Yes, Serana's presentation is what peeves me the most. She's too human for my tastes. I mentioned Carmilla off-handedly in my previous post; actually I'm rereading the novel now and think that Bethesda should have taken a clue from that book how to handle the relationship between Serana and the PC. I mean, Carmilla is at turns fiercely possessive of her "friend" (read: would-be victim), girlishly huggy-kissy, and creepily cold and aloof. Also, her every line seems to be a dark hint of her true nature. She comes across quite creepy, but at the same time the main character can't help being drawn to her.Finn Wolfshorn wrote:As for family issues vs saving the world I for my part find relationship stuff more interesting than saving the world anytime, but that's just me. I agree however on how vampires should
be presented, and Serana could have improved if Beth had made her a little creepier and more vampiric, thus making it harder for the player to overcome their prejudice; having her use her Vampire Lord power would have been great, and even more having her actually feed. (There's a little-used random dialogue line where she says, "I'm feeling... hungry", it sounds quite scary.)
Something of this pattern could have been used in Dawnguard, too, of course modified to suit the fact Serana is in the end a good guy. Maybe she could have shown some signs of an inner fight between her vampiric instincts towards making the PC a thrall and a vestige of her human side that yearns for true friendship? That kind of portrayal would have been far more interesting for me at least.
As for relationship stuff vs larger plot thing, I think Tolkien excelled at this. See e.g. how Sam and Frodo's friendship grows during the course of the novel Lord of the Rings. Mostly it gets implied by events and other dialogue and shown when relevant to the plot. There are only a few explicit conversations they have about the topic, and even those at points where the action needs a bit of breathing time before resuming. The need to destroy the Ring always remains the centrepiece of the story as it should. So it's possible to do both aspects in the same story, it just gets some balancing. But well, I'm the type of person who got immensely more excitement from, say, Eowyn's fight with the Witch-King than Frodo and Sam's little heart-to-hearts in Ithilien. Different folks, different strokes I guess.
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On topic, today Eryniel continued with Dawnguard's quests and finally infiltrated the Volkihar Castle with Serana. She was very impressed by the dark grandeur of the place and couldn't help wondering how the castle would look if renovated. She got annoyed and unnerved about Serana's habit of raising thralls and killed those every time. Eventually the dynamic duo made their way into Valerica's laboratory and entered the Soul Cairn. Horrified at the mere thought of becoming a vampire, Eryniel rather submitted to have a part of her soul being trapped. In the Soul Cairn they found Valerica, whom Eryniel actually found a quite imposing woman. Certainly she was more impressed by Valerica than by Serana. While running around to dispatch the Keepers, Eryniel also stumbled across a Dunmer's soul named Jiub and agreed to find the poor sod's papers.
As for dialogue choices, this far Eryniel has been civil, but not over-friendly towards Serana. This is because she's still wary of the vampire and doesn't want to wake up one morning sucked dry of blood, so she figures it's better to remain in Serana's good books for the time being, and also because she's a nice person who wouldn't be rude towards anyone if not absolutely necessary. She couldn't lie to Valerica for some reason, however, and flatly told her she just wanted the Elder Scroll. Because, well, that's why she was there and everybody could guess that.
Especially horkers. Gotta confess there've been times I've wondered whether Molag Bal took the form of a horker when he made Serana her a Daughter of Coldharbour, for she seems to hate the poor beasts with a vengeance. I remember a journey from Solitude to Winterhold where one solitary horker looked at us the wrong way and she went out of her way to aggro and obliterate what must have been every single horker on the north coast. She was gone for hours. Fortunately I've got a mod (AFT) that let's me tell her to stay in stealth mode until we're attacked; she'll even make herself invisible, it's quite nice.
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); she did some brewing and crafting and enchanted Serana's sword and bow for her. Furthermore she figured it's her responsibility as the Listener to give new Family members some on-the-job-training, therefore when Mari and Serana left the Sanctuary again they were accompanied by Arlus the Gravedigger (another follower from the Dawnstar Sanctuary expansion mod which I've already mentioned a few times). So far he's proved himself to be a very capable spellsword and necromancer, definitely an asset to the Brotherhood. His first fight at his Listener's side was against a group of Dawnguard who ambushed them right outside the Sanctuary, and he now sports a cool Dawnguard waraxe. Marilyn was deeply worried by this attack which seems to prove that the Dawnguard have somehow found out about her connection to the Dark Brotherhood and are apparently ready to extend their personal vendetta against her into a crusade against her Family, which is not to be tolerated. Drastic measures may be necessary.