How can anybody srsly play as a Vampire Hunter?

[KNA9595]

Just throwing this out there... When you first find Serana, you CAN bring her to the Dawnguard. Talking to Isran at that point, if I remember correctly, he actually tells you to bring Serana back home. (Serana decides to stay outside- she can sense the racism from a distance... (Vampires are people too, you know!)) Can't remember the details, as its been a while, but yeah... Has no one really tried to do that?

 

Add: And another thing, you don't technically have to be human to first join the Dawnguard. Vampires can, too, since apparently Isran only notices you after a certain point. Just so you know. I did it, myself!

Damn Harkon, calling my blood some worthless disease... Its insulting!

Edited February 19, 2014 by KNA9595

[MidbossVyers]

Don't like Serana? Would you prefer someone cuter?

[Deleted5460035User]

What I'm about to say has probably already been stated, but I'll throw my opinion out here anyway.

 

Though previous posters are quite right when they say that the justifications for keeping Serana alive can be explained with relative ease, even for a bloodthirsty vampire hunter, the problem is that it removes a great deal of choice and true RP, just as being forced to join the Dawnguard initially to side with the Volkihar Vampires can break the RP of a murderous vampire who would kill someone like Isran on sight.

 

Sure, Bethesda can't add an option for every potential decision a player can make; that would be a near impossible task. But some degree of freedom to RP without needing to constantly pause the game and try to justify your own character's decisions (or lack of them) would be a godsend. Just look at Fallout: New Vegas;

Though not completely free from the bonds of forced questing (What game can be?) it allows many different options for completing quests both small and large, and provides a plentiful amount of dialogue options that can satisfy most types of RP with all sorts of NPCS, all of which can affect or be affected by other quests; You can be a Legion supporter, a mad anarchist, or an NCR citizen with relative ease.

 

With Skyrim, you constantly have to step out of the character of "Murderous Vampire", "Thalmor Agent", "Vampire Hunter", etc and ask "Why the hell did my character not have even a chance to do something else?" whenever Bethesda railroads you into some decision that is utterly idiotic or out-of-character for your current RP.

And don't even get me started on dialogue. Are you about to look like an idiot? Are you being forced to express emotions or ideas that go completely against your character's personality or ideology? Too bad, you'd better tab out of that conversation and hope to God you don't have to complete it for a quest, because when you're paying that many voice actors you can't take the time and money to get a decent array of varied replies together. (Though Obsidian managed to do it for the aforementioned Fallout:NV!)

 

 

TL;DR, just because Dawnguard isn't only about being a fanatical vampire hunter doesn't mean it should force you to not be a fanatical vampire hunter. An RPG should have multiple paths, not a single path that can be "justified" for any RP. Dawnguard had two paths for two different broad types of RP, Vampire and Vampire Hunter; but in the process of starting those very RP paths it ruins the more fanatical portions of each.

 

To hell with "reason", a bloodthirstly Vampire wouldn't join the Dawnguard to get to the Volkihar clan, he'd hike all of Skyrim in search of them and demand an audience with Harkon! To hell with "reason", a hardened Vampire-hunting lunatic would kill Serana in a second! That "reason" is an excuse for lack of choice and fulfilling RP, and is the bane of Skyrim as a game.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Guest

[Lachdonin]

New Vegas and its plot-choices should NEVER be used as an example of what TES should be. It's 'pick and ending' rubbish to several of it's stories, creating mutually exclusive end results which are totally impossible to have exist in the same world are the single most idiotic thing you can do to a persistent franchise universe. It means you have to either find some way to explain them all (in TES this would mean Dragon Breaks every 5 effing years) or you have to pick a side. It's a garbage idea, and because of New Vegas we can't go back to that part of America again, at least not for decades in-universe. New Vegas' conversations and characters were good, but it's 'Choices' have no place in an ongoing universe.

 

Dawnguard had it right. Give two or more different approaches to a quest-plot, but the same end result. The approach needs some tweaking, sure, but it's still lightyears ahead of the universe-breaking garbage that happened in New Vegas.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Lachdonin

[Deleted5460035User]

New Vegas and its plot-choices should NEVER be used as an example of what TES should be. It's 'pick and ending' rubbish to several of it's stories, creating mutually exclusive end results which are totally impossible to have exist in the same world are the single most idiotic thing you can do to a persistent franchise universe. It means you have to either find some way to explain them all (in TES this would mean Dragon Breaks every 5 effing years) or you have to pick a side. It's a garbage idea, and because of New Vegas we can't go back to that part of America again, at least not for decades in-universe. New Vegas' conversations and characters were good, but it's 'Choices' have no place in an ongoing universe.

 

Dawnguard had it right. Give two or more different approaches to a quest-plot, but the same end result. The approach needs some tweaking, sure, but it's still lightyears ahead of the universe-breaking garbage that happened in New Vegas.

 

And who is to say that multiple paths cannot have a single end, just as you said? Perhaps all the roads in Skyrim should lead to an ultimate conclusion, but the number of roads leading to that ultimate conclusion are pitifully small in number and show no respect to RP and character development; my only respite as a player of Skyrim is in contrived justifications for my own character's decisions.

 

http://i.imgur.com/cb2kqVH.png

Take the above image that I threw together. It's not accurate to how many major branches there are in Fallout: NV, or how many different starts I'd like for Skyrim or Dawnguard, but I think it sums up how I'd like to see things play out. In Fallout:NV, you start off the same way each time but can go wherever you want at a certain point of divergence, with all paths leading to a different ending. In Dawnguard, you get two different paths for its MQ, but you have no choice in how to start them, which can be a great detriment to an otherwise interesting DLC. In Skyrim, you follow the MQ like a dog.

 

As you said, the NV method wouldn't work well for the Elder Scrolls games, but I fail to see how more RP-serving paths for Skyrim and its DLCs would be a bad thing if they lead to a conclusion that, from the POV of future games, would be the same.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Guest

[Lachdonin]

Oh, i agree with you there. I mean that the Dawnguard model is a far better one than the New Vegas, even if it's too limited. I would prefer to see the quest-lines start at the same point, break off into at least 3 different paths (for the 3 game-play paradigms -Combat Stealth Magic-) and then converge somewhere around the end. I just do not agree with New Vegas' approach to having different ENDINGS.

 

There's also the problem of people demanding that the world shape around THEM. That's unrealistic most of the time, and sometimes, no matter who you are, you have to make concessions. Maybe not as much as in Skyrim, but the point still stands. What if you had killed Serrana? You'd have no way to open the portal to the Soul Cairn, because it required Valerica's blood (or her daughters). Either way, you're stuck on a particular route because of your decision, and suddenly the end is unattainable. I do kind of miss the days of Morrowind, when you COULD do this and the game would then tell you that you dun f***ed up, but it drew no shortage of rage on the internet.

 

You always walk a thin line when giving too many choices, and it's very easy to totally destroy the storytelling doing so. I don't think we've found the happy-medium yet, but Dawnguard is closer to it than New Vegas.

[Deleted5460035User]

Oh, i agree with you there. I mean that the Dawnguard model is a far better one than the New Vegas, even if it's too limited. I would prefer to see the quest-lines start at the same point, break off into at least 3 different paths (for the 3 game-play paradigms -Combat Stealth Magic-) and then converge somewhere around the end. I just do not agree with New Vegas' approach to having different ENDINGS.

 

There's also the problem of people demanding that the world shape around THEM. That's unrealistic most of the time, and sometimes, no matter who you are, you have to make concessions. Maybe not as much as in Skyrim, but the point still stands. What if you had killed Serrana? You'd have no way to open the portal to the Soul Cairn, because it required Valerica's blood (or her daughters). Either way, you're stuck on a particular route because of your decision, and suddenly the end is unattainable. I do kind of miss the days of Morrowind, when you COULD do this and the game would then tell you that you dun f***ed up, but it drew no shortage of rage on the internet.

 

You always walk a thin line when giving too many choices, and it's very easy to totally destroy the storytelling doing so. I don't think we've found the happy-medium yet, but Dawnguard is closer to it than New Vegas.

 

Perhaps if Dawnguard were a game unto itself I could wholeheartedly agree with you, but being a DLC within another game, I still find it an insurmountable difficulty for some characters that you are forced through the same awkward one-size-fits-all start before being able to get to the meaningful branch.

 

As for your thought that world-altering decisions are perhaps unrealistic, I'd also agree with you there if Skyrim didn't provide, at multiple times, decisions that by their very nature should be world-altering to a large degree and should interfere with other quests, but don't. The Civil War questline stands out the most. If the civil war has been won by the Stormcloaks, why is the Emperor's boat in Solitude harbor in preparation for the Dark Brotherhood quest?

 

Instead of planning for this and making the Stormcloak victory a failure option for that DB quest, or making an alternate path for that DB quest which is available in case of a Stormcloak victory, they just left it be.

 

Your example of the portal to the Soul Cairn needing Serana's blood would bring up a similar predicament if she were killable, that is true, but in the end it just reveals the bad planning behind so many Skyrim quests in relation to RP. Sure, you need the plot to get from A to B, and for that, Serana needs to live, or the Emperor has to be assassinated. But in so many cases, the devs either ignore cause and effect from other quests or compromise player decision in getting the plot from A to B.

 

What am I trying to say with all of this? That I agree with you, a truly dynamic world affected by player decision is too much to ask for, but Skyrim is so lacking in even basic cause-and-effect player decision that the devs should have easily foreseen and implemented when making the quests that I'll still rally for more because Skyrim is so hopeless without mods.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Guest

[Yagamoth]

So to basically sum up eleven pages of discussion the debate here centers on a Morrowind style game versus the Oblivion style game that Skyrim is patterned after. For those of you who never played Morrowind allow me to clarify. In Morrowind there was not a single NPC that was essential (to the best of my knowledge), and you could easily break quests by killing the wrong NPC. While that certainly adds role playing value (how I wish I could slaughter the Black-Briar family) it also creates a situation where you really need to know everything about a game before taking any action. Look I loved Morrowind and have been raging about the new system since Oblivion but the truth is that in some ways it is better than Morrowind.

 

Now Virnemo I agree with most of your comments about the quests but insofar as your comment about the Soul Cairn quest being bad planning I strongly disagree with you. Morrowind was the true RP game and as I mentioned if you screwed up, then you screwed up and there was nothing you could do about it. Basically it is the ultimate way of showing that there are consequences to any action. If you want to play as a zealous vampire hunter that is fine, but by that same token there are consequences to that mentality.

[Dhegonus]

didn't you ever watch buffy? :tongue: some times a temporary alliance with the enemy is a good thing, the enemy of thy enemy is my friend kind of deal, then when the mission is done an dusted, so is the vamp. Intelligent people don't always go in guns blazing, pick your battles. also, from a roleplayer perspective, observing the enemy will give you time to find the weak links to easily slay them.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Dhegonus

[KanesGhost]

didn't you ever watch buffy? :tongue: some times a temporary alliance with the enemy is a good thing, the enemy of thy enemy is my friend kind of deal, then when the mission is done an dusted, so is the vamp. Intelligent people don't always go in guns blazing, pick your battles. also, from a roleplayer perspective, observing the enemy will give you time to find the weak links to easily slay them.

You bring Buffy into this?!!... :blink: ...Angsty teen and her cohorts... :yucky: ... :tongue: ...But at least even she had the sense to be suspicious of the new Vamp and not immediately become 'Best Friends Forever' with it... :blink: ....can't say the same for the Dovahkin... :sad: