord and go with the Dawnguard as a werewolf.
E8_BALL_
Cool thanks. I have yet to gain ability, i think i’ve done some quests in an unorthodox manner, which has postponed relevant quest.
SH Number 7/Mini-Lipscombe
Nice article, it does sum up the DLC well (I wouldn’t call this an expansion really, as it doesn’t live up to what they were saying before), I really liked the DLC and it takes you too some interesting places. Playing as the Vampire Lord isn’t amazing but it is a bit better than you made it out too be, you aren’t just stuck with the reanimate dead in your left as later you can get a paralysis spell, which is really useful especially as the aiming in third person as you said it a bit clunky, and you also get a Darth Vader like death grip which will drain the health of enemies and then throw them miles. I did like playing as a Vampire Lord but since I put so much into my sneak it seemed a bit pointless when I could take most people out before they saw me, pushing me to transform.
blarty
I enjoy Skyrim when the mood takes me. Unfortunately now that ‘The Secret World’ is out, I’m not sure if I can tear myself away to play anything else…. but I might throw down some spare MS points on Dawnguard, as it seems reasonable enough
The Lone Steven
Excellent review Peter. I like the few seconds it takes to tranform as it prevents you from becoming overpowered and forces you to decide if you want to risk getting killed in mid tranformation or not. I am a bit annoyed that they haven’t made the vampire’s weakness to sunlight be more damaging as in previous games, you would be dying if you are exposed to the sun if you are a vampire.
I won’t be getting Dawnguard when it releases on the PS3 as i’m not willing to pay £40+ for all of Skyrim’s DLC and plan on getting the Bug of the year Edition when it comes out. :)
posem
nice review CB, im up to around 200hrs+ on the main game so far, literally bled every quest out going, I just do random little bits in every town now….
MICKY17
Excellent write up and despite the shortcomings mentioned, I still plan on getting this (whenever that may be on PS3). Just hope the PS3 patch that adds horse combat also fixes the damn water freezing glitch. It’s the only thing annoying me at the moment.
Klart
Erase game data (not save data) en reDL patch. Should solve yr problem.
MICKY17
Ah ok, will give that a go. Cheers.
E8_BALL_
Erase data is a process I do every patch(recommended by dev too, for latest & prev patches.) I guess i’ve been lucky, as I never experienced water bug.
Next PS3 patch rumoured for mid-July, hoping DLC in same month.
An-dz
I can wait for this on PS3, i more or less dont care what they are adding im more than likly to snap it up just because it has TES straped on it