Dragonborn was... Lacking

[Amoryenar]

So yeah, you save Soltheim but what about the rest of Tamriel? Hmm?

 

I think Miraak would have challenged the gods

 

Besides, I hate the fact you can NEVER see his face... Ever... Damn you Hermaeus Mora. Stealing my kill. I worked HARD to kill him...

 

And then the Tentacles in Apocrypha.

 

You know what... I'll shut up now.

[sisterof]

I found it absolutely delightful. I begun really getting into my current main character because of Dragonborn - and precisely because Mora steals your chance to win. I felt so angry to be manipulated time and again by Daedric Princes, and then having Mora kill the shaman and then not even let me have my victory over Miraak - and then saying with that uber annoying sleepy voice of his that I was his servant.... Gods, if I was angry here outside their universe, my poor Dovahkiin went in a wild rage and alignment shift. :biggrin:

Apocrypha's atmosphere was brilliant! Lovecraft-inspired stuff make me so happy. And not seeing his face is part of the frustration the DLC makes you feel. That's what makes it a great story in my opinion - it provokes emotions, even if negative ones. Unlike Dawnguard, that I played in a totally detached way 90% of the time and had to make up some wild stories in my head for my character to feel engaged when I was not (the only genuinely exciting moments where finding the two Dragons at once, Durnehviir and, of course, the Snow Elves).

Are you sure you did not like the DLC, or you liked it in a "I love to hate you" way? :P

Edited March 30, 2013 by sisterof

[Kayyyleb]

I actually loved Dragonborn. Far better than Dawnguard (I never got Hearthfire) imo. Solsteim was fun to wander around questing, the new dungeons were much more dynamic, the main quest was short but good and the new weapons and armor I particularly liked.

 

Contrast that with Dawnguard which had me running around doing mostly generic quests with an NPC I was clearly supposed to care about but in reality absolutely hated to death (Serana). The Dawnguard armor and weapons were neat at least.

[ilikecheese1337]

I actually preferred Dawnguard's main quest (Dawnguard has fleshed-out characters and Snow Elves; Dragonborn has a tubby man in a silly mask and a Daedric Prince with a bad cold), but where Dragonborn shines is the sidequests and new environment.

[LithiumPower]

I loved every single minute of Dragonborn. I thought it was atmospheric and the sense of a nebulous evil building somewhere out of reach was well done. I reached Raven Rock late in the evening, tired from my journey and slept at the Inn only to wake up in a strange place with no memory of having gotten there, working the temple mindlessly and the strange hesitance of the townspeople on the subject of Miraak suddenly clicked into place beautifully. Miraak's chant, falling from the lips of hopelessly mind-controlled thralls was sinister and gave me chills every time I heard it. It instilled a sense of the palpable evil of the villain even when recited in the otherwise ordinary voices of regular civilians.

 

Encountering Miraak for the first time and not seeing his face retained the threat and enormity of him as a villain. Apocrypha was spooky, unfathomable and overwhelming - just like Hermaeus Mora - the lighting, the sense of not knowing what's lurking behind the corner, stumbling over the rarest of tomes and forbidden knowledge of history and arcana was thrilling.

 

And the ending too, knowing that Miraak had been entrapped by HMora in pretty much a mirror of your own journey was fittingly ominous and the awareness in the end, that all of your power and struggle was but a minor gambit played by Mora to replace one Knight on the chessboard with another was an amazing glimpse of the power of the Lord of Knowledge.

[Kayyyleb]

I actually preferred Dawnguard's main quest (Dawnguard has fleshed-out characters and Snow Elves; Dragonborn has a tubby man in a silly mask and a Daedric Prince with a bad cold), but where Dragonborn shines is the sidequests and new environment.

It's quite a stretch to call any characters in Skyrim "fleshed-out" by RPG standards. Serana is the only one who comes close and the more I learned about her the less I liked her. Ancient powerful pure-blood vampire who acts like a teenager with daddy problems and complains about virtually everything. Pass on that one, send in the next.

[breakwind]

I reckon that the Dawnguard main quest is better than Dragonborn's but Dragonborn as a whole is much more of an experience than it's MQ offers and to me is replayable

[Amoryenar]

I didn't say I didn't like it... I loved it as well, but it was lacking a bit. Still fun.

[Relativelybest]

I don't think Dragonborn is a bad DLC, but I do have two complaints, one minor and one major:

 

1: Apocrypha is too restrictive. It looks impressive and I liked the moving corridors and stuff, but since you can only move on a certain path, the place is basically just a large dungeon. I would have prefered it to be a true worldspace to explore the way the Forgotten Vale, Soul Cairn and even Solstheim was. Even the trips to Dagon's realm back in Oblivion gave you more freedom to move around. (Let's not even bring up Shivering Isles.)

 

2: We never got to know Miraak. By that I mean you get to meet him once for like two minutes, then a second time when you actually fight him. He has zero character development, to the point where I actually have no idea why I'm fighting him. His cult wants to kill me and... that's it. He has some vague plan to return to Solstheim and I guess maybe conquer the place? But his main motivation seems to be simply escaping Apocrypha and, hell, if I was stuck there for a thousand years with only Mora to talk to I'd brainwash a few people to get me out of there too. It's not like he uses them for blood sacrifices or feeds them to his dragons or something.

 

Frankly, exploiting people for unpayed labour while they are sleeping (which they don't actually remember afterwards) and corrupting some magic stones in some vague way are the only remotely evil things he does. There's the cult attacking you, but when you meet him in Apocrypha he doesn't even know who you are or why you are there, which means his cultists probably acted on their own, having heard about you and thinking you were some kind of heretic. Note that when he has the chance to kill you, he just sends you back home. Like: "Whatever, I don't care."

 

Basically, I'm not sure what makes him the bad guy here. Why do I want to kill this guy? For all I know he might actually have done a pretty decent job ruling Solstheim - dude could have kept the dragons in check and mess with the Thalmor and so on. I'm not sure he even said anything about taking over the world. Couldn't we at least have discussed the matter over a glass of wine like civilized people before busting out the Dragon Aspects and dueling to the death?

 

At least Harkon explained what he planned to do and offered me to join him. I knew he was a dangerous lunatic. Miraak is just some guy who's trying to get home.

Edited March 31, 2013 by Relativelybest

[sisterof]

That's the whole point, Relativelybest. The only reason you face Miraak is because he grows convinced that the Last Dragonborn is powerful and his soul will help him escape Apocrypha. He ruled over Solstheim with an iron fist and would do so again, but his main motivation has always been simply freedom - first from the Dragons, and then from Hermaeus Mora. He is, in a way, just a guy wanting to get home and do his stuff without strings attached. If he did escape, though, I think he'd become quite a problem. He seems to have extreme ego issues, and given his history and the amount of dead Dragons at his footsteps, it's probably understandable. :biggrin:

And I completely agree with Kayyyleb, The Elder Scrolls suffers from very very veeeeery cheap writing as far as RPGs go. People had this argument before on another thread. The main plot of a story matters little (we even used the example that LotR is all about throwing a ring in a volcano through the power of friendship), the development is what matters. The "in betweens" of plot and character growth. Bethesda offers none of these things. It does give us some starting points to imagine a story ourselves, but that's it. The characters are mostly unidimensional archetypes.

Dawnguard was extremely disappointing to me. Having to use a bow was completely "wtf" as my Dragonborn rarely used one and Harkon kept teleporting too quickly and too far for melee. The lack of option to take any of the Snow Elves as permanent allies was sucky too. The whole quest felt very detached from the Dragonborn's overall legend, but it still doesn't suit a non-Dragonborn character because of Durnehviir's presence (and damn, I love that guy to bits). Also Harkon sounded so totally inane with his Disney-villain stance, wanting to turn the whole Nirn into a dark wasteland with only undead (not to mention that blocking the main connection between Mundus and Aetherius surely should have other side-effects). I tried really hard to like Serana, as my Dragonborn is lacking in allies with stories of their own, but Gods.... is that a millenia old woman behaving like a 15yo spoiled teen with daddy issues? I had to tell her a few times I am not her surrogate father! And in the end I wasn't that upset she's not even marriageable - my character would feel like some dirty old man if he hooked up with a brat like that. :ermm: