To hell with the lore. I mean I like the lore just like the next guy, but lore should NEVER come before gameplay. The vampires in TES have always svcked so bad. If they are having issues making them interesting because of lore then change the damn lore in my opinion, I've never much cared for where they have taken the vampire lore in TES anyway.

Some people take this a little to serious...

Hm I may just be patient on this and see where it takes me..

HI again.

What I mean is though the fundamental premise of Dawnguard has no expressive power, which is rather problematic in itsef, as the weakness of the core idea tends to ressonate throughout the entire story, a fresh original execution might just salavge it. For example, the idea of blotting out the Sun seems interesting and cannot be considered commonplace. Here's hoping there are more of those.

Not another one of these threads...

its because of not following lore they svck.... Cyrodiil Vampires were suppose to be amazing with Thralls and mind control

Sadly its becoming one

The undead flaming horse was made during the gamejam week when the devs were told to "make what you like." I said in another post that I'm willing to bet EVERY creation by the devs during that gamejam week will make it into the game, and [censored] all lore, balance or beta testing for those things. Why? Because it's profitable for them to shoehorn all the already-designed ideas in instead of paying the devs to come up with new ideas. I think the Dawnguard trailer has basically proven me right, as it adds the vampire lords, the flaming undead horse and the werewolf skill tree.

Having said that, I wouldn't expect much. I agree with you fully, but I wouldn't expect much.

I did hope that these were some sort of "vampire master-race" which would explain there extreme powers and ridiculous transformations..
and the castle did seem to be on some island in some rather cold looking area, perhaps they have ice machine to make them feel at home?

The latest Game Informer confirmed a lot of details about the DLC. Many threads have been made about those details already.One of those details is that the vampire castle is called "Castle Volkihar". That's where everyone has been getting their info. Also, that's why I love GI.

P.S. You can easily find photos of the article on the internet in various places(but not here). Or just stop being a lame person and subscribe to GI.

We barely have any lore on the Volkihar at all so i don't understand what the lore guys are freaking out about. We never knew what they really looked like. This is what we know about them.

1: "The next day, he did return with more questions, these ones very specific. He wanted to know about the vampires of eastern Skyrim. I told him about the most powerful tribe, the Volkihar, paranoid and cruel, whose very breath could freeze their victims' blood in the veins. I explained to him how they lived beneath the ice of remote and haunted lakes, never venturing into the world of men except to feed."

2: "Your advice helped me very much," he said. "But you should know that the Volkihar have an additional ability you didn't mention. They can reach through the ice of their lakes without breaking it. It was quite a nasty surprise, being grabbed from below without any warning."

I don't see how the trailer ruined any lore when we know almost nothing about this clan of vampires. Sounds just like whining to me personally.

The majority of us think dawnguard is amazing

It's confirmed that the name of the castle the vampires live in is called "Castle Volkihar." Pretty much a confirmation.

That sounds less probable than retconning

I think adhering to lore would make things more interesting. Being able to phase through ice or disguise yourself as a child to kill people offer incredibly more interesting gameplay mechanics to me.

To be able to play as true, lore adhering versions of the various vampires mentioned in Immortal Blood would be fantastic. That's part of what made the vampires in Skyrim disappointing. Not only did they not adhere to lore, but they didn't offer anything fun to do as vampires. Pulling a legionnaire into a frozen lake or pretending to be a Stormcloak's little girl before biting into his neck seems way more fun than what we had in Skyrim at release.

i have to agree that the new vampires are a tad......cliché to say the least but they seem ok. but i would rather not have everything explained to me i alwas found it so of putting when everything in a game is explained to you, theres always a monologueing bad guys or an all knowing good guy that has all the answers. as for the current lore well there is a reason most of it comes from books and rumors just because somthing is writen down does not make it true, it gives them more flexibility when writing new lore or rewriting old lore

It's also incredibly plausible with the game engine.

Spriggans appear from trees, New Vegas had Tunnelers, which appeared out of the ground. They could easily program the Volkihar to appear from under frozen lakes or to come directly out of the frozen tundra in the northeast (which coincidently, is also their place of origin according to existing lore), ambushing you. There's 0 reason why they can't make vampires that act like the Volkihar.

But again, personally this isn't about the Volkihar for me. It's about the message Bethesda sends with these constant retcons. It's very poor writing and it's incredibly tripe, and of course it's INCREDIBLY sad to see them tossing out their own UNIQUE, ORIGINAL lore for some cliché, overdone idea that people are familiar with.

This. I have stuck with Elder Scrolls game because of the unique lore, and if they're going to toss it out for some grimdark fantasy clichés, I'll be extremely disappointed. That being said, I did see some icy, cavernous areas in the trailer, so who knows, maybe they are adhering to their own lore. I certainly hope so.

Hi there Longknife! Good to see you.


This is a damn good post.

After seeing the dragon dive under the water I'm not really worried about the vampires. If a dragon can go under and then pop back up to attack the player, I'm sure a vampire could do the same thing quietly.

Why do arrogant peons assume we should already know about everything that isn't a recent development in the world?
Here's a big reason it wouldn't work for PC vampires, and secondly there is no established lore on Volkihar, a single book written by a vampire is not reliable and can not be considered established until backed up by another source or seen with our own eyes. A Vampire has every reason to lie about the abilities of other vampires.

Pretty much, there is very little info avaliable, and the only source is Anonymous with "second hand info"... in real life we would throw this out as not even being reliable. Who is to say they can really reach through ice. How reliable is the second hand info? There is no date on this book. When was it written? As far as we are aware the Volkihar could have evolved and became better integrated with humans for some unknown reason and left from beneath the ice.

You guys are looking way into this... with very little reliable info available.

I'm in the same boat.

I realize that the Elder Scrolls has had differing accounts and such, but there's a difference.
Take Morrowind for example. A lot of the Tribunal books? Total bull****. The difference? The game provides you with a counter-perspective. There's the BS perspective and then there's the TRUE perspective. The game simply shows you both, and by showing you both, it sends the message of "one of these guys is lying." Even if the game never blatantly says WHO is lying, it at least confirms one of them is.
This? How is this different? We never had a counter-perspective on the Volkihar. That's what makes this a retcon. We were told what they act like and now we have something completely different.

And more importantly, it's just a poor decision. They've sold out an original idea for a cliché one, while simultaneously shoe-horning in some other Gamejam content that may not make sense (the undead horse, the vampire lords), some that's unbalanced (mounted combat) and some that doesn't even feel like it was beta tested. (magic kill cams, sometimes arrow kill cams too)

This sends the message of "we just don't give a damn." Of course, people who treated TES like a book are upset. Imagine watching your favorite movie or TV show, then right at the climix they say "yknow what we stopped giving a damn, now we're interested in this story about vampires instead, so here's a completely different story with vampires."

One, yeah, it's disappointing and borderline insulting, and two it sends the message of this could happen again at any time. Let's say these Dawnguard turn out to be extremely loved. The Dawnguard vampire hunters are well-written and loved by 90% of the community and hailed as the greatest faction to enter TES since -insert popular faction here-. Part of my complaint is that, come TES VI, the very people defending Skyrim now? You might be in my shoes. You might be complaining that your favorite group from Skyrim got retconned and completely written out or changed ENTIRELY. Maybe in TES VI, the Dawnguard are suddenly dead without a trace (after Skyrim establishes them as a Tamriel-wide faction), or now their main focus is to hunt Daedra.
Hence I speak out. I'm sick of this attitude where names and faces change on a dime and we're all supposed to be perfectly ok with this. No, that's called bad writing: learn to write.

That's what i want to know. They assume we already knew everything about the Volkihar when we really knew nothing. Especially when our evidence of them was from a vampire from a separate clan.

There seems to be a fair bit of vampire lore in the vanila version of Skyrim. I just think it's a bit lame they'd make it a theme of a dlc pack for a TES series. It's like the dovakiin was destined be a hunter of some sort. Dragon hunter, bounty hunter, witch hunter, werewolf hunter, now even a vamipre hunter.

Why dont you write a whole entire universe filled with hundreds of differnt books HUH, Lets see how you do