Skyrim - Dawnguard Stage Demo Video
 

GameSpot also has a stage demo for Dawnguard with "Matt" from Bethsoft talking us through around around eght minutes of gameplay.
More information.

Sorry wrong post!

This demo gets better every time I watch it. At first I wasn't too excited about it, because I don't really play evil characters in RPGs, but hunting these vampire lords seems like it could be a lot of fun.

So Dawnguard adds content to the base game (even for high level chars), has lots of additional 'exploration' content, has new armour sets, xbow skilltree, etc etc. Will buy.

edit: also new - mounted combat, new dragonbone weapons, a new dragon shout (soul tear), a new oblivion realm, crossbow weapons. New hounds, summonable gargoyles and new creatures.

You forgot more crafting recipes like bolt, which probably mean they added craftable arrows too…hopefully.

Nice, didn't expect a female version for the vampire lord.

Anyway, I am sold.

Not interested. I plan to replay Skyrim in a few years when everything gets finally patched. Maybe I buy additional content in that case. But now? No.

P.S. I don't care for fan patches. Mods, ok, but patches… Unless it's Akella game. But I doubt that.

I wish they could add spears and halberds, but more than anything I want more guild related stuff and the chance to get my hands on the Cowl of Nocturnal (having two identities was something I really loved in Oblivion)…

Nice to hear they added a werewolf skill tree and higher level dragon encounters and more crafting content and spells, too.

A more informative interview below. More informative than GameSpot, you say? How can that be? ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2BJyeJ7uuw

I wouldn't exactly call the USKP a "fan patch," although essentially that's what it is.

It fixes thousands of bugs and glitches, some which have a big impact on gameplay.

I haven't used the USKP yet (I'm not playing Skyrim) but if it is anything like the one for Oblivion it is great and pretty much the same as if Bethesda fixed the bugs themselves.

Count I'm aware of it, but honestly I believe fans should add additional content for more fun, not cleaning up the mess developers can't be arsed to do.

Actually pretty much every game that is moddable has fan made patches that fix problems the developers and with many games it is the only existing mods. Everything from Baldur's Gate and it's sequel to the Ultima games have fan patches because there almost always bugs that never get patched even when the internet is easily available for distributing patches. It is an inevitability that there will still be bugs in a game long after the developers stop patching a game and the bigger the game the more bugs will be left over.

I'm glad that there are people out there who have the ability to fix bugs - god knows I'm a huge fan of those who patched up Gothic 3.

But I can't bring myself to use fan made patches for a game that is still being patched by the developer. It's just too much of a pain in the ass for me to keep track of all the moving parts between the developer and the fans that may play out for a long number of months - most of which I'm busy with real life things and can't keep track of day to day.

But when Bethesda is totally finished with Skyrim - patches, DLCs, expansions and whatnot - that's when I'd like to apply a fan made patch to fix whatever is left that was not fixed by the developer.

This is basically what I do too, TMG. I love the fan patches, but till Bethesda shows that they're done modding/patching, I just wait. Installing 15 different fan patches is no fun, plus I basically play TES games about once a year, so I wait until my next session to patch up. I am letting Steam update it every so often.

USKP is designed in a way so that it does not conflict with updates by Bethesda, and you load it at the top of your load order so it does not conflict with other mods.

In my humble opinion, the USKP should be installed by every single person who plays the game on PC. I'll give you an example of just one out of the thousands of fixes that improve gameplay experience:

There is a leveling multiplier bug that makes all the Civil War quests spawn enemies at very low levels. As a result, when you play the vanilla game, all the Civil War quests are way too easy unless you are below level 10 or so. USKP fixes this problem, and the Civil War quests are a lot more fun.

The Oblivion realm looks nothing like the realms you visited in Oblivion. Anyone more informed on the lore willing to explain this without spoiling too much?

I also noticed the combat of Werewolves and Valmpire Lords was presented in 3rd person view. From my little experience with Skyrim I remember that was a pain in the ass, surely the picked this way mostly because it looks better rather than having improved it to play better?

There are more than a dozen different planes of Oblivion. Most are ruled by a specific Daedric prince, but some are not.

In the game, Oblivion, we visited two different realms of Oblivion, Mehrunes Dagon's Deadlands and Sheogorath's Madhouse (The Shivering Isles).

Here is a list of the others

• Malacath's Ashpit
• Boethiah's Attribution's Share
• Molag Bal's Coldharbour
• Meridia's Colored Rooms
• Hircine's Hunting Grounds
• Hermaeus Mora's Apocrypha
• Azura's Moonshadow
• Namira's Scuttling Void
• Peryite's Pits
• Clavicus Vile's Realm
• Sanguine's Realms
• Vaermina's Quagmire
• Nocturnal's Evergloam
• Mephala's Web

The Soul Cairn, which is the realm the player visits in Dawnguard, is a different kind of plane of Oblivion, which is not ruled by a specific Daedra. There are a few more like this:

• Chimera of Desolation
• Gaiar Alata
• Havoc Wellhead

So the depiction of the realms of non-destructive princes in Oblivion was inaccurate (excluding Shivering Isles) ?