Hi guys! Despite the evidence of your senses, my blog is not strictly Elder Scrolls themed, but I thought I would do something nice for my PS3 and PC brethren by giving a spoiler-free review of the new DLC expansion for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which if you have been away from the internet since a month before E3 is called Dawnguard.

Let’s start with the integration into the existing game. I think that, with the exception of a few blips where vampire attacks on towns (a new feature I actually like) will happen before you hit the level to start the quests, the integration is smooth. There are new enemy types within old enemy types who will appear in pre-existing dungeons. My primary example is female Falmer and “Falmer Warmongers” who wear a new heavy armor variant. I am told that pre-existing vampire caves are also re, aha, “vamped” to include gargoyles and death hounds, two new enemy types that I enjoy fighting, but I have not yet seen this firsthand. Two new dragon types, revered and legendary, now appear at high levels. They use a new Shout, which you too can learn, that drains vitality. Both types look very visually interesting and are fun to fight.

So lets talk, now that the integration is done, about plot and setting. As the ad campaign stated, there are two factions, the Volkihar vampires clan that was formerly just a name in a book and the Dawnguard, an order of vampire hunters. The expansion invariably starts you off with the Dawnguard themselves. They are led by Isran, a Redguard so extreme in his methods of vampire hunting that even the resident extremists from the vanilla game, the Vigilant of Stendarr, think he’s what we would call “a bit weird for vampire hunting.” The first quest sets up the initial choice. After finding a mysterious vampire woman named Serana in a cave, you bring her back to Castle Volkihar where her father Harkon offers you the full power of a Vampire Lord. This “blessing” will wash your blood clean of lycanthropy, should you have it, and start you along the path of a night walker.

I, being the goody two-shoes that I am, chose the Dawnguard side, using a werewolf character. I do not know how different the two sides are, so I will not speak to that. However, the adventure truly begins, and I shut up because of spoilers, when Serana seeks you out at Fort Dawnguard itself to ask your aid.

The new locations are great. Fort Dawnguard looks like a huge, imposing and well-equipped stronghold when it is restored and Castle Volkihar is a dark and threatening place in the mists of the far north. You can almost feel the oppressive stuffy heat and stench of blood when you walk into the latter. 

Of the two “large” new worldspaces only one was given much attention in the ad campaign so it will be the only one I’ll name: the Soul Cairn, returning at last for the first time since Battlespire, is a dim and creepy place. The unsettling and spooky aesthetic is spot-on for the place where the Ideal Masters, mysterious and powerful beings, lord themselves over those who were foolish enough to try to trick them. As for the other new locale, I will say only that it is beautiful and sad, and that the new music drives the sadness yet farther. 

Now last but not least, character. Whatever you wind up thinking of Serana, she is an actual character with likes, dislikes, insecurities and flaws. This is important, because most of vanilla Skyrim’s followers were no more fleshed than every other NPC. That was enough for random aquaintances and passers-by, and some of the non-follower characters like Ulfric and Paarthurnax actually did have a lot of really good moments that happened off-screen, but if Bethesda is going to have character moments for NPCs and have follower characters those two groups would do best to overlap heavily. Just as long as the option to explore alone stays. Personally, I really like this development because it shows that Bethesda can tell a personal story, and have the follower’s story strongly effect that of your own main character, while still telling a great world-scale story that is heavily reliant on pre-existing series lore.

So I say if you have an xbox, get it immediately. If you don’t, I highly suggest that when it comes out on PS3 and PCs you get it. It is very close to Bloodmoon for Morrowind on my scale of “how much I like this Elder Scrolls expansion.”

Oops. I probably should have said this earlier, but as Friday is now my least busy day my big posts will be done from now until whenever on Fridays instead of Thursdays. 

Sorry about that.

Anyways, what shall we talk about today? Should I plug my preview for my upcoming novel, King of the Water Roads: The Violet Scar, while asking you all yo plug it on your own bogs, twitters and facebooks? Well, not specifically but I would certainly be glad if you did.

No, this week I think I’ll talk about that strange effect of talking about something just after you have seen, read or played it. There was a reason I waited before talking about Avengers, and I’m going to explain it to you now.

I think Avengers is a good movie. I like the characters, I like the presentation, I like the acting, I even like the story. I was concerned, during the ad campaign, that I would not. Oh, I knew for a fact that I would enjoy myself in the theater. I knew that as I left I would be saying how awesome I thought the movie was. However, I was concerned that I would have a reverse-growing effect. 

Let me explain what that is. When I saw The Matrix: Reloaded as a teen, I thought as I left the theater “oh man, this movie is awesome!” Then I thought about it. “Man, this movie had an awful lot of telling instead of showing. Huh, that character didn’t have much of a point. The philosophy is all right but do they have to be so heavy-handed?” I was gradually having the flash and spectacle wear off, allowing me to see the lackluster movie beneath. 

Avengers avoids that because, for all the explosions and cheesy Joss Whedon jokes, the core of the movie is the characters and the characters are good. The alien invasion is a backdrop, not the focus, and the different personalities the previous Marvel movies got us to like now get to bounce off one another. 

This does happen in reverse, when something you were not too thrilled about grows on you. A solid example of that (and because it wouldn’t be one of my weekly posts without talking The Elder Scrolls to some degree) is the weird lore for the series. It may freak you out at first, but once you start looking into it you can’t see Tamriel without it and it gets you to think about things in real life in a new way. 

So there’s my first Friday once-a-week big post. Obviously I’ll still put up bits and bobs as they come into my head but for those of you who actually look out for my stuff this is the day to look.

Well, Lady Luck is on my side in so many ways today, not least because I was planning on writing a Skyrim article the very day the Dawnguard DLC trailer was put up. 

Anyways, as some of you know I have, in fact, written a story about zombies. In point of fact, Matt Grandstaff from Bethesda Game Studios was the first person to retweet my story, which can be found here. However, I had some problems with the zombies in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. They weren’t that fun or original. In terms of originality, they were pretty basic and generic. In terms of fun, well. They were all the same to look at, lumpy, rubbery. They were damage sponges with no particular strategy beyond bringing in a fire-enchanted sword. Oh, sure, the usual psychological coolness of zombies still applied, the fact that they are human enough to be disturbing and all that, but there was no gameplay or narrative reason for them aside from having your usual undead enemy. Compared to Morrowind’s bonewalkers, who were the devil at high levels and had a very specific narrative purpose for the Dunmer people, and it was pretty underwhelming, or the Draugr from the Bloodmoon expansion, men cursed to undeath for cannibalism based on real-world Norse undead of the same name.

Then comes Skyrim. Like Bloodmoon, it is a Nordic place, so Draugr were expected. However, they got a serious power-up from the desiccated cannibal corpses in Bloodmoon. Having been buried in armor and weapons as befitting a warrior, they are revived by an aspect of the Dragon God of Time, blessed and cursed for worshiping him in his destroyer aspect. While only partly sentient still, they retain their skills from life, coming at you with sword, bow, magic and thu’um, using tactics befitting their calling in life. They also have health at normal levels. Instead of hammering at a damage sponge mindlessly, I have to fight like I am fighting a human. They retain the psychological advantages of undead, which are twofold: firstly, I (and my character) feel no guilt. I am not killing people, I am putting down undead monsters. Second, they are still just human enough to be disturbing as they taunt you and laugh at you in the language of their master, Alduin. 

The last advantage of draugr over zombies is that they are less generic. Oh, sure, they do come from a real-world culture in terms of name, but they are still not the first thing that comes to mind when you think “undead.” Therefore, it feels more original. Doing things like that, changing names for things that are functionally the same, was something I actively asked for in Skyrim, and Bethesda deliviered magnificently. Draugr stand in for zombies, falmer stand in for goblins, ice wraiths stand in for normal ghosts (usually) and the like.

It’s the little touches that change a game from good to great, and Skyrim has plenty of those. If you haven’t, be sure to check out the new Dawnguard trailer on Bethesda’s YouTube channel.