Skyrim's Dawnguard Expansion Gets Official Release Date & Screenshots

Game Rant

By Rob Keyes

Published Jun 22, 2012

Ready to wield a crossbow to fight Gargoyles and other new creatures as a member of the Dawnguard faction or for the Vampire Lord? Starting next Tuesday you can with the first ever Skyrim expansion.

Haven't you heard? Next week is massive DLC Week! Two of the most high profile video releases of the last year are both getting very important new content on Tuesday, June 26th. We discussed the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut news extensively already, so now it's time to return to Tamriel for more adventures with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Ever since the game released, Todd Howard, Pete Hines and the rest of the Bethesda team have emphasized that DLC for Skyrim won't take the form of piecemeal components and instead will come out as "substantial" expansions, like we saw back in the day of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The first DLC, a timed exclusive for the Xbox 360, is Dawnguard and it comes next week.

The Dawnguard release date was previously revealed but today Bethesda confirmed that the English versions (likely North America and the UK) will release on the 26th with other languages (French, Italian, Spanish & German) coming later in July.

PC gamers of Skyrim have already been subject to (limitless) additional content through the wondrous community mods generated with the Skyrim Creation Kit, but outside of the various updates and new features added to the game through official patches (horse combat, Kinect, etc.), console players haven't had any additional new content.

With Dawnguard comes around 10-20 hours of new questing and areas to explore, the return of crossbow weapons, vampire and werewolf skill trees, gargolyes and various other new creatures. For a better look at the DLC content and its new features, here are a series of screenshots released previously that we've not yet shared.

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If you're a player of Mass Effect 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which DLC will you play first? And for the TES fans out there, with this DLC focused on vampires and werewolves, what would you like to see in the next Skyrim expansions?

Dawnguard will be available to download on Xbox 360 for 1600 MS Points beginning Tuesday, June 26, 2012.

Follow me on Twitter @rob_keyes.

Source: Bethesda