THE ELDER SCROLLS SKYRIM ALL DLC SERIES

The ability is unlocked as one of two new Thu'ums on offer in the main quest, but it's not something I can see taking off, if you'll pardon the pun. It's surprising how easy it is to overlook this fact. How powerful Microsoft's next system will be, backwards compatibility and more. In the end, inevitably, it all comes down to a boss fight. Only the ending lets it down, with Miraak remaining a sketchily drawn antagonist and his potential as a mirror of the player character untapped. Like most Elder Scrolls plotlines, the main Dragonborn story is join-the-dots stuff when you step back and consider what's being asked of you, but it ties together neatly enough and never feels like its padding itself out for no reason.

THE ELDER SCROLLS SKYRIM ALL DLC SERIES

The realm of Apocrypha is the closest the Elder Scrolls series has come to truly disturbing cosmic horror. Seekers, squid-faced guardians of this knowledge, are your main foes here, along with Lurkers, gigantic Pumpkinhead-like beasts who combine the strength of a giant with the magic abilities of a mage. It's a trippy place, with Lovecraftian tentacles reaching down from the sky and constantly shifting corridors made from books of forbidden lore. Most notable are the jaunts into the realm of Apocrypha where Miraak dwells. It's a solid storyline taking in seven major quests, each with a unique tone or flavour. You, unsurprisingly, must put a stop to such shenanigans. They worship the first Dragonborn, a corrupt priest called Miraak, who has been trapped in a plain of Oblivion plotting his return. There's a cult at work, and it's their assassination attempt on you that brings the player to Solstheim's shore.

Its people are being strangely drawn to a series of sacred stones, erecting temples around them in the thrall of some unseen force. Solstheim has more immediate problems though. There's a town, of sorts, called Raven Rock, which is ruled by aristocratic Dark Elves a community of hard-bitten hunter-gatherers known as the Skaal and small bands of bandits and pirates taking whatever they can get their gnarly hands on.

It's a desolate place, perched on the edge of Tamriel and plagued by volcanic activity. The island of Solstheim is the location, and it'll be familiar to those who played the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind. This is an expansion, like in the good old days.' It's an absolute beast, with a main storyline that lasts a good few hours and enough supporting content to keep you playing for weeks more. It's an entirely new area, a blank map waiting to be filled in as you roam, packed with new quests, miscellaneous tasks, dungeons, barrows, ruins and crypts. This is an expansion, like in the good old days. Solstheim contains a variety of architectural styles, from the organic curves of Raven Rock to a house carved inside a giant mushroom. Just as I'd resigned myself to the thought that it was time for me and Skyrim to part ways, along comes Dragonborn and all the wonder, the thrill, the passion comes flooding back. There was also talk of adoption, but the life of an adventurer leaves little room for watching an eerie digital child loop through the same animations and voice clips over and over. Hearthfire tried to get me to settle down, offering three plots of land on which to build identical houses that I could fill with furniture, provided I didn't mind having no say over what the furniture was or where it was placed. Dawnguard tried to spice up our waning passion by squeezing a perfunctory questline into an already busy map, but leaned too hard on a clumsy gimmick that let me turn into a lumbering Vampire Lord who couldn't fit through doors or open cupboards, as if that was a thing I'd ever expressed an interest in. My malaise was deepened, rather than alleviated, by the lacklustre DLC so far. The map markers were all filled in, and all that was left for me to do was maybe consider finally trying my hand at alchemy. My romance with Skyrim last winter - has it really been a year? - was heady and intense, but over the months since it cooled considerably. I've fallen back in love, and it feels great.

The elder scrolls skyrim all dlc