Skyrim: Hearthfire DLC (PS3)

Hearthfire released at the end of 2012, just shy a few months from a whole year after Skyrim released. There really isn't much to talk about in Hearthfire, there's not a lot of content with it and there's nothing story related.

The biggest feature is that you can now build houses. Yes, that's how much Minecraft has taken over video games. Now you can see where Fallout 4 got it from. You can build three houses in three of the smaller town, where you couldn't buy a house. Houses are excellent for storage and if you're like me, you have a load of shit you need to pack away. So you can choose one of three locations, or all three and get building.

The building is tedious, you have to get a boatload of materials. Iron to make nails and hinges for doors, clay, wood and quarried stone. You need to hoard these items, and I might really hoard them if you want to build all three houses, even more if you want to build three wings to each. It's a long boring process and a lot of back and forth to store all the materials, as you'll become over encumbered instantly.

That's not all, once you've built your houses, you'll need even more material to build your furnishings. OH COME ON. That's where I drew the line and gave up. I built a few weapon plaques and some mannequins to store my outfits and weapons, because that's all I wanted to do. A weird glitch occured though, sort of an infinite money glitch too. I found that once I applied and outfit to a mannequin, it'd stay there. I could take it off and put another outfit on instead, but every time I re-entered my house, that same outfit was there. I could take it off the mannequin, and leave, enter again and I could stock up on that outfit to sell. It really fucked with me though, as I couldn't present my outfits how I wanted, and ultimately I fucked off all my new houses. Even after five years this glitch still works.

The other big feature is adoption. You can go to the Riften Orphanage and take your pick. Your new child returns to one of your selected homes, where they spend the rest of the game droning on. Adoption is a wonderful thing, but in Skyrim, what's the point? The kid in stuck in your house walking around acknowledging you, and occasionally give your useless items like sweet rolls and tankards. Thanks kid. They are literally just their to pawn their trash onto you.

Probably the most pointless DLC to come out for a game. The ball was dropped here, and they never done anything to fix it, or even make this a good piece of content. If you've avoided it this long, well done. Keep it that way.

2.4/5