After polishing off as many sidequests as I could, I decided that perhaps I should return to the main quest of Dragonborn.
We get to meet Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of forbidden knowledge, and enter his Realm of Apocrypha. I really like this realm. It’s a dark realm that seems to be constructed mostly of books, with tentacles, black oil (slime?) and alien metalwork. It has some new enemies such as Seekers, which look like their father was Cthulu.
The ending was two Boss fights in a row. The first being more difficult (requiring more strategy and running around) than the second. In fact, after that first “boss”, the final one (Miraak himself, as you’d expect) was a drawn out walk in the park. At least for my level 50 Orc Thief…
The ending was satisfying enough, though I always find the build-ups to the ends of these stories more interesting and satisfying than the conclusion. Possibly because most of them involve simply killing someone or something. Perhaps that’s just me.
Overall, I quite enjoyed Dragonborn. I enjoyed most of the story, the new Lore and the additions to Lore we already know. I do, however, have two gripes about it. Be warned that beyond this point will be spoilers.
The mildest of the two gripes is how long the final Apocrypha trek was to get to Miraak. It became very samey and dull, especially given that it seemed to be designed as a “shifting maze”, which just annoys me after a while.
The second gripe is more disappointment. There were rumours that you could actually fly a dragon in this DownLoadable Content (DLC), rather than it being part of a cut-scene as in the main Skyrim story. To an extent this is true. Yes, you do get on a dragon, and no, it’s not a cut-scene.
However, the amount of control you have is … pitiful. The dragon flies on its own path to a tower where you can learn to use the controls to fight a few enemies. Your control is limited to setting a target on an enemy, asking the dragon to attack the enemy targeted, and telling the dragon to land.
Yay.
From that fight you are taken to Miraak, and that’s it for the dragon flight. Even if there’s not much of Apocrypha rendered, I was hoping to at least fly around what I could see and explore a bit. Instead the dragon section is short, out of your control, and unsatisfying in the extreme. Add to that controls that seem to have been made up as they went along, and really, I don’t know why they bothered.
Still, given the hours I put into it, and the amount of fun I had, I still think Dragonborn is worth the 1600 points. And I’ll happily return to Solstheim again just to wander around and maybe explore a few bits I skipped.
