Bethesda still haven’t announced the big Skyrim expansion, Dragonborn, for PC. 360 owners are getting it on the 7th December, but for reasons that absolutely elude us, the PC is left unmentioned. What’s more frustrating is that this is normal for Bethesda. The chances are it will come to PC, and therefore your seeing the screenshots below will be a worthwhile whetting of your appetite. But they so far haven’t acknowledged even the possibility that the machine on which the Elder Scrolls games have thrived for decades will be graced by the extra content. Which is rather lame.

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The next set of DLC for Skyrim has its first adver-trailer, although no PC date is confirmed. In fact, only the 360 date is listed and it’s a not-too-distant December 4th. Skyrim will soon incorporate the island of Solstheim, which doesn’t look like it’s completely> covered in snow. There are some giant mushrooms and a house that looks like it might be carved out of a giant beetle carapace. It’s a tad Morrowindy. Story-wise, it’s all about the Dragonbeast, who is the first of the Dragonborn and an all round nasty piece of work. It also looks like dragons will be available as giant air-steeds. You’ll never go back to Easyjet again.

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Look at you, hackers. Rummaging through Skyrim’s files and turning up references to what might – but only might – be the game’s next and perhaps most ambitious DLC. If the details revealed and shared hold weight, the next pack could be called Dragonborn, and could include FLYING ON THE BACK OF DRAGONS plus new locations that fall tantalisingly close to the hallowed province of Morrowind on the atlas of Tamriel. (more…)

Bethesda send word that the latest Skyrim DLC, Hearthfire, arrives on PC today, after its pointless period of exclusivity on whichever console it was. It costs $5. The DLC will enable Skyrimfolk to build their own home – rather than simply buying an existing one – and then furnish it with “an armory, alchemy laboratory, stable, garden” and, as I understand it, adopted children. There’s some more craft stuff in there, too, with workbenches for the fashioning of things from wood and clay. Despite this healthy-sounding shopping list I understand that’s not particularly in-depth, so don’t expect The Sims with cat people.

The trailer lurks below. (more…)

Remember Morrowind Overhaul 3.0, the mega-graphical mod intended to make the bestest of the Elder Scrolls bester still? Of course you don’t, because of all those drugs you took when you were young. That’s why you can never go into politics. That and all the embezzling you did.

Look, Mister/Mrs/Ms Short-Term Memory Loss, here’s the last time we posted about it, so go read that, watch the trailer and remind yourself, then you can report back and be given your download link for the mod, which is now out at last. (more…)

“A People’s History” is a three part essay series that argues for a long-standing but suppressed tradition of non-industry involvement in the first person genre. This is part three. [Part one. Part two.] (more…)

Here’s official news on the second Skyrim expansion, Hearthfire. The hook here is that you get to build yourself a home from the ground up, which involves finding yourself a patch of land then building and expanding a building appropriate to your tastes/budget upon it. It’s the Sims in dragon-addled Scandinavia, essentially. Apparently you can also adopt children, but hopefully not by abducting them from happy NPC families.Take a look below. (more…)

After a couple of months spent kneeling at the altar of Microsoft exclusivity, Skyrim’s first expansion Dawnguard has made its expensive way to the admirably-supported PC version. It brings vampires and it brings vampire hunters – but will it bring the game-changing of Bloodmoon or the deflation of Shivering Isles? Gaze into my proud undead eyes, human cattle, and allow me to seduce you into reading on.> (more…)

Bethesda are saying (at QuakeCon) that Dawnguard PC is out at last right now, but I can’t get it come up on Steam just yet. But oh well, I’m sure it’s either a caching thing or it’ll be there any moment – me, I’ve just got to postpostpost and then sleepsleepsleep. Here’s the official word though. I’m hearing it’s $20 for the long-awaited, Vampire-centric Skyrim add-on. Now I’m off to clean my teeth. Good luck, enjoy, and see you tomorrow.

Update: and here it is on Steam to buy now. $20/£14 to you, sir or madam. That is not> cheap as DLC goes, and the reviews were mixed, but I’ve not played it yet so don’t look to me for answers. Unless they’re about cats or Transformers, anyway.

That’s not to say that it’s not coming out, just that there’s no announcement, and that we should therefore not expect its imminent release – which was something we wondered about with the advent of the recent patch. Pete Hines, who tweeted the news of the non-announcement, followed up by saying “I was simply stating that expecting/demanding something today is unfounded. Not that news is never coming.” SO MAYBE IT WILL BE ANNOUNCED. IT’S ANYONE’S GUESS.

Oh well, anyway, that’s a shame. We’d just imagined it had been announced. I’m going to pass the time waiting for announcement by installing one bajillion mods from Skyrim’s Steam Workshop and seeing what happens. Crabs wearing monocles, probably.