Skyrim Dawnguard Personal Review

The first Skyrim expansion Dawnguard has not been as warmly received online as I original hoped. Most personal reviewers have accused Bethesda of selling out to the modern vampire craze that’s plagued our films and our games of late. I can assure you that The Elder Scrolls series have been sucking blood with lave red eyes for many years now so there is no reason not to have expected a full guild based storyline at some point or other.

The new campaign is accessed once a character reaches level 10 or above where you will start to hear rumours from city guards (particularly in Riften). Early on you will come face to face with the ancient group of vampire hunters known as the Dawnguard – which will lead you onto the choice of fighting for them or biting their necks and sucking their blood. I first choose to complete a run through by helping out this guild as I love my werewolf beast form almost as much as my Nords duel-maces.

Your playtime may vary but as I played with a high level character my trip lasted about 8 hours but I didn’t need to spend much time in any of the towns sorting myself out between missions. I would imagine that this could increase to around 12 hours should you start this questline off earlier in your adventuring career. I have since given this a run through playing from the vampire perspective which holds more gameplay additions but maybe a less interesting story (at least in my opinion). Basically the content could last anywhere between 18-25 hours in total depending on how rushed you play and as long as you give this a go from both perspectives – overall a worthwhile £15.00 investment.

The Dawnguard side of the faction starts off a bit slow but picks up after a quest or two into the expansion. The areas to explore are much more open (even though they are mainly cave systems) and have some nice aesthetical touches to make them unique. The only problem I had with the new locations were that some required backtracking to get out once you’d completed the desired requirements (although again this might just have been me not spotting the quick win).

You get some marvellous adventures along the way with two unique outdoor locations that you can go back to time and time again even when the Dawnguard expansion has come to a close. There are also some wonderful crafted set pieces, one involving a legendary dragon and a Skeleton Horde and the other pitting you against two massive Dragons on an Icy Lake (where they crash in and out of the water). There were also some brilliant set pieces created from the expansion – for example when my summoned Dragon (yes that’s right) caused havoc for a couple of his Frost cousins while I ventured over the bridge into Windhelm.

One of the other advantages of joining the Dawnguard side of the quest is the ability to quickly pick up the new weapon type as well as upgrade it. The Crossbow is an interesting addition to the weapons on offering firing more damaging bolts to the usual bow and arrow combo but with an increased reload time.

Bethesda were obviously pushing people down the vampire half of the questline though as you are repeatedly offered the chance to get turn into one of the hovering bloodsuckers. The new vampiric powers are actually pretty cool thought and the ability to turn into a Vampire Lord makes you feel truly powerful. In fact I actually ended up finding the Vampire Lord a more interesting form to the Werewolf already available in the main game. Both the new vampire and the werewolf transformations have been given a perk tree for you to boost too.

The last few additions to speak of are the new open areas for you to explore. The Soul Cairn isn’t very easy on the eye but has a nice couple of side quests available and a very distinctive feel. The Forgotten Vale on the other hand is an area a lot like Skyrim but largely contained to distinctive looking areas (one being an awesome Falmer Tree House style village). Full exploration can take a couple of hours but in all honesty there isn’t distinguishing this from the standard Skyrim cave patrols.

All in all though Dawnguard is a fair size for it’s price especially if you pick this up with an early game character as the tasks will be a lot more difficult. I would definitely recommend picking this up if you need a reason to return to Tamriel and the additional gameplay content is pretty good too for those already well invested in their characters. Armoured Trolls anyone?

P.S. There is also a brilliant new follower available through either quest path.

8/10