I enjoyed the DLC. There were some crap in there that i didn't like, like how the vampiress chick just shows up and immediatley befriends you, or certain aspects of the main quest line. However I did enjoy the new toys like dragonbone weapons and crossbows, the snow elf, and the new locations. That big expansive area Forgotten Vale was really nice.

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Dawnguard="Where a bunch of racist pigs who use to slaughter innocents and blame it on vampires"

Agree, Dawnguard should've at 10 instead of 20. Price gouging at it's finest.

20$ = Making up for the PS3 sales they know they won't get.

Hmmm, you make a good point there citizen

While I, as a PS3 User, might never get this DLC, I've read about the story on uesp and it doesn't sound all that exciting.
What would make me want to get the DLC is the change to Vampirism (No more hate from people on stage 4).

PC Gamer always downmarks everything because it's the "kewl" thing to do nowadays, be different to the other 30 or so magazines which gave it the high score it deserved.

Dawnguard is easily the best DLC I've ever played for any game. It's genuinely imaginative, introduces a LOT of cool stuff if you look a bit further than just where the quest markers point you, it has an awesome tone and atmosphere, a great story and the first companion in Skyrim with a real personality and some insightful dialogues. I say it deserves 80 at least. Comparing it to Torchlight doesn't make much sense to me, by the way, since that's a completely different kind of game, one which I personally wouldn't pay for... But others might. Anyway, if you're a fan of Skyrim it's well worth the 20 bucks.

Same here. Between Danwguard and Hearthfire, buying them seprately is now out of the question.


For me that would have to be Lonesome Road. Despite me hating the word due it being so overused, "epic" from start to finish. And only 10 € Dead Money is great too. The other two don't even get close to them, unfortunately

It's a review by somebody I don't know, from a source I don't care about, about a DLC I knew I was going to love when I saw the main feature (that being the Vampire Lord form).

This arbitrary number rating thing? It's got to stop. All it does is encourage and enable the weak-minded bandwagoning that is already too prevalent in gaming society. Ye gods, it makes me sick.

My main complaint is how it broke the vanilla game with the random city attacks. No DLC for MW or OB ever did this. Losing all my non-essential NPC's (including vendors) to vamp attacks is just a terrible feature. The problem would be fixed if NPC's didn't feel like they should fist fight Master Vampires and they would instead run and let the guards (who respawn) do their jobs.

I have one save game where I keep it turned on since in that save I already beat the DG MQ (siding with Dawnguard). All other save games I don't have the DLC turned on, and probably never will. Just too much collateral damage in the vanilla game to make it worth it.

I keep hearing this "my npc's all die" complaint and yet have still to have important vendors die, bar one which a quick reload resolved. Fair enough if you dont like the DLC but dont make statements that are ludicrous please. Its down to the player to stop the attacks before they kill NPC's, if you fail to act its your fault. I have plenty of characters, have played DG very thoroughly and done essentially "everything" in the entire game.

The complaints of vampire attacks are over-rated. Its extremely easy to stop them with any character, at any level, at any time. Its not a problem unless you let it become one from failing to act. If you dont have the skill or wit to counter the vampire attacks its not the games fault. And lets face it the NPC's themselves are not essential to the gameplay. Sure its a pain if a vendor falls down dead but he aint about to make a contribution to the dragonborns story arc now is he. All that they do is sell or buy stuff and maybe offer a small sidequest once in a while.

Now as the for the content itself, if you dont like vamps its not for you. If you dont like killing vamps its not for you. Me? I like doing both so I rate the DLC highly. However I would agree that the DLC is a bit overpriced.

Inaction or not, it should not be possible for a DLC to mess up the vanilla game, yet this one can.

When playing a Vamp I actually let the vamp attacks happen. Why on earth would I stop my brothern from feeding as they see fit. This character also did about 30 radiant quests for the vamps, including many that required me to kill a 'named' NPC in town. So if you add the vamp kills, plus the ones I had to kill for a quest, ... yeah, there is no one left (except those essentials).

Could this be avoided? Sure. How? BY PLAYING OUT OF CHARACTER. Honestly my biggest gripe with Skyrim overall is the requirement to play out of character (or not Role-Play) in order to not break the game or strings of quests. Your character thinks only an idiot would willingly become a Werewolf? Too Bad. You character would never sell their eternal servitude to a Daedric Prince. Too Bad. Your character would never kill an old woman but would rather finds a means to just have her replaced. Too Bad. And I could just go on and on. Never before has any so called Role-Playing game made me work so hard to actually Role-Play. I have had to pretend that so many things are just not really happening that immersion is all but broken.

Yeah, that was a rant. Continue on please.

They are not your bretherin though, thats the point. They are half bloods, impure vampires with no control over the lust for blood. RP wise its easy to justify killing them, they are killing YOUR cattle.

And thats the point of RP'ing. Its not supposed to be easy, you have to make choices depending on your point of view with that character. Sometimes that means going against what your characters "normal" course of action would be. Thats where the RP comes in, YOU the player have to find a reason for your actions. The game just does its thing, its down to you to play it.

Well let me know how you finish the Companions questline without becoming a WW. Or finish the Thieves Guild questline without becoming a Nightingale. The problem with Skyrim is you have no choice, other than not to play. There is no RP option. I can pretend the sky is green, but that doesn't make the sky green, it just makes me an fool.

But you have your opinion and I'll leave you with that. I will soon be at 1,000 hours played so I can't say Skyrim hasn't been good to me.

When I dont try to do everyting on one character for one thing. Companions was with a character who was going to be a WW. Same for the thieves guild, a character who was going to becomes NG. You have plenty of choices, including walking away and ignoring a quest. The only time you are forced to do anything is the MQ and entering the college. Short of that everything, and I mean everything else is optional.

Just because you have a quest in front of you, does not mean you actually MUST do it. There is a cancel button for a reason. Haunted house in markath for instance. Just cancel convo and walk away, problem solved.

That is exactly how I play. I have never played a character through more than two factions. Most never even do the MQ. They are all tightly role-played, but that is the problem. I can't just do something totally out of character to move the quests along without feeling immersion break.

You say to role-play a person that wants to be a WW. Well ... I can't even imagine someone being that stupid so the RP just fails unless I am intentionally playing the village idiot that likes to whack things. Now that's just me, I am sure some people can do it. But if I want to play (IMO) a sensible warrior, no option for it and also be a Companion. I did have one character just say no to being a WW. Aela will for all eternity be waiting in the underforge, in WW form, for that guy to come back and change his mind. Well have fun waiting Aela.

Back to Dawnguard. I would give it a 60 to 70 score myself. Plenty of nice things added and places to see. But again the quest line requirements kill me in this game. Bethesda just says "Don't Role-Play, just do what we want you to do and everything will be all right." Well thanks for that.

I actually preferred Festival of Blood for Infamous.

Vampire, flying around as a cloud of bats, biting people, steaking vampires by flying into them, shooting lightning bolts at people.

The flying around the map was cool in itself xD

One of my biggest issues with Skyrim, just the blatent lack of respect for Roleplaying. Your basically forced to do Dawnguard if you want those NPC's to surivive. It's absolute garbage that you have to do an optional DLC just to avoid people dying and I personally could care less about random NPC's in town getting killed but when it's shop keepers that have Finite Money then that's when it becomes a huge issue.

Couldn't agree more.

59 might be a bit low, I would say 65 or even 70, but it's far from perfect and I got the PC version and didn't have any bugs that I noticed. It was just..dull, and was really short. There just wasn't much to it, 95% of the game was just walking to the destinations which where oddly always on the opposite end of the map as if it was trying to add filler. I think most of Dawnguard was just fanservice, mounted combat, new perk trees, crossbows, and other things the fanbase had been asking for.

Just the fact that it did not make it to the PS3 yet for review yet should have knocked it down by quite a bit. So really, this dlc has a score of 26/100 until the PS3 version becomes available.

But you don't have to move it along. It's your choice if you want to continue along the path you're taking. If something goes against what your character would want to do, then don't do it.

I'd agree that more choices would be good (or for the game to even acknowledge and respect your choice; actual 'yes' or 'no' options, not this 'yes' or 'later' crap), for instance at least being able to continue doing radiant quests without advancing the story, if not an alternate path. But it's not the game's fault if you do something and can't think of a good reason for your character to do it. There are other quests to do. It's not like the guild quests are particularly long anyway.

A character doesn't need to be stupid to become a werewolf.
Role-playing wise, the biggest problem I see with Dawnguard is that a vampire character, or a character that wants to be a vampire, has to go join the vampire hunters to get it started off (unless there's another way to start it that I'm not aware of). That's pretty nonsensical.

As I said in a following post I did do that with one character. Now Aela is forever standing in the Underforge waiting. I lost one of the more interesting Companion members, my favorite archery training, and can not finish the Companion quest line. Other things to do, sure, but if you are a Nord warrior wanting to make a name for yourself your common sense just ended that career.

The VL and WW forms are really fan service to Underworld lovers, but are just awful in my opinion to play. Change to VL, kill, change back, loot, change to VL, kill, change back, loot, change to VL, get stuck in door, change back, go through door, change to VL, kill, etc. and etc. It was just a terrible experience. Most the times I was killed was because I'd get backed into a corner in 3rd person and couldn't target anything because of the camera angle. I also didn't really think the rest of the game was really playable after you became VL. TES has never been about playing vampires, but playing heroes that kill vampires. This DLC just was wrong on many levels. But it's over, it's done, and maybe we can get a DLC that follows the more classic TES Hero fights evil scenario. Oh look, we can build a house....

You have been spouting this nonsense throughout a few posts now for quite a while and have been told several times that this is in no way for Underworld lovers. Vampires and Werewolves have been in TES for a very very long time. You seem to have something against anyone that enjoys it. You take every opportunity to knock the play style. Fine. We get it. YOU don't like playing as a werewolf or a vampire. MANY others do and it doesn't impact your game in any way. I do agree that they should allow you to loot your kills. I play on PC so I just use a mod that allows me to activate and loot, but I could see how that could get extremely annoying on consoles.