I loved Mass Effect 3. I thought it was a great way to end a wonderful story and I spent as much time as possible savouring the final journey of Shepard and the crew of the Normandy, completing every side quest, every conversational strand and following every interpersonal relationship to its ultimate limit.

Likewise I loved Skyrim, albeit for other reasons. The story wasn’t particularly great but the sense of place was superb, with the rewards for exploration being constantly surprising and tangible. Over 180 or so hours I explored every inch of the world, investigating every cave, climbing every mountain and opening every door, portcullis and chest I came across.

The thing is, however, that I have had absolutely no impetus to play any of the DLC for either title, though admittedly for quite different reasons.

If you’ve ever played Skyrim for more than five consecutive minutes, you’ll quickly have noticed that there are approximately seven different NPCs in the game, all of them are voiced by the same person, and they all look like identical twins. Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating for comedic effect but the point is: there really isn’t a lot of variety in Skyrim’s NPCs.

So what’s the solution? The Skyrim Interesting NPCs mod, which has already been downloaded over 70,000 times, adds over 100 new NPCs to the game — with 90 of them being voiced by professional actors, too. And they sound pretty good! Take a listen in this video below (it’s fifteen minutes long, but you get the idea). There’s 20,000 new lines of dialogue, so presumably they chose to record only a sampling of them below.

Source: via RPS

With floating jellyfish, mushroom houses, and more than a touch of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos saturating the whole area, the Dragonborn DLC is an impressively large piece of add-on content. We catch a boat to the island of Solstheim to check it all out.

A reddit thread from a user claiming to offer “a look inside Bethesda” has been shut down by an official Bethesda developer, who took to the site to trash the claims as “a mixture of half-truths gleaned from interviews and outright falsehoods,” and to say it was “best to just move on.”

“We’re all excited for more news out of Skyrim,” wrote Bethesda’s Ricardo Gonzalez, “but let’s not take advantage of the community’s fervor to peddle silliness. Thanks, and have a good day.”

The original post, which has since been removed, claimed that a separate skill tree for spear use was on the way, with spears being introduced in an upcoming DLC. The upcoming DLC was part of two more planned expansions, each as big as the recently-released (for XBox 360 owners, anyway) Dragonborn DLC.

“Without giving a lot away, the next DLC will explore the beginnings of the Nords and Skyrim’s culture, as well as the Snow Elves and yes, even the Dwarves. The last DLC will involve the choosing of a new King of Skyrim and the war against the elves.”

But, since all that’s not true, there’s nothing to see here. Move along! Move along.

Source: OXM

Skyrim‘s next DLC pack Dragonborn is on its way to XBox LIVE tomorrow. But what about everyone else? Will there be a repeat of the Dawnguard expansion debacle? Well, Bethesda have confirmed that the PS3 and PC versions will be released ‘early next year’. There’s no indication whether ‘early next year’ means January 1 or February 28 or even later, but it is a positive indicator in any case.

Official word from the Bethesda Blog: “We’re less than 24 hours away from unleashing Skyrim’s next add-on Dragonborn on Xbox LIVE.  It’s one of our most ambitious add-ons ever and we’re excited for everyone to play it.

We’re also happy to announce Dragonborn will be available on PS3 and PC early next year. And we’re still not done – we look forward to sharing more Skyrim news next year!”

Despite these happy words of encouragement about Dragonborn, however, PS3 owners are still waiting for the previous expansion, Dawnguard. So I’m sure PS3 players are reading this with a rather large grain of salt.

If you are excited, though, a few more details about exactly what’s going to be in this DLC pack were leaked just today, so check them out over here.

Source: Bethesda Blog

A beta tester for the upcoming Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim is apparently leaking like a sieve, probably much to the consternation (or possibly amusement) of Bethesda. The Outhousers is collating an enormous list of the leaked information, which so far includes achievements, shouts, weapons, locations, and monsters not yet officially revealed.

Here’s some highlights: new shouts are available, including ones that create small cyclones, bend dragons to your will, and a ‘Dragon Aspect’ that greatly buffs you and saves you from death once a day. New locations on Solstheim include Raven Rock, Imperial forts, Nordic and Dwemer ruins and more, with at least one new companion and marriage option available. Werebears will make an appearance, along with the Morag Tong, giant-sized and extremely tough creatures called Lurkers will apparently make your life hell, and a mysterious “serpent-like creature”.

Spears are also mentioned — but unfortunately they’re not a proper new type of weapon. They’re a weapon used exclusively by Reiklings, if you pick them up they become arrows in your inventory. Also, it’s worth noting that players who’ve slain Alduin and finished the main Skyrim quest will get different dialogue during their travels through Solstheim. Get slaying!

Source: The Outhousers via Reddit

Some vocal old-school RPG fans dismissed Skyrim on launch as being “for babies” and “too easy”, but while it’s easy to criticise, it’s more difficult to actually figure out where the problem lies and then try to fix it.

Well, that’s exactly what a user named Xarrian has done with The Requiem Mod for Skyrim, an old-school mod aimed at making the game exponentially harder, more terrifying and more reliant on player skill for progress.

Enemy levelling is now out, and all enemies are completely static. This means that enemies are now, generally, a lot harder for you to tangle with, and foes like dragons, giants and werewolves will maul you to death. Skill rates have been adjusted down so you gain points slower, new skills and perks added, and spells have been made much harder to use with huge mana costs. Combat has also been hugely overhauled, to the point where unarmoured foes will die in one good hit.

If this sounds like your sort of thing, head over to the official page and download it for yourself!

Source: Kotaku AU

Bethesda’s announcement of the Dragonborn DLC was a shock to nobody, but the reveal trailer showed a DLC larger in scope than a lot of us were really expecting. Now, Bethesda have released this slew of new screens for their DLC, and — to be frank — it looks pretty boss. Check ‘em out.

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Nemesis_22 joins us with the first of our Community Soapbox articles! If you’re interested in submitting a soapbox article, check here for more information.

As I grow older, more jaundiced and fatter around the middle, I find that there is still one tried and true method to RPG games which never, ever, seems to die the death it so richly deserves: fetch quests.

Remember all those rumours about how there was going to be Skyrim DLC called ‘Dragonborn’, and that it would have dragon mounts in it? And then Bethesda posted that image of a man with a weird tentacle mouth helmet and you said it looked like a Dragon Priest? Well, we were all right. All of us. Bethesda have just released this trailer for the upcoming ‘Dragonborn’ DLC, featuring a main villain who was a Dragon Priest — the first Dragonborn, in fact — and who eats the souls of dragons just like you do. And you can ride around on a dragon. And, to be honest, it looks sweet as hell. Take a look.

Dragonborn will be available for download for 1600 Microsoft Points on Xbox LIVE on December 4. Naturally, there’s no word of when PC players will get their hands on it.

What could it all mean? Well, Bethesda are promising a new trailer tomorrow — probably Tuesday our time — so in the meantime, they’d like you to stare very closely at this image of what looks (to me) like some sort of man with a tentacle-mouth helmet thing on his face. Cthulhu DLC for Skyrim? Why yes, I would re-install, actually. Yes I would (click to embiggen).

Source: Twitter

A Skyrim ‘Premium Edition’ has been announced, or rather listed on Amazon.de with pricing and content descriptor. The game has been confirmed for parts of Europe and the UK, and ships with an official T-shirt, a copy of “The Infernal City” novel, six concept art postcards, and for the PC release, a 600 page ebook and soundtrack disc.

It’s listed at 59.99 Euro on Amazon, and while Australia hasn’t been confirmed yet, we are reasonably certain more information regarding its release here will be forthcoming.

The weird part, apart from all of this, is that despite T-shirts and art postcards and all that cool stuff, the release will not have DLC bundled in. What? That seems crazy! There’s still time for this to change, since it’s not really been announced yet — but will you buy it, if it doesn’t come with the DLC?

Source: VG247