Skyrim - Snow Elves and Vampires in the first DLC?

Dhruin

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Every site I visited this morning is linking to this Bethsoft forum post where a player has scanned the v1.5.26 Skyrim update file for the string "DLC01", concluding snow elves, vampires and crossbows will somehow combine for the first DLC. It's all speculation but seems based on reasonable evidence - with some information expected next week, we might not have long to wait.
More information.
 
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I guess these details are maybe a little spoilery.

I wonder if it will involve Solthseim then - that's where the flamer were defeated wasn't it (Fall of the Snow Prince)? Put this in spoiler tag because the fact that the Snow Prince is part of it might be a fairly big reveal.

I've speculated before that it could take us there or be related to it - since that's where the Falmer fought their last real battle against men and is where many of the powers from Vanderfell fled after red mountain erupted (previous king of Skyrim gave them the island to seek refuge on - something the game made a point of mentioning in books and I think one or two conversations).

So crossbows, redone (or improved?) vampires, Falmer (degenerate cave dwellers or some who escaped without being poisoned by the Dwemer)?
 
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Maybe some of the Falmer escaped by becoming vampires.
 
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Maybe some of the Falmer escaped by becoming vampires.

Well the "vampire" stuff that it points to looks to be new feeding animations so the vampire stuff might not be that central - possibly just for scenes where an NPC vampire is feeding on another NPC.
 
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Maybe some of the Falmer escaped by becoming vampires.

That would be crazy-awesome. And seeing how vampirism is curable, that means that the lore would allow for a possible return of the Snow Elves. I like the (highly speculative idea) of the hero having as a goal curing of vampirism the last remaining snow elves, thus bringing back their entire civilization from beyond extinction.
 
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"Snow Elves" ? Taken/inspired from/by TDE / Aventuria ?
 
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So glad to see where the future of cRPGs is heading, thanks to blissful cash-cows docile and paying customers.

After marketing spending heaps of their time and money convincing the public that taking extra features out of their game was for the best, that weapons like spears and crossbows weren't needed, we finally get to have vampires and crossbows back in a paying DLC.

In the next episode, we should be convinced that Endings to a game are indeed not as needed as we first thought either, and that everyone should find their happiness with upcoming DLCs : one blue, one green and one red.

Stay tuned!

EDIT : And to say that it all so innocently started with them taking horse armor out of their game. :thumbsup:

Every site I visited this morning is linking to this Bethsoft forum post where a player has scanned the v1.5.26 Skyrim update file for the string "DLC01", concluding snow elves, vampires and crossbows will somehow combine for the first DLC. It's all speculation but seems based on reasonable evidence - with some information expected next week, we might not have long to wait.
More information.
 
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I can't tell the value of any DLC because I don't know what it offers - but I got plenty of content with Skyrim. Perhaps they could have included crossbows and instead reduced other content but it seems churlish to me to argue either way.

If that makes me a cash cow - sign me up.
 
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Is there not anything in that logic of yours that comes to slightly bother you ?

If I added anything beyond that, I might start to sound accusing, which, please trust me, I don't intend and don't want.

Yet, it will never cease to amaze me that people with anything but a short experience of video games, especially you working/moderating for one of the major RPG reviewing sites, can't see that a disturbing pattern in where the AAA players of the industry are heading.

If the current standards keep you blissful, so be it. We may want to hold this discussion again in a couple of months I guess, at the release of the next versions of Fallout/Dragon Age/Mass Effect/TES/etc. The status quo might have evolved till then.

I can't tell the value of any DLC because I don't know what it offers - but I got plenty of content with Skyrim. Perhaps they could have included crossbows and instead reduced other content but it seems churlish to me to argue either way.

If that makes me a cash cow - sign me up.
 
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What would it take for you to not think every dlc is something cut from the game. Since 500 hours of content isn't enough would 1000, 1500, or 2000 hours be enough?

PS. Did you complain back when these were called expansions or is it just the name. It took just about the amount of time from the release of Morrowind to the release of Tribunal as this DLC is taking and Tribunal had new features also.
 
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You see, I can understand that between Dagger Fall and Morrowind, Morrowind and Oblivion, or Oblivion and Skyrim, features get cut out, because they just wouldn't work out. Yeah, the (in)famous "Too little bang for the buck" precept.

What I am not buying, literally, is that the same feature/game mechanic/whatever is restored at a later time as a paying DLC because well, they ARE pretty cool to have after all, after being heavily argumented against by the Devs/Marketing team in a first time.

Do you not expect to find the same features, improved and expanded upon, in the sequel of any game ?

Did you not expect to find the same spells, stats and classes in BG2, after experimenting with them in BG1 ? The same skills, weapons, armors, creatures, lore, in FO2, after enjoying them in FO1 ? The same powers, and what not, from Kotor1 to Kotor2 ?

I can't speak for you, but I know that I did when I bought those games. So what did change between the normality of then, and the one of today ?

Does it not seem suspicious to you that, barring the valid reason of the above "not working as intended", whole locations, game features and companions get cut out from a sequel, and automagically appear again a couple of weeks after release, provided that we accepted to shell out even more money to enjoy the game as we should have to begin with ?

Its not a matter of content in terms of hours of playtime, or Go delivered through Steam.

Companies, like EA and Bethesda, perfectly know that people will want to have the whole thing. Playing vampires with limited feeding animations ? Playing the game with limited weapons ? Not quite, especially if one intends to use mods later on, that will require those as "standard" to further improve on, simply because they probably belonged to the, uh, yes, right, base game mechanics ?

Finally, Tribunal (EDIT: and Bloodmoon) was much, much more than a DLC that reintroduced half working or absent features from the base game because of a lack of time, or initial funds. It was a true expansion, by the very definition of the word, with a whole *new* worldisland, *new* story, adding *new* creatures, *new* weapons, etc. It did not interfere with the base game in the sense that you had full base game features with the former, and only half base-game features with the latter. One could perfectly enjoy the base game mechanics to their fullest without playing a werewolf, and still can nowadays.

A DLC should remain totally independent of the base game, as new remote locations that are not mentioned anywhere in the base game (like FO3's Mothership Zeta), new non-canon companions (like ME2's Kasumi) or minimalistic graphical enhancers (like ME2's alternative armor packs). If a DLC touches existing content, it should offer a new perspective (DAO's Leliana's Song) or truly expand upon a secondary aspect of the main story arc (ME2's Shadowbrooker). DLCs should not be stupid last minute cut-out shenanigans like a part of this DLC and others (ME2's Zaeed, DA2's Exiled Prince, ME3's "get a real ending", etc.) seem to be.

EDIT: If anything touches the base game features, it should be called a patch, and provided for free.

Have them sell as many furryelven races and Facebook graphical enhancers DLCs as they wish, but keep the base game integrity as a whole. Caution anything less, and expect to see more of these or these in a not so distant future.
 
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Karmapowered I wouldm't even try this site is mostly PRO-DLC and they will buy it. I've seen this discussion many times already.:lonely:

There reasoning is it supports the developer and there glad too spend more money.
 
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I guess I was right at least about the blissful part.

Thanks for your advice, I guess I will just have to stick to it.

Best regards.

Karmapowered I wouldm't even try this site is mostly PRO-DLC and they will buy it. I've seen this discussion many times already.:lonely:

There reasoning is it supports the developer and there gland too spend more money.
 
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It's not about being for or against DLC. Most of the people here are simply smart enough to know that ranting about it on a message board isn't going to change anything. If you don't feel a certain DLC is worth the price then just don't buy it.
 
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I can think of so many more important things to worry about in life than whether crossbows were removed from a game due to the nefarious planning of the evil game overlords and placed back in for a price.

I tend to have only one criteria for a game and my money - is it fun to play? If game A had wolf pets and next generation was B with no pets and then a DLC to add them back in, would I be miffed? Perhaps ... I would probably judge it by the rest of the game though and not really worry about it. Can be hard to judge what is worth something to so many different players.

Even content varies. I prefer DLC that integrates into the main game myself, versus a pocket adventure with next to no connection.

In the end the only thing I worry about, in GAMES, is enjoying the content and I don't really worry about what "I might be missing" in regards to DLC that seems to worry and irritate so many others. If game becomes so stripped down that it isn't fun to play without DLC I wouldn't even bother giving my support to begin with. For that matter I seldom get DLC. It has to be something pretty damn impressive (to me of course) to get it.

Since I have been playing games since the Apple 2E and floppy disks ... and enjoy the ones today as much as I do the ones decades ago ... I don't see anything horrible at this point in them being stripped away to nothing.

Would I prefer all the DLC to be in the initial game? Sure ... but I don't really consider it all that possible. More things you add the longer the game takes and/or other things that get taken away. If you are going to have DLC you need to have some incentive for people to by it.

Now if a company removed swords, fireballs, and buffs from a game then added them back as DLC ... then perhaps you might be on to something in the evil plans of the overlords thing. Not sure if there games would sell though :)
 
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"Snow Elves" ? Taken/inspired from/by TDE / Aventuria ?

Not sure - but the Falmer and the Snow Prince in particular were mentioned as far back as Morrowind (first appearence of the book "Fall of the Snow Prince.") They're the original surface inhabitants of Skyrim and much of the north and were driven to the brink by the first Nords. They sought refuge with the Dwemer who betrayed them, enslaved them, and through generations of poisoning and (I guess) inbreeding created the nasty blind monsters they appear as in the game now.

The snow prince was their last great general, defeated in a final battle on the wastes of Solthseim by - I think - a relatively young nord girl. Judging by the dates - it seems impossible that they are related. You might be able to judge how different they are - or aren't - by what the modern Falmer (snow elf) look like in Skyrim so far:

Falmer_simple.jpg


I guess it's helpful to remember that Orcs in skyrim are also another type of "mer" or elven people; instead of underground captivity and poison that has deformed the Falmer, the Orsimer (orcs) were changed by a Daedric prince.

What the snow prince might look like is anyone's guess though; he could look more like what the Falmer used to look like but they only - sort of - appeared in a nokia Ngage game so that's hardly something to draw from. The Falmer encountered in skyrim so far are not nice creatures at all - kidnapping, torturing, and mutilating pretty much anyone they come across.

I can't tell the value of any DLC because I don't know what it offers

No point ranting against figments right?
 
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What I am not buying, literally, is that the same feature/game mechanic/whatever is restored at a later time as a paying DLC because well, they ARE pretty cool to have after all, after being heavily argumented against by the Devs/Marketing team in a first time.

Gamers pay too much attention to marketers, whose job is to manipulate you. Stop it.

Do you not expect to find the same features, improved and expanded upon, in the sequel of any game ?

Did you not expect to find the same spells, stats and classes in BG2, after experimenting with them in BG1 ? The same skills, weapons, armors, creatures, lore, in FO2, after enjoying them in FO1 ? The same powers, and what not, from Kotor1 to Kotor2 ?

Every game you named is a relatively quick-turnaround sequel using exactly the same engine and almost exactly the same art assets. Nothing wrong with that at all, but that is different to other games that may have changed more substantially under the hood. In this example (AFAIK) every art asset in Skyrim is new, as are many other things. Every game has a budget and, ultimately, the development is balancing act of features vs resource/development cost.

So, no, I don't automatically expect every spell from Daggerfall to be in Morrowind to be in Oblivion to be in Skyrim. As I said in the first place, they could certainly reduce the scope of the game to achieve this but it isn't clear to me that is always a better choice.

Does it not seem suspicious to you that, barring the valid reason of the above "not working as intended", whole locations, game features and companions get cut out from a sequel, and automagically appear again a couple of weeks after release, provided that we accepted to shell out even more money to enjoy the game as we should have to begin with ?

Don't use hyperbole if you want to have a proper discussion with me. Skyrim is already 6 months old and we haven't seen a singe DLC yet. If something appears "weeks" later, then there might be a valid argument the feature was intentionally held back - don't buy it.

When I get a game with a massive amount of content and 6 months+ (8, 9 months by the time it gets released?) a particular feature might come back with DLC, I evaluate the specific value proposition.

...base game mechanics ?

As above, I look at the value proposition of the entire package, which I can't judge because I haven't seen what they are offering. However, the base game gave me an enormous amount of content, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The hard difference you draw between "base game mechanics" and other content is not meaningful to me.

Finally, Tribunal (EDIT: and Bloodmoon) was much, much more than a DLC that reintroduced half working or absent features from the base game because of a lack of time, or initial funds. It was a true expansion, by the very definition of the word, with a whole *new* worldisland, *new* story, adding *new* creatures, *new* weapons, etc. It did not interfere with the base game in the sense that you had full base game features with the former, and only half base-game features with the latter. One could perfectly enjoy the base game mechanics to their fullest without playing a werewolf, and still can nowadays.

I don't know what line you are drawing with "full base game features" and "only half base-game features" and that you create these distinctions seems odd to me. One of those Morrowind packs (sorry, been a while) made the journal actually useful, which I would have liked in the base game. Maybe it was withheld to include as DLC? Maybe not? Again, the important bit is the entire value proposition.

If Skyrim DLC01 has a substantial new area with new weapons and new monsters and "reinstates" crossbows, I would say to you the product is not meaningfully different to Bloodmoon - but somehow you have decided it is without seeing what is on offer.

...people with anything but a short experience of video games...

Are you always patronising without knowing what you are talking about?

...especially you working/moderating for one of the major RPG reviewing sites...

Sure. Is it nice up there on your high horse?
 
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Both Tribunal and Bloodmoon had features that people wanted or would have been better in the base game. Having an actual usable journal added by Tribunal and Werewolves which were originally in Daggerfall.

I have been playing games (mostly rpgs) since the 80's and most of the game series have had different feature sets from game to game and usually got better as the series went along (except when something was added that I didn't like) but may not have had the same features as it's predecessor.

PS. Each of the Elderscrolls games have had features cut from newer games but usually more were added then were cut. The exception was going from Daggerfall to Morrowind in which Morrowind had far less features then Daggerfall.
 
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