Friday, December 7, 2012

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Skyrim: Dragonborn DLC"


It’s a good thing that this a written review instead of an audio one, largely due to the fact that I am really unable to properly form any sort of words with my mouth after playing this new DLC, much less any sentences.  This DLC is amazing! When Hearthfire came out a few months ago, I was vastly disappointed.  The kind of disappointment one really only receives from being promised the world and being given a rusty tin can and some string.  Dragonborn has proven to be everything that the previous DLC, for all its lovely aesthetic appeal that didn’t save it from being completely pointless, was not.

The storyline was picked up by my Dovahkiin in the city of Whiterun, where he was approached by two strange looking cultists (very reminiscent of the Knights of Order from Shivering Isles) who inquired as to whether or not I am the true Dragonborn.  After telling them I was, they made a poor life choice that resulted in them being piles of ash on the small bridge by the blacksmith and I found among their remains a note that led me to Windhelm, and eventually to the island of Solstheim.  That’s right, the beloved stomping ground of werewolves in Morrowind’s expansion Bloodmoon returns and has changed significantly since the time the Nerevarine came to meet the channel of Hircine.


The story follows the Dragonborn learning that the many sacred stones of the Skaal people have been corrupted by some unknown force that is getting anyone who comes into contact with it to build temples around them.  Sooner than later, we discover the identity of the cultists’ leader – the original Dragonborn.  And you lore fanatics might be screaming that it’s Saint Alessia, but it is in fact and individual that we’ve never met or heard of before.  I have to admit, that is a little disappointing (and given lore, more than a little confusing), but it soon becomes irrelevant as you go on more and more through the storyline.

It quickly becomes clear that your Dragonborn much become stronger than the one currently rising in Solstheim.  To do so, you seek the help of Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Memory, and can find a few new words to channel into Shouts.  The DLC also gives you a variety of new armors and weapons to try out that those players of Morrowind should find quite familiar – Bonemould and Chitin – as well as badass new Nordic armors among other things.

I really did enjoy playing through this DLC and I think you will, too.  I speak, of course, from a position of not even being remotely done.  Even after wrapping up the main questline of the Dragonborn, most of Solstheim is left open before me, untouched.  There are still many Dwemer ruins and Dragon temples to explore, and I wish to leave no stone unturned and you shouldn’t either.  The nods to things in Morrowind are just great and a big gushing point for me, as Morrowind remains to this day one of my favorite games.  Even some of the remains of House Redoran and Telvanni make appearances.  The homages are done in a way that doesn’t get in the way of the main story, and I like that.

Where Dragonborn falls short for me is in two areas: 1) The Dragon shout that allows you to tame and ride dragons, and 2) Morrowind itself.  The shout has a problem in that, I can get a dragon to come down and mount it, but I’m not even sure that I’m controlling where it goes.  When I tamed a dragon for the second time, in the forests of Solstheim (so I could test it out in a non-plot related event), the dragon would go in a certain direction for a set amount of time, and then loop back around.  No matter how I moved the control stick, it seemed I was unable to much control its movements.  Being able to lock onto targets from the air would be nice, but when are you ever going to have that many enemies to rain fire down upon? My Dragonhunter character, my main play right now, is nearing level 45 and he can easily dispatch even a crowd of enemies very well on his own.  But usually enemies aren’t in mobs of more than three or four.  I could see this being useful for maybe a bandit or a Forsworn camp, but not much else.  And if you can’t even really steer the dragon, what’s the point?  It just seems rather cheap for a mechanic that Bethesda was so blatant about promoting as something awesome.

And then, there’s Morrowind itself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Morrowind is probably one of my favorite games of all time. It had depth and complexity to almost every facet of the storyline, it was just great and well thought out and all that. And the scenery, well it’s a Bethesda game, so the scenery is kind of a given it always looks good. But traipsing around the island of Vvardenfell, there was always this strange, exotic look to everything. When I first played it, I could see just from that that this was not the normal sword and sorcery tales I had grown so accustomed to. This was something wholly unique.

 I’m not really fond of Bethesda’s decision to have had the Red Mountain erupt and render Vvardenfell effectively uninhabitable, because it robs us of seeing so much amazing things that could have been done with Skyrim’s graphics engine.  Not to mention, I would have just loved to see how Vvardenfell had progressed in the 200 years since we last saw it.  It just seems like a rather cheap cop out, especially almost taunting us with Solstheim – an island that was within swimming distance in Bloodmoon – being the setting for this one.  But, I suppose in the end, it’s not all that bad and it doesn’t at all ruin the charm of this DLC.  If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and 1600 Microsoft Points lying around, I highly recommend that you get it.  It is completely worth it.

Oh, and the PS3 crowd will actually be getting this one, Bethesda has said. It’s about time, guys.


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