The Dawnguard questline actually respects the vampire side more than people think

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

I've been replaying Dawnguard on my third character and something just clicked. Everyone says the Dawnguard faction gets shafted compared to the vampire path, and yeah, the Volkihar rewards are better and Serana's questline is more developed. But the actual Dawnguard questline has something people sleep on - it's about fighting a losing war and doing it anyway.

Like, Isran knows you're probably going to fail. The vampire threat is genuinely apocalyptic if Harkon actually goes through with it. And the game doesn't really hide that the Dawnguard are understaffed and desperate. Fort Dawnguard is barely holding together. You're recruiting from the dregs - Gunnar's a farmer, Agmaer's a kid, Celann's a mercenary. Isran knows this. And he asks you to join anyway.

Compare that to the vampire side where Harkon is just... offering you power and immortality. It's transactional. But the Dawnguard questline is about choosing to fight something that might actually kill you, with people who aren't soldiers, because it's the right thing to do. That's way more interesting to me than "join the winning team and get a cool castle."

The problem isn't that the Dawnguard side is bad. It's that the game doesn't lean into that thematic weight hard enough. Isran deserves a final confrontation with Harkon that matters. Instead you just... fight him at the end. And that's it.

Anyone else feel like the Dawnguard questline would hit different if it actually acknowledged how much you're sacrificing by choosing the losing side?

 

[NordOfSolitude]

I think you're onto something, but I'd push back a little on the "losing side" framing. The Dawnguard actually win - you stop Harkon's plan, you seal Serana's mother in Oblivion, you break the Tyranny of the Sun prophecy. That's not a loss, that's a pretty decisive victory. The theme isn't really "noble sacrifice against impossible odds," it's more "desperate organization manages to pull off the impossible."

Where I agree with you completely is that the game doesn't feel like it respects that victory. Isran's just... there at the end. No real confrontation between him and Harkon. No acknowledgment from the broader world that you just prevented a literal apocalypse. You get some gear and that's it. The vampire questline gets Serana's whole character arc, Harkon as a personality, Castle Volkihar as a base, the Soul Cairn as this whole other realm to explore. Dawnguard gets... Fort Dawnguard, which is fine but pretty generic.

I think the real issue is that Bethesda built the vampire path as the "player power fantasy" route - you get immortality, a castle, a cool daughter, daedric artifacts - and the Dawnguard path as the "mechanical gameplay" route. Destroy the sun, get perks, kill vampires. One's a character story, the other's a checklist.

Your point about the recruits is solid though. Gunnar, Agmaer, Celann - they're not elite. But the game never really uses that. There's no moment where you're fighting alongside them and realizing these normal people are holding the line. They're just... there.