thank you OP, this stuff is stupid as hell. the bats will not be lore-friendly (Doesnt break the lore, but it has no lore base what-so-ever. no vampire clan from skyrim or it's surrounding provinces has that ability as of the time immortal blood was written) untill it is confirmed i can also transform into a mudcrab with the same alteration magic and the vampries are clearly just there for something obviously evul to kill. not even going to ask how something as powerful as a vampire lord has stayed hidden for more than a few hundred years

that aside i will enjoy this DLC, i will jsut have to think up explanations for these things myself (already solved the "vampire" problem: they are deadric beings sent to pester the humans with dumb looks and acts of terror)

edit: took out a small bit that could actuall be explained if we change settings from skyim

it probably takes place outside of skyrim, and the vampires might be a weird strain either adept at hiding or newly created by molag bal (or valmenia (nightmare deadra)) to take advantage of certain conditions to block out the sun

The bats are lore breaking? Then kindly direct me to the lore that says vampires don't do that in the TES universe.
As far as not hearing about the Dawnguard before -- DLC has traditionally been set in a place that is very separated from the main game. In Morrowind you go to Solstheim and Mournhold (oh, and by the way, Solstheim literally came out of nowhere); in Oblivion you get sent to a Daedric realm. There are probably very good, and very obvious, reasons why the Dawnguard hasn't been mentioned before. Probably 'cause they're far away and just not that important to the people of Skyrim.
And the vampire lords -- ever heard of something called "biding your time"?

All i am hoping is that it is more then an new area , questline and loot , i hope that there will be new features for the world of skyrim aswell !

Too much hate in this thread
jack254 makes some good arguments ,I would like something closer to the skyrim vampires that we read about but never actually seen one.
I love the crossbows by the way may buy the dlc just for that.

iv changed a few things around and reworded some stuff to adress a few things (and took but the dawnguard bit, i thought about relocation after i posted it, but there it still no reason what-so-ever we have not heard of them if they really are such a big order, if they are a small order i will not mind). yes the bats are lore breaking because no vampire has that ability, we have already seen the morrowind and high rock clans, the ones in skyrim phase through ice, not turn into bats, and the cyrodilic vampires remain hidden in the public eye. an island, a city and a deadric realm we knew about is perfectly believable but a totally new clan of vampires appearing totally out of the blue without The Order even doing anyhing before the new clan can even infect another member? that is much harder to believe

↑ you know what they say about assumptions......

i'm just hoping one of these vampires will know how to cut hair.

Dear god I'm sick of all these people arguing with bethesda about the dlc because it doesn't fit in lore. WHO BLOODY CARES?!!! I just want new content and see new and pretty things and play with whatever they give me. Also, we only saw a trailer bro. Just a trailer...we didnt exactly play the game. These vampires are probably worshippers of Molag bal judging from the statue in the blood fountain so probably not Volikhar. The dawnguard are most likely a secret organization since they have never been mentioned before and they have to be related to either Meridia or Azura because these kind of organizations never go into battle without some god backing them up. Tamriel is a huge and giant continent which leaves alot of room for bethesda to add whatever they damn well please. Werewolf transformations are there because they ARE an tes thing. Have you played morrowind dude? Hircine is the god of werewolves and the hunt so it is an tes thing.

And about the bat magic...I dont see why you even bother to mention it. Magic is a force that can be manipulated to do anything. There are no "real" rules on the ways of magic. Dont forget that just because bethesda made the way magic works in Skyrim does not mean thats the way it works all around...

Are you even trying to put a good point to your "story" bro?

Of course we don't have any definite facts yet, but as you said yourself, it certainly looks like the rift, thus my somewhat tongue-in-cheek statement.

I really hope that won't turn to be the case; it would be a truly awful experience.

Has anyone taken into account that just south of the Rift is the Jerall mountains, which we havent visted in 200 years.
It could be a new structure there.
I'm still betting on High Rock though.

Your name. It's inaccurate.

Has there even been a trailer yet? Or specifics confirmed? I have been out of the skyrim loop playing other games lately
Last I heard of Dawnguard was just the cryptic glowy eyes reveal

I think it looks awesome. Elder Scrolls going into a classic horror route. This looks like it could be legitimately scary, which I don't remember TES ever doing. So its new and exciting for me.

And crossbows have been a huge request to be put back in TES since the second they took them out. And did you even SEE that awesome ass horse he was riding???



But in your defense, "Dawnguard" is a really [censored] name.

even though i was right on all points i didnt edit out? gotcha. the only vampires that exist in skyrim during the time of the game is The Order and a few remaining volkihar, The Order decided to expand their influence and they whiped out most of the vampiric population of skyrim in the process. ignoring that though, lets talk about this bat idea, there is no vampire clan that can do that in cyrodill, skyrim, high rock or morrowind (we seen 3 province's vampire clans first hand and read the volkihar of skyrim, none have that ability), there is no way it has grounds in the lore. now for my next point, it is painfully obvious that bethesda needed something that everyone could tell is evil to have as an enemy, besides that being boring a hell, they look as cheesy as a party in sheogoath's madhouse. that last bit was philosophical truth abouth things of power (power attracts attention, no matter how you try to hide it)

Just because you don't see it in game doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means it wasn't important enough for the developers to implement given the time constraints.

while you may very well be right, but the fact that The Order is everywhere in skyrim really makes it seem like the over-took any and every other clan in the area (i would have said you were right and it is really just the game mechanics limiting our ability as volkihar, untill i started to notice a few volkihar every now and then)

Yes let us completely disregard how logical the assumptions being made actually are because [censored] anyone who dares criticize Skyrim.
Listen, if you wanna be hopeful, by all means. But those of us assuming? We wanna deduce. We wanna deduce what could be based on what we've seen.
And what we've seen so far is an Elder Scrolls title that definitely doesn't seem afraid to sell out, followed by a DLC that copy-pastes a cliché unoriginal vampire concept directly from a recent semi-popular action movie, whereas the established vampire in lore, the Volkihar, are completely M.I.A. from Skyrim. Sure, they exist, but they act nothing like they do in the lore, but rather act exactly as the Cyrodiilic strain.


Why on earth would they completely ignore existing lore they've already created and then dedicate an entire DLC to a vampire strain that seems to match the cliché stereotype of vampires as known by most people? Because they're selling out and appealing to the common denominator; "the common denominator doesn't brush up on Volkihar, so let's just copy-paste an idea they're comfortable with." Because they're trying to use as much of the DICE gamejam stuff as possible and [censored] all balance and lore and stability issues those creations might make: it's cheaper to implement them since those have already been created, rather than to pay devs to design even more. And thus, one can expect that much of the DLC will share cliché aspects that will seem all too familiar.

By all means, if we turn out to be wrong when it's released, let us know, and by all means, you're free to be hopeful and stay positive about this upcoming DLC. But we also have a right to be pessimistic about it, to attempt to deduce characteristics of it, and I think there's more than enough reason to worry at this point.



Good thing Bethesda's got their preferences straight too, huh? I for one would've been ticked as hell if we actually got Volkihar and werebears and everything else synonomous with Skyrim lore instead of these incredibly awesome kill cams they gave us!


There's no game mechanic limitation. Spriggans spawn directly from trees; from thin air. They could use the exact same mechanic to make Volkihar spawn from frozen lakes and the tundra ice in the northeast.

i think it looks sick

I love the -PLONK--Spitter--Spatter--Splash- wipe, flush... I just had the green apple splatters.

Blah blah blah... word wall. Skip.

Again you make the assumption that Dawnguard is set in Skyrim or in a region bordering the province. As demonstrated by DLC for previous games, this is unlikely to be the case.
And, again, there is nothing saying vampires can't turn into bats. There are, after all, vampires that can transform themselves into mist as per Immortal Blood; it's not too big a leap of the imagination, then, to believe that there are vampires that can turn into bats. After all, I did watch one do it myself.
Your next point is moot, really; you can join the vampires and decide to kill off the Dawnguard if you want to. Plunge the world into darkness and all that.
As for your 'philosophical truth' - well, the word truth implies that it is true all the time, and the idea that power can't be hidden strikes me as very . . . unreasonable. To quote Machiavelli: 'No enterprise is as likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.'

Hey let's all pass judgement on content that we've only seen a ~3 minute video for! we don't know that these vampires are or aren't Volkihair. We don't know that they come from Skyrim or somewhere else. We don't know if either castle is even in Skyrim.

C'mon guys.

you know, Bethesda is allowed to expand on the lore of their own series.