In the interviews, the DVD, and even in the artbook, the devs speak of dragons as only appearing similar to commonly known myth so as to be recognizable, but that they're otherwise unique; that the dragons don't merely breathe fire, they speak it. The ancient dragon language and its shouts are supposed to be an arcane magic, forcing change with mere willpower, and the shouts certainly feel epic. But the dragons don't.

After hundreds of hours of play--if that's even necessary to notice it--it becomes apparent that not only do the dragons of Skyrim look like everything we're already used to, they act familiarly, too. Melee attacks and fire/frost breath. How original.

The dragons also have their "own" version of the shout that's scripted differently. Why do we hear them roar, even though they should be saying the words of power? They appear in the subtitles, but only roars are audible. Why can't we get that version of the shout instead of being given an inferior one?

For that matter, why don't they use the shout we use for fire and frost breath? Why don't they use any other shouts at all?

Fights with dragons are uninteresting because they don't force you to be any more tactical than fights with horkers. We don't get to do cool things like use Clear Skies to counter an enemy dragon's Storm Call, or Dismay to counter an enemy dragon's Animal Allegiance. Dragons don't use Become Ethereal to recover or prepare an attack like we can (I use it all the time for master Destruction spell assaults). They don't FUS RO DAH us over cliffs, or at all. They don't Disarm us, freeze us with Ice Form (even angry Greybeards do that!), use Kyne's Peace to reduce the effectiveness of our allies, or Marked for Death to reduce our combat effectiveness. It'd be cool if they used Whirlwind Sprint to move across the battlefield on occasion, but I can understand why that would be difficult to code.

I'm on PS3, but I would make the switch to PC ASAP if there were a mod to fix this blunder. There shouldn't be a DLC that adds more dragon variety, including dragon types, more shouts, and dragons using shouts, it should be part of an update; unique combat with epic bosses is something we were promised from the beginning.

For the most part, the game is great. But the dragon battles are absolute crap, Bethesda. I wouldn't be complaining about big, powerful dragons angrily breathing fire and ice at me if I wasn't promised so much more. You don't deserve a GOTY for hyped mediocrity and broken promises. I am very displeased with you.

No...they're not lame...they walk quite well!!! (XD)

To a degree, both the shouts and the dragons are lame. The recharge time between shouts is generally too long and the shouts themselves are pretty weak and not very practical, save for Dragonrend (which I use all the time to kill Dragons).

Get the Talos necklace and shouts are reduced 20%... become more than just a defensive power then... or at least better than not having it- casting-wise that is.

What? They dont roar, they Shout. Havent you ever noticed the "Yol" they say before each fire attack? But the real disappointment with Dragons is that theyre nothing more than big beasts who can barely talk even though the lore says they were/are really intelligent. Like when you get a Flourish on a Dragon and jump on its head, its just stupid that the Dragon doesnt use its wings/arms to throw you off. I understand that the point of the Flourish is to kill in a cool fashion but IMO its just poorly executed, dragon-wise anyway.

Even with the Amulet of Talos (-20%) and Talos' Blessing (-20%), its still a solid minute of recharging for each Yol-Toor-Shol which is just stupid considering I can dish out more damage per hit with my sword. Anybody else remember the E3 demo that Todd Howard was using Yol every 10 seconds or so? Thats what I had hoped it wouldve been like.

Me too. I suppose they decided that if they let people do that, they would just spam the shouts, but so what? We can spam the sword, and that's more potent anyway.

Actually, I think I'll just go with reporting you. I'll criticize my purchased product for its qualities and flaws all I please.


Yeah, big disappointment there :/ And as I've said, the words may appear in the subtitles, but they're not audible (or at least I never hear a dragon actually shout).


Obviously, spamming shouts would be way OP, but I do agree that the cooldown time on most, if not all, is very unfair. For the most part, I resort to Fus Ro Dah, since 45 seconds (minus 20-40%) is the closest to a reasonable time for decent power. I suppose, though, that it's possible to use shouts often and effectively if you have both Talos buffs and use only the first or second word. You'd have to shout often, since the effect would be far less than than a full three-word shout, but I think that the massively shortened cooldown might pay off in the end. I'll have to experiment playing like that.