Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-71.61.178.23-20130722105712/@comment-24180901-20131204135217

Back again on were/vamp.

I think Bethesda did not stay true to their own ideas. As far as I know - and please correct me if my lore does not hold true - becoming a vampire is the ultimate expression of coming under MBs sway. While it is true that DPs can and do mess with the common people, they are limited in this by the Lorkhan/Aedra/Nirn complex. Not so for vampires - they belong to MB body and soul.

From this point of view the dawnguard plot is not drawn from lore but from the fact that vampires and werewolves became sexy and romantic since "Interview with the Vampire" and Bethesda simply jumped on the bandwagon after the sixhundredandsixtysixth "embrace" mod.

Werewolves are basically the same mould, but a lot less radical.

To sum it up I am only marginally interested in the tactical tradeoffs (though I have to say trading melee power for magical weakness does sound good with the number of magical enemies around, but anyway - you get an extra option that you can freely use, which is my main point), but more in the story elements - your free will remains intact, which is the selling point for were/vamp.

If Bethesda had the balls to follow their own lore and made it so that being a were (for example) had the potential to interfere with your gameplay (like instinct taking over and forcing you in a killing spree which cut of your access to a questline or six and made you public enemy number one in Falkreath (Hircines quest anybody?)), the cookie would crumble in a very different direction. Which might put off a few (like hundreds of thousands) pixel-psychopaths. Which is why you don´t get to join the Silver Hand.