News!!!...

Finally...

Sooo, that puts the writing on hold...Again... ...

You need to get yourself that for Valentine's day XD

Very cool, I am glad you are getting this, PS3 gamers. You're gonna love it (hopefully). It's also cool that the DLc is being offered at half price for making you guys "wait" for many months.

Damn it . . .the best DLC is saved for last? Ah! The wait! I can't wait any longer! DAWNGUARD! DAWNGUARD!

I would not get your hopes up people. It does not say February of this year after all...

Ew. Fine print.

I can't wait till you get it. Do you know about Serana yet? ... In my opinion she is the best NPC ever made in any videogame I've ever seen in my life. And DG gets interesting, too. I'm actually holding off on Lord Haaf-Mersey for a few days because he's just got to a part of DG that blew my mind, it'll take a LOT of typing to cover! hee hee hee

I'm looking forward to your impressions of DG, DE, particularly 'cause of your vampire story.

I'm pretty sure he knows more about her than I do, and I actually have the DLC!

Hehe, oh yes. A fellow friend leaked everything before the release. The story, the NPC, everything.

I actually thought Serana was an amazing NPC. She's easily my favorite. Because she relates to my female vampire, Raven(which I love dearly ). In my story, ever since Oblivion, Raven is a pureblooded vampire and worshiper of Molag Bal. Black hair, yellow eyes and shades of black, purple and red clothing. And then Dawnguard comes out for Skyrim a few years later. And my jaw falls. I was like "Woah. Raven has a twin! With shorter hair!"

Also, her voice is by Laura Bailey, who played Rayne (a half vampire) in the BloodRayne video-game series.

Of course, they have similar personalities but one has a darker side than the other. I was simply amazed. They both had parental issues. One had issues with her father(Serana) and the other had problems with her mother(Raven). Both are pureblooded, or "Daughters of Coldharbour". Both worships Molag Bal(Serana does mention she did at one point, and she may still). Hell, even their stories somewhat seem similar. Serana has a desire to save her people from an extremist vampire lord(Harkon), who's very idea of vampiric peace can bring war. He plans to subjugate mortals and enslave them. Serana and Valerica knows it could bring war to vampires not only in Skyrim, but all of Tamriel. It would be a civil war between vampires, mortals and of course, other dwellers in foreign continants that would be pissed at having the sun taken away from them. Nirn might as well be Coldharbour if that happened.

Raven, as she grows up, finds out the leaders of in her clan have tainted the name of Vampyre, and plan to use the Elder Scrolls in the Imperial Palace, as well as their political power, for domination. Raven knows the importance of survival and how her people can live on through deception and manipulation rather than brute force. She does what it takes to kill off her enemies and friends to stop a threat that would put her people and bloodline at risk of exposure. Even if she sacrifices thousands of people in war through political maneuvering, she still believes she has to save her people from certain doom. So, she is a noble woman . .in her own dark little manner.

I like Serana also because she likes her condition. When confronted about it, she says she doesn't have a good reason why she would throw away her gift, especially after what experienced to get it. Despite what it did to her family, the dialogue she says shows she is reluctant to get rid of it. It is all Serana knows, having been a vampire for over two-thousand years(She's a walking fossil). She's one of the oldest beings in Skyrim and she's been given a great degree of power and abilties not even regular vampires would comprehend. Vampirism makes up Serana's identity. 4000 years of blood is all she knows, and she only turns to being human if the player persists enough.

The only problem I did have with her of course(I never played the game, but I am sure it will be a bit of a problem) is that we don't see her feeding. She is obviously proud of her gift and even jokes about feeding on Isran's people but we don't ever see her turn into a Vampire Lord or taking a bite out of the thralls at the castle. This is gameplay elements, I know, but it would still be cool to see. It is not shown, and people think she is a cursed character who wants to get rid of her gift. It's not the case.

Like Janus Hassildor, for example. He wants his wife to be cured because of all the suffering she went through, but he even said he embraced the changes within himself and we all know he has Mina(The Pale Lady) working in his basement to harvest blood for his wife. He is like Sybille Stentor, feeding on prisoners and taking blood from them so he can sustain himself and his wife. It's a clever trick. And the fact that he still helped his wife even though she rejected her condition makes him a likeable character, like Serana. Even though she's a vampire, the purest form of vampire, she still fights for her people and would rather see her father dead than her world destroyed.



Hehehe. It's easily my favorite Elder Scrolls DLC. And I don't even have it.

Yeah, says you...But I get to build a house... ...

That's all you want, dude, lol

Very exciting indeed, especially if they mean February 2013.

I still have big concerns, though. I’ll be waiting a bit before I risk my long-term characters. Assuming they survive another patch that is.

I believe this is why it's taken so long to get the DLC out to you guys, they wanted to bug test things thoroughly, rather than rush them to the public and have more fiascos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bailey_(voice_actress)

I just learned that Laura Bailey is the voice of Serana. I've never heard of her before. For those of you who haven't, check out the list of things she's done, especially in other vid games. She's like a superstar for voiceovers.

I hope you're right. I’ve been poking around on the official forum, and that’s being said there too. Still I’ll sacrifice try out my least beloved characters first, and keep all of my pre-disaster Dragonborn saves!!

Seriously though, I am really looking forward to this. Dragonborn for my oldest dragonborn characters, and kids and houses all around. We have Dawnguard on the Xbox, and while it’s a very enjoyable addition I like being able to play characters without the changes it makes to the regular game. So no PS3 Dawnguard for me.

You mean to make sure that it is filled with game-breaking bugs? This is Bethesda we are talking about. They do not have a QA department. These are the same folks whose idea of a patch is something that makes dragons fly backwards!

I think the mountains of bad press that Bethesda has been getting - not just from disgruntled fans - but from game reviewers and publications, is what finally prompted them to get off their rears and release this stuff for the PS3. They could have done it a long time ago. They have just chosen not to.

Their previous claims of having issues porting it to the PS3 is just hogwash. Yes, the PS3 was purposely made to be difficult to program for. Yet every other game company in the world can release their products on it, and in a much more timely manner than this. Just look at all the games there are for the PS3! All it takes is the willingness to hire a couple of PS3 programmers for a month or two to port it over. Or subcontract the entire thing to another company that specializes in working on the PS3. In terms of project management, it is nothing insurmountable. In terms of technology, there is nothing new in any of the DLCs. Everything there is already in the vanilla game. Perk trees, a third person monster form, flying creatures, scripted events, it is all in the base game. The only things that are honestly new in the DLCs are some meshes, textures, and vocal tracks.

I just said that on my post above . . .



Bloodrayne baby!

Omg, she was in xxxHolic?!

Dawnguard makes changes to the regular game?! Oh no!! I guess I'll have to make a guinea pig character on someone else's PS3 before I commit to it on my own.


This. Bethesda displayed this same laziness toward the PS3 with Oblivion (vampirism anyone?). The thing that ticked me off then (and now) is that, even knowing that the bug exists, they have never made any attempt to fix it.

It does make changes to the vanilla game. The biggest ones are to the vampires. All of the existing vampires get a face lift, in the form of glowing eyes and sunken cheeks. There are certain npcs out there who are vampires, but are masquerading as normal (I am not going to use names, so I do not spoil anything for anyone). Before they looked just like anyone else, and it was really hard to tell. Now it is very blatantly obvious they are vamps.

Another are that vampire dungeons get things added. There are new critters that get put in them, and the vamps themselves all get new outfits to wear (some rather nifty vampire armor). So if you have mods that edit the vanilla vamp lairs, they might conflict with DG.

Then you get some new places added. The biggest impact IMHO is Castle Volkihar. It sits out in the Sea of Ghosts north-west of Solitude, right across from the fort with the Thalmor in it (not the embassy, but the place where they torture the Greymane son). You cannot look out at the sea without seeing it rising up. It is an eyesore if you are on the PC and use the high res texture pack, as the two conflict, resulting in the game using a low res LOD for the castle which really looks ugly. Thankfully that can be fixed with mods though. If you are on a console, I suppose it just looks like everything else (yes, I am spoiled by PC graphics).

DG also adds a boatman to several of the port cities (Solitude, Windhelm, and Dawnstar I think?), who you can hire to transport you to any of the other cities.

Hearthfire also makes some changes as well. Most notably to the three places where you can build your house. Any mod using those spots is going to conflict. It also changes the carriage system. You can now hire a carriage to take you to any of the hold capitals, no matter where you are. The downside is that also conflicts with every mod that tweaks the carriage system, causing CTDs as soon as you walk into a cell with a carriage (this burned me, and had me stumped for days trying to figure out what was causing it).

Honestly though, IMHO most of the changes are good ones. The vampires you fight are much tougher now. Not for the low level character at all. It really feels like a challenge facing them. So now they feel like Big Bads. While I mourn the loss of the Scenic Carriages mod, I do appreciate what they did to improve the carriage system overall. Plus the face-changer that DG adds was long overdue. That should have been in the vanilla game. I personally think the good things outweigh the bad ones.

Edited to Add: Oh, yeah, and as DE notes, no one hostile to vamps at stage 4 anymore with DG. People only become hostile if you turn into a vampire lord.

The Dawnguard addition screws with my RP characters. And stage 4 hostility for vampires is gone and they only attack you in vampire lord form. Seriously . . .yellow glowing eyes and a pair of fangs aren't a dead giveaway for vampires? GTFO!

And about Oblivion, I am still quite bitter against the Beth team for screwing up the GOTY edition, though I never even bothered trying to cure vampirism. I hate that we didn't get the Vile Lair. That was a sexy home with a sexy coffin and yummy prisoners!

This is exactly what I would do too. I would either try a character who's lesser-used, or make a 'trial' character.

The changes to the vanilla game that bother me to the point of not buying Dawnguard for the PS3 are the loss of hostility to stage 4 vampires and the new random event. Possible non-quest spoiler discussion follows.



So if I ever make another vampire character I will do it without Dawnguard. I actually have a vampire who lives in Solstheim. I’ve never written a word about her because she’s so damn boring. There is no conflict in her life. I’m pretty good at filling in the gaps with imagination, but a blood-starved vampire who gets a friendly greeting from the guards and isn’t much bothered by the sun? I liked it better when they had to feed or deal with the consequences.

Yikes, that was kind of a rant. I should mention that Dawnguard also has my favorite armor and weapons by far as well as a lot of very cool characters, events, locations, and stuff. And I think that if you try it and decide later to delete it, you can still play old characters whom you did not load while Dawnguard was installed? Is that how it works?

I can rant and write a paragraph on how I agree, but I'll just agree.

Oh yes, I forgot about your spoiler. I use a mod that prevents that from happening. When I played a vamp I also used a mod called Better Vampires that allows you to customize the vampire rules, like making people attack you on sight, the sun doing damage, etc... So I tend to forget how it is in the vanilla game.

I cannot say for how it works when deleting a plugin on the PS3, but when you do it on the PC it is not game-breaking. Any plugin-added clothing or weapons vanish. So you might find yourself naked. Any plugin added spells also simply vanish. If you are in a location added by a plugin, you find yourself teleported to the center of the map. In Oblivion that was the Tiber Septim Hotel (which is why that place is sort of haunted. Actors pop up there when the game gets confused about where they are supposed to be). I am not sure where it is in Skyrim. So on the PC it is really no big deal. I imagine it would not be any different on the PS3.

We watched one of them Youtube videos the other day and the bloke was playing on the x-box...He seemed to have one of those "Extra Content" menus open when he started Dragonborn up...

Is it possible that you could buy Dawnguard and have it only affect your game if you choose to activate it?...Or is that not how it works?...

I only ask because that's how the Download menu on Gran Turismo 5 works...We got a pile of stuff off the Network and it only applied to the boy's game when we went to the Download menu thingie...

The daughter's pretty desperate to play Dawnguard but we're saying no because of the game changing (Possibly breaking - no Ghost Towns please...) things it does...

I completely agree with this. I thought the sun mechanics were good in Oblivion, feed, and you could walk in the sun. Starve, and you burn.

On the PC yes. It is as simple as checking or unchecking the plugin from the Data Files list. On the X-Box or PS3, I have no idea.

We can uninstall Dawnguard or any of the DLC, and I did uninstall Dragonborn from LHM's game (for unrelated reasons) but I also have not been to Solstheim yet, so this did not seem to affect anything. I have no idea what would happen if I were to uninstall DG from his game now that DG has already been started, and is well under way. I'm betting something would get massively screwed up in the long run!

I agree with you Grits, if there were a choice I'd rather have a vampire who gets hated at Stage 4 (or whatever the old system was) then greeted like any ordinary citizen. I like this sort of edgyness, as you may know! ... On the topic of vampire attacks I have mixed feelings...

Pros: they introduce some some spontaneity into villages that (after awhile) start feeling a bit static and stale. Vamp attacks are exciting, and if my char. happens to witness one in the making, it's a good way for me to get my pulse running. I like trying to DO something about it. That's one of the main reasons I like Elder Scrolls: occasional adrenaline rushes that happen when I'm sometimes not expecting them.

Cons: my favorite NPC might get killed in the action. I especially don't like it if I can't do anything about this, too. My char. will wake up, go for a stroll, and find the Redguard who runs the smith in White run dead. I happen to like some of the NPCs, even if they are rather staid after awhile.

I don't really have a problem with the 'suicide mission' aspect you've mentioned. Yeah, they're not 100% realistic, but neither are people who greet you with exactly the same line day in and day out (I work for Belethor, at the general goods store....). One of the coolest things about Oblivion are NPCs like City Swimmer, who just flip out in the middle of the village square! .... But after City Swimmer (and a couple other NPCs) are dead, there aren't really any moments of spontaneity. This is what I like about the vampire attacks.

Thank you. *sits down*

Adrienne? She is an Imperial. A lot of people mistake her for a Redguard though.

Doh!

OOoh!! Ooooh!!...

Question from th'wife...

Can you go to Solstheim even if yer not doing the MQ?...Along with worrying about vampires with Dawnguard, she doesn't want to have the dragons threatening places if that's the only way she can play Dragonborn...(She does worry so... )...

I'm quite looking forward to flattenning Miraak the Part-Face... ...I'm the Dragonborn!!...No I am!!...And so's my wife!!...

(provided you can go etc)...

Still...We will be able to build houses!!...


EDIIIIT!!!...When say she wants to play Dragonborn, she wants to go exploring and do the side-quests...She cares not for the MQ aspect of it...

Thank you...*Bows*...

Good questions...

Yes, there is a new boat at the Windhelm docks that will take you to Solstheim even if the MQ is not active. (It’s mentioned in a loading screen.)

I don’t want to spoil even the slightest thing about Solstheim, because I loved discovering it so much. I watched The Girl play first for a while without the MQ. Then when I finally had a character go there I had tears rolling down my face when they arrived. I’m curious to hear everyone else’s experience.

Also, will those priests ever bother me if I go Solshteim? I don't want to even have a hint that my character is dragonborn since I already have a certain character that is. The rest do seperate things unrelated to the main quest.

Plus, Majni and the Frostmoon Pack! Aww yeah!

DE, I’ll PM you.

Excellent!!...Thank you... ...

I'm really looking forward to it...Which, considering my usual ambivalence towards Skyrim says something for it... ...

Ah, now, very importantly...

Can we build a house there?... ...


...

I'll second the "yes". Haven't done this yet, though. Could you imagine how much it would suck if we were forced to do the MQ just to go there? Well, it would suck for those of us who avoid the MQ.




Sweet!
Yeah, I've only heard good things about it. There was a thread over at Bethsoft in which long-term Morrowind gamers/OB Skyrim haters (ya know, the type of gamers who hate anything after TES: III...) were giving the thumbs up on most aspects. Not that I need an endorsement from these sorts, but if they are being impressed by it, that's a good sign in a way. They were basically comparing Bloodmoon's version to the new one, and were mostly saying good things for a change.

As opposed to the several other ways that Bethesda try to push you into the MQ during the main game?... ...

LOL. That would be a thread for mods and PC gamers.

But I’ll give this non-spoiler hint about finding temporary housing: strongboxes are safe storage.

I was reviewing my calender today and I realized... HEARTHFIRE TOMORROW!!! Right? It's tomorrow, right?

Get those ingots ready, people!!

Wheeeee!!!

YES! Woot! Can't wait to stuff my trophie room with prizes from the hunt!

And we're once step closer to Dawnguard!