Crossbows
Archery is a very useful skill for many play styles, but bows aren’t majorly powerful. The crossbow, which is the weapon of choice for the Dawnguard, adds a major kick to the archery perk. If your character is highly skilled in stealth and ranged attacks, the crossbow gives you a dangerous edge when taking down groups of enemies covertly. It makes much more noise than a bow and takes a lot longer to reload, but it also hits way harder. But since the crossbow takes advantage of all such archery kills, it is possible to speed up the reload time.
The only downside is that crossbows require special bolts, and you’ll probably have to make your own to keep a steady supply going. Other than that, crossbows can provide a critical edge when clearing out dens of vampires and subterranean creatures known as Falmer.
WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE
Cross-country questing
Dawnguard likes to make you travel. While the game takes place in Skyrim’s northern regions, you’ll be exploring pretty much all of the most grueling and mountainous terrain available. Since the DLC also adds several new locations to the world map, you’ll be making those journeys on foot most times.
On several occasions, you’ll travel from the island regions to the northwest of Solitude to another island region east of the Mage College in Winterhold. Even if you fast travel to the nearest known location, you have a fair bit of mountain climbing to do, which is hardly an easy task.
Admittedly, the only way I’ve ever overcome mountains is to buy a horse and use its supernatural ability to break the game’s physics programming by shakily climbing previously inaccessible terrain. Well, nothing’s changed, so be sure to acquire a horse while on your Dawnguard expedition.
A new follower
Without getting into too many spoilers, Dawnguard also has a couple of new followers for you to choose from. One of them is a vampire named Serana. She is the most vengeance-filled follower you’ll ever see and gleefully murders anything and anyone who isn’t you. Previous companions were also a bit kill-happy, but Serana takes it to another level by perpetually striking first.
When she isn’t hacking away at vital, quest-related, non-player characters, she’s milling around aimlessly during your conversations and even trapping you in narrow passages until you force her out of your way. She’s reliable and helpful in many ways, but her penchant for massacring everything that could potentially go hostile makes her a dangerous companion if you’ve followed the Vampire Lord plotline.
Her constant milling around can also force NPCs off their designated paths, which can delay a quest’s completion or force you to restart from the beginning.
Serana also has a raise dead spell that is often laughably terrible. Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of vampire hunters like an undead deer prancing toward them.
CONCLUSION
Dawnguard feels like a part of Skyrim in a way that many DLC expansions rarely achieve. Bethesda went the extra mile to tweak existing quests in order to fully integrate the experience, and their effort shows. The constant treks across Skyrim do get a bit old after a while, but the wealth of new powers, information, and intrigue you’ll find along the way more than makes up for the long walks.
The best part of Dawnguard is honestly how much of Skyrim’s lore it explores. Who knew that one crazy vampire’s plan to blot out the sun would reveal so many mysteries and hidden locations?
Score: 85/100
Dawnguard is a DLC expansion for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and is currently only available on the Xbox 360 but will be available on PC and PlayStation 3 soon. Bethesda provided an Xbox 360 download code for Dawnguard for the purpose of this review.