You're saying that the two new play styles are not "meat".

EDIT: And to someone who roleplays, the "meat" can often be the most unexpected of things.

It's completely worth it. In my opinion it expands on all areas of Skyrim that felt really missing from the original game.

- 2 new unique factions the Dawnguard and Clan Volkihar with their own questlines (pretty long and exceptionally well designed)
- Refining of werewolf and vampire gameplay complete with their own awesome perk trees and of course the Vampire Lord form
- Crossbows and Dragonbone weapons
- Badass dog / creature followers (Death hounds, Armored Huskies and even Armored Trolls)
- Great expansion on the story / lore of Vampires, Snow Elves and the Falmer.
- A never before seen daedric plane of oblivion called the Soul Cairn.
- New random encounters including Legnedary Dragons, Wild Werewolves, Vampire / Dawnguard sweeping patrols etc...
- Character makeover feature for 1000g in Riften

DAWNGUARD SPOILER:

Anyways, this post says it all. The DLC is worth it.

The Royal Vampire Armor and

It's 1/3 the price of Skyrim; it's totally not worth its price tag.

Its funny to see so much bitterness and negativity about Dawnguard's value from people who haven't played it. You guys sure have a very large chip on your shoulders.

Hello Frank.White. How have you been doing? Good, or so I hope.


I see your point. After one has watched the official trailer, read the press release, read several professional reviews and watched a number of youtube playthroughs, what exactly is one lacking in order to make an informed judgement?

To be more precise, one would need to contrast Dawnguard's sales figures, absolute and relative, with comparable Oblivion's DLC, both say 6 months into the launch. Then we might be able to draw accurate conclusions. Yes, Dawnguard isn't just about vampires. It's just mainly about vampires, unless official trailer, press release, professional reviews and Youtube playthroughs conned us all.

Well clearly I was suggesting that people should play the product in order to be able to determine its value. All the reviews and youtubes won't ever account for the actual in game experience, which you can only get through playing through the content.

Hi again.


I am talking about Dawnguard. Some animations do look a step backwards, such as the one that can be seen at 0.50 (official trailer), some models look shabby, such as the Vampire Lord equipped with Kentucky Fried Chicken wings and lastly the Soul Cairn looks like it's suffering from a severe case of purple barrenness. All this is coming from someone who loves SKyrim art direction and has praised it to death.

All of that only coming from your personal perspective though.

Interesting. What you are suggesting is every company's dream. Buy first, evaluate later. Would that be the way you usually proceed with other goods and services? As for myself, I have more than enough information to make an educated judgement about Dawnguard. I'll pass.

And then if you are NOT in the US, you get to pay EVEN MORE!!!! WWWHHHhoooppppie... Uh...Wait...

I'm not suggesting that people looking for feedback should buy the product first. I'm suggesting that the people giving the feedback should have experience with the product in question. The feedback from someone who hasn't bought the product or operated the product has very little credibility or substance.

I don't really think there has been feedback on the experience itself from people who haven't played Dawnguard. Could you point me to a specific post? Talking about gameplay hours, price/content ratio, theme and thematic significance, models, animations and so forth is quite possible from the backseat. It's a Catch-22 situation. You want us to only pay attention to those who have actually bought Dawnguard and played it, people who made a positive assessment of all the info avaiable at launch and who are thus inclined to pass good comments about it.

I suppose the price to content argument has some validity but it's wrong to view the DLC on just this front. Most of the new features are going to add to all of your adventures in Skyrim. If you are truely into The Elder Scrolls then I suspect that you will eventually create a lot of new characters, experiment with different playthroughs...

Now you can play all the previous content from a new perspective when you use the form of Vampire Lord, or get your Husky dog and crossbow etc.. (Going further with examples would contain a ton of spoilers.) Even the new conjure spells could grant something to the player.

If they're saying the game is trash, maybe that's true, but I think people can still give valid opinions about whether they think the DLC is worth 20 dollars without having played it.


The point is, even without playing it, hearing about a lot of these things have notified me that I'm better off not getting the DLC for now (which is all well and good, because Bethesda shows no signs of releasing it on PS3 anytime soon). Even if it was released this Tuesday, I wouldn't get it because there's enough stuff I know I wouldn't like to make me feel that that 20 dollars would be better spent getting something else, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I'd also rather wait to get the DLC until I have a PC that could competently run Skyrim, and wait until someone mods a Vampire Overhaul that irons out some of the major design flaws that I feel Dawnguard has (especially those considering the vampires).

Not looking at the story aspects, but just looking at some of the additions and alterations, there's a lot of stuff I like about Dawnguard, but there's also a lot I don't like. Right now it seems to be split 50-50, and for me personally, 20 dollars is too high a price to fork over for DLC that I feel I'll hate half the content of. So for me, it isn't worth it.

Hello REL_Dovahkin.


In all fairness, there seem to be some pretty good things about Dawnguard as well. The castle looks rather cool, Forgotten Valley worth exploring, dawnguard armour and crossbow worthy additions. Were it not for the fact that the main focus of this DLC is vampires and were the price below the 10 buck bar, I would certainly consider buying it.

The PS3 version wil probably not be worth $20, but we can always hope it wil be worth it.
i wil not be the one that pays the $20 to find out.

I will be short ...
YES, its worth .

If the price were lower, and I could be assured it'd actually run on my PS3, I'd probably buy it too. There's a lot of stuff I've heard about the DLC that I really like, but there's just not enough stuff I really like compared to the stuff I really hate that justifies the steep price that Bethesda is asking for. I'm not even opposed to the story focusing on vampires (though I do have some gripes about how they handled it...). Dawnguard just suffers from some things I consider to be poor design choices, and poor enough that they damn the DLC to not be worth the asking price they currently have, no matter how much I may like some of the things it includes.

If I was on the PC, I'd wait a few months, hoping to snag it on Steam, but not download it until those lovely people who made the Unofficial Skyrim Patch had a chance to ensure that Bethesda's game would run properly. It'd also give those with modding knowhow time to make mods for Dawnguard. Mods that hopefully would address problems I have with it.

Its half the price of Dark Souls with less than 10% of the content. Of course its not worth it.

Save your money for DS. Maybe wait a few days to see if the PC version is as good as the console one and then buy it.

After you finish DS, you will probably be able to buy Dawnguard on sale for the fair price of $7,99.

OK, on a realistic note:

I think that those of us outside the US, that are getting [censored] over the coals on price (can one paraphrase a phrase???), should NOT buy the DLC just as a protest. I don't see any reason to charge those offshore of the US 25 - 35% more just because. This is not whether or not it is worth the price, it is about the obvious price discrimination.

I did pay a premium over and above the US prices for the game, but that was for a box, delivered to the door, on 11-11-11. (It actually arrived the 10th, and wouldn't play until the 11th, 18:00ish NZ time) I'll pay a premium for this as well, if it is delivered in a box... but over the wire?

Sooooo buggy. Expect graphical bugs from things that have absolutely nothing to do with Dawnguard, and expect them often.

The pros are: Serana, Jiub and Vyrthur are all excellently-written, the second-last boss battle is amazing, and the Vale is a gorgeous place. The armour included is some of the best-looking so far, and... well, it's fun and took me about 12 hours to complete. Not bad, considering Fallout 3 DLC cost half the price of Dawnguard and took a fraction of the time to complete.

...on the other hand, it takes about as long as Fallout New Vegas DLC took to complete, and costs twice as much.

Hi there croc. Good to see you're around.


Playing Devil's advocate here, but is there a chance different fiscal regimen apply, you know, could VAT and other tax differences account for the discrepancy?