Erm, I don't think I ever said that's what defines a role-playing game. But in that scenario, you would be role-playing.

I've ranted plenty before about the railroading in the game, and I remember explicitly saying that more options would be good to have. What I'm "rationalizing" is the fact that you can role-play in Skyrim, even though the choices are pretty lack-luster.

Do you harp on Bloodmoon too for it's multiple "copy/paste fake dual questlines"? Or how you can still be a werewolf after siding with the Skaal?

It's not without faults, but I wouldn't call it a "lazy implementation of a non choice". The choice has meaning to your character, and both paths progress logically.

... that's the opposite to me.

Straight forward story telling is just that, story telling.
Where choices are, something that draws you in, makes you feel like your choices matter, that your character has significance, and that you are actually filling a role.


Yeah at least 2 choices. Go infamous style, infamous or famous lol.

I mean it's not much, but it's something along the lines of choice!!!

SWTOR was an MMO based all on choice and it had potential but they did the same crap that dawnguard did. Choices wern't significant unless it was effecting something happening 2 seconds later, and they did a few other things that kind of screwed with the potential. But whatever, blade and soul is my next try

On a side note, the choices in KOTOR and Mass Effect, that felt fulfilling. Making people jump off cliffs, executing them, befriending them, actually participating in conversations, to me that's what I see as a true role playing game. Filling the role of the character created. Making the character, designing them, deciding their path, deciding their fighting style, deciding their personality, and being able to act it out in game.

Not, I will be the good guy so Ima evade killing these things over here, or over there. That can be done in almost ANY game so long as it's objective isn't to kill all NPC's. Make people think less of me when I do wrong, make bandits more aligned with me when I do wrong and guards more when I save people. Give me the option between hero, villain, or somewhere in between! lol


Ok so you're free to have your opinion of course, and you're satisfied with what dawnguard and skyrim gave which is perfectly fine. I'm not here to argue that people shouldn't enjoy the game.

However, the both paths progress logically thing. The point where you just escort Serana home, and if you go dawnguard, just leave the elder scroll with her? That just makes absolutely no sense. Why would one EVER do such a thing. In fact, if you killed her right there, that'd be the end of the DLC!

They'd never find the mom, not in your lifetime, and even after if the vampire hunters did their job and killed serana, then it'd be done!

Or how Serana can be a vampire walking around the fort but the PC can not do the same.

And the vampires, just letting you walk away after learning of their plans. Some 2 second honor code? He tries to kill you if you do everything he says so he clearly has no honor.

After joining the Volkihar, it makes some sense sure. It's not too hard to believe the progression.

But honestly the entire Dawnguard side is just a logical fail.

It would be over with in 2 seconds. Kill Serana, burn the body.



She's a good vampire? Doesn't stop dawnguard from rejecting you if you accept her disease.

There are just so many logical holes in the story, you can't really say it progresses logically.



It doesn't mean it's impossible for people to enjoy, it just means it seemed like a very poorly thought out storyline where they didn't think of better ways to do things, or they didn't want to waste the time to push out the release.

That is not a review. The "reviewer" chose not to review a lot of the DLC as if he was on a mission to dislike it and to get others to do the same. I have greatly enjoyed Dawnguard. I have played through it a few times now, but of course it isn't by any means perfect. Would have been nice if they had expanded on what you can do with Fort Dawnguard or Volkihar keep once you are done with the main quest line of the DLC. or to actually be able to expand your influence and feel like you truly made an impact on the world around you.
It'd be nice if they'd stop holding our hands every step of the way and allow us to truly fail if we either can't do something or refuse to. A lot of games these days suffer from this. Everyone wants everything handed to them without putting forth any effort and then complain that the game is too easy and the game developers all acquiesce. Sorry, getting off topic here, but this is a bit of the root of the problem. Everything is getting watered down.

I was talking about after the split, what was claimed to be "lazy implementation" and "non choice", and that happened before. You're right though, like I said it's not without it's faults.. the beginning seems to be a particularly troubled area (if you're a vampire you have to buddy up with the dawnguard at the beginning for no reason, or if you're a dawnguard you have to buddy up with a vampire at the beginning for no reason). But it's not like the quests for the side you eventually do take don't progress sensibly.

Serana had intel on what the vampires were up to and would help stop them. Like Isran says she's an asset (notice how he always refers to her as "it"), and he makes it quite clear that it's an exceptional case and that you're both on thin ice.

He was honestly grateful for what you had done. You returned his daughter, someone he does actually care about and who he needed for the prophecy, and handed him an Elder Scroll that he needed for the prophecy. If you had done anything less, you could bet he would've killed you if you refused.

Well, he cares about what she can do for him. He doesn't actually care about her as his daughter.

I agree with you here, even if it is a bit off topic. Nothing is more irritating on forums, either, than players who follow through the watered down hand-holding process, then complain that the game doesn't provide enough challenge although they make decisions that actually lessen the challenge in-game. Basically, I see both as a symptom of the linear/fps development mindset, where games follow a routine structure of low level fights, grant player a new weapon, medium level fight, grant player a new weapon, high level fight, give them a big weapon, boss fight, game ends. Sure, it's nice to have graphically spectacular games, sure it's nice to actually have to work towards something, but there are too many games where the only consequence of net being able to achieve the set down structured goal at the end of the level is simply to repeat it until you do actually win through...that's not game development, that's just technical laziness.

On the other side of the coin are complaints of 'dumbing down' or streamlining of games like Skyrim...those are generally levelled at it by people who have been brought up on earlier titles, but ignore the fact that each and every release is a game in it's own right, not necessarilly an add-on from previous series titles. Games in series need to grow, or they stagnate, and only end up appealing to hard-core fans, and that turns them into a niche market.

I would like to see reviews which are a lot more informative, rather than regurgitations of marketting hype and press releases, or involving a decent length of actual gameplay, not several hours of play by a reviewer on a specifically provided segment of the game, which you could pretty much guarantee would have been so doctored and tested that there were few, if any, bugs in it. The best reviews on this or any other recent game I've seen have been those written a month or two after release, by reviewers who were actually gamers, rather than staffers in the games media industry....at least those reviews give genuine appraisals of the game and it's bugs or quirks, but it's a crying shame that we don't see them come out until after most of us have outlayed our coin. As a pc gamer, I do like to get a game on day or night of release, but I know in my heart that day one isn't going to be spent playing it (in most cases), it will be spent patching, working around bugs, reading up on problems that other people have found, etc.

But again, the entire DLC could have ended just by killing Serana. Right there the prophecy ends. There's no need for intel once it gets to that point. You just go ahead and whack her head off.

Even if you don't want to, there's an opportunity for choices if nothing else. Choose to kill her or not, and still face down Harkon to end his reign as he would still be a threat and probably angry that you stopped his plans.


As for him being grateful, regardless of what ever happened he planned to eventually kill you. He planned to use you and kill you, so when you refused he should have just killed you right there. There was no "gratitude" there was only seeking opportunity.

Nobody knew the full details of the prophecy at that point, not even Harkon (that's why he wanted the Elder Scrolls). I'm not sure the Dawnguard were aware of the prophecy at all at that point, either. They just knew the vampires were up to something and they got an Elder Scroll... then this vampire walks up with an Elder Scroll, says she knows you, and can help defend against what the vampires are planning. At that point, they took her into holding (in a torture room, no less..) and waited until you returned to help figure out just what was going on. Killing her before giving her a chance to talk would be extremely dumb.

Besides which, Serana and Valerica are far from the only pureblooded vampires. As she says when she shows up at the fort, it was customary for female worshipers of Molag Bal to go through with it. Most don't survive, but some do. As long as Harkon could eventually get the Elder Scroll, I'm sure he would just begin searching for another pureblood. Killing Serana might buy you some time, but it would become a problem again eventually and you'll have lost the one person that could help you figure out what he's trying to do.

I'm not so sure about that. If you side with him, it's your show of abilities that he finds threatening. I don't think he was planning from the start to kill you, just when you showed yourself to be too good and a threat to his rule.

If you side against him, it was a show of mercy as payment for giving him two very important things. Just because he promises to kill you the next time he sees you doesn't mean he should just kill you now to get it over with.

I know, I was following on your sarcasm, but I don't do it very well in the Internet environment

Pray tell how Harkon got the Elder Scroll in the first place? That's right, Dovahkiin handed it to him. One of the few people in Skyrim who realize how important and powerful Elder Scrolls are, and he goes straight to a clearly evil vampire lord and says "Here, take this, have a nice day".

It makes absolutely no sense, no matter how you look at it.

Like I said, the beginning had issues.

Molag Bal didn't give you the option... (evil laughter)

Never said I was upset about the score. In my post I never commented about the score or even cared about it for that matter. I was commenting on the quality of the reveiw itself. Any score is just an arbitrary number. What that author posted wasn't a review, just his commentary. A review looks at every aspect of the reviewed material good or bad, communicates that information to their readers and then adds their commentary and "Score". This guy didn't even come close to doing that.

And so yes - you can roleplay Skyrim. Just as you can roleplay many games if you so choose. But it's not designed with roleplaying in mind. And - when you factor in in other areas like attributes going - the franchise is on a steady march away from being an RPG franchise at all. And as long as people are prepared to go along with that, they'll keep on moving in that direction.

The choices are not just "lackluster", they're basically non existent. In Skyrim the only choice you get - besides choosing sides in the copy'n'paste civil war - is 'kill this guy/don't kill this guy'. Half the time you don't even get the chice to refuse a quest - you can of course choose not to do it, but many will force themselves into your quest log whether you like it or not. The open world 'do it at your own pace' format kids people into thinking it's a game with a lot of freedom. It isn't. It's a lot like a linear FPS except you decide what levels to do and in what order. And dawnguard is no exception.


I've never played Bloodmoon and likely never will. I'm not talking about Bloodmoon. In theory, Skyrim should be tapdancing all over games the same studio made years ago. The games should get better as the franchise develops.

The 'choice' can have a superficial meaning to your character - they're a vampire or vampire hunter (who maybe turns into a vampire later anyway because they can). But you're going to still be doing basically the same quests and still be railroaded into the same forgone conclusion.
You just might get slightly different kit and a different castle to hang around in. Your 'choice' is going to hinge on whether you want more crossbow options than anything else. Because it sure ain't going to make a jot of difference to how events play out.
Bethesda - in their writing and quest design - are, at present, very, very lazy. This is because they are making action games, not story driven RPGs.

No. If you got a 5/10 on a test at school, would you have been happy?

There is no mounted combat in Dawnguard.

I liked Dawnguard. I often find that reviews of whether its a game or music or even a film are often tainted by the person who is doing the review. If they already didn't like Skyrim or RPG's then they will never give it the chance the game or what ever it is a decent write up. Its like asking a ardent fan of WoW giving a decent write up of GW2 and then a decent score, it just wouldn't happen. As no one is that inpartial to anything as we all have our favourites. I hate FPS like Unreal, Quake and CoD so I would never be able to give them a fair write up. Same goes with journalists, but often is the case they are given treats by the bigger publishers to help push up their review scores as seen by EA and their scores for TOR and ME3.

PC Dawnguard was buggy, incredibly buggy

Agreed. The unofficial patch helped quite a bit though.

I disagree. Dawnguard would be OK if it had less bugs/crashes, but it's far from the best DLC.

The winner for that are the Mass Effect 2' ones, especially the epic "Lair of the Shadow Broker"

Frankly i feel that is the only Bioware's DLC worth it's cost

Hey, what about Overlord and Arrival DLCs? They were very nice, too.

Also, I haven't tried Leviathan yet, but "From Ashes" DLC (ME3) is also pretty cool, too. Javik is a pretty nice sarcastic bastard

Tali: "So, you're a real, living Prothean?"
Javik: "As opposed to a fake, dead one?"
Tali: "...??U"

Haven't played Overlord, but Arrival was just one big corridor shooter. And there's no point in buying From Ashes since the character and the special weapon is already on the disc availabe with a tiny ini edit

And for that i have to credit to Bethesda. They haven't sunken to the day-one-DLC-included-in-disc tactics

Nothing beats Shivering Isles. It's a game within a game.

The only DLC I've ever bought that actually felt worth the price were the FO:NV DLCs, to be honest. (Not counting Expansions, mind you. Shivering Isles was worth the price too) In my opinion, DLC should focus more on story. DLC should be like buying a book or going to see a movie, because let's be honest here: no DLC ever seeks to re-shape the basic gameplay of the base game. So what does DLC possibly have to offer besides more of the base mechanics? Expand on those base mechanic systems a bit (for example more cooking recipes?) and give the player a good story they'll enjoy.

I think DLC is just typically a business that exists solely off of the fact that people want to have the complete version of a game they like. They know they liked the base game and they want the full version of a game they love, so they buy it. It's only AFTER they buy it that they typically realize "I don't think this was worth the price at all."

So no, the review score doesn't surprise me. Dawnguard doesn't seem very ambitious in that it appears to add more of the same. It's just quests, dungeons and a story combined with a new vampire/werewolf form and perk tree + dragonbone weaponry that makes you think you "have to have it." The story, while definitely improved from Skyrim's standard of story quality (not saying much...), is still kinda bleh.

Sorry, but although the landscape and enemies are fine, I'll never forgive it the fact that there are only 2 kind of dungeons in the entire expansion (sometimes even mixed into one)...thus making dungeon crawling painfully repetitive and boring once you visit a single one of every kind.

That's one of the biggest Oblivion flaws IMO, only multiplied by 2.