The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

THE BUZZ: What does a development team do after shipping one of the most successful games of 2011? Take a month off? No, they spend a week creating amazing mods for their just released game.

Skyrim Director Todd Howard has revealed that after finishing the game the team spent a week on their own various mini-projects. They include:

• Seasonal foliage
• Flow-based water shader
• Spears
• Kills-cams for magic and ranged combat
• Stealth enhancements including water arrows
• Paralyse runes
• Hanging structures
• Water currents in dungeons
• Dark dungeons, new follower commands
• Favorites for followers
• Adoption
• Build your own home
• Spell combos
• Goblins
• Waygate fast travel
• Epic new mounts (flaming horse)
• Mounted combat
• Dragon mounts
• Kinect shouts
• Screen space ambient occlusion
• Enhanced underwater visuals
• Snow footprints
• Verlet surfaces for non-rigid objects
• Ice and fire arrows
• Werebear
• Lycanthropy perk tree
• Vampire feeding
• Become a flying vampire lord
• Vampire imp minions
• Mudcrab animation tweaks
• Giant mudcrab

EGM’s TAKE: Oh how we wish these had been put into the game before release. But that’s the great thing, some of these mods could easily be turned into future DLC or applied via patches to the game, so we could actually get to see them. If Bethesda offered us a Dragon mount we’d throw money at them. Some of the texture mods such as improved water and buildings would be slightly more difficult to implement due to system constraints.

There are so many good ideas, it just shows how talented the team really is. Given the option we would all become flying vampire lords if we got vampire imp minions that followed us around and caused destruction. Everybody cross everything and beg that Bethesda considers letting us have some of these.

Which mod is you favorite? Let us know in the comments below.