I know in previous Fallout games it was an absolute pain to switch around weapon animations and required an immense amount of scripting work. We couldn't even add our own custom ones in. I haven't modded for Skyrim but can you add custom weapon animations in that game? There are some guns that I want to make and if the don't have certain animations then it would be impossible or just not look right when it's imported.

Modders kinda started figuring out how to add new animations to Skyrim, but it's *really* hard. The animation system Bethesda uses isn't well-documented in the modding communty, there aren't many (any?) utilities to help with it, and there aren't that many animators in the community to begin with.

And I think the animation middleware Bethesda uses got a pretty hefty update after Skyrim, which would be a big change if they're using it for 4. What is it called? Havok Behaviors, something or other.

That sounds like a thing for Modders, rather than a thing to do in the game.

With the increased modding support perhaps they will be more helpful and provide more documentation about this.

Just to expand on my last post: Skyrim uses Havok Behavior to manage animations. Nowadays it's Havok Animation Studio, which is a lot more robust (and possibly what Fallout 4 will be using). To my knowledge, replacing existing animations or adding new idle animations (which are activated via script) isn't too difficult, but fleshing out the existing system with new animations for different weapon types (like Spears, or crossbows, or mounted combat) is a lot harder.

Maybe one of the animators will pop up in the GECK forums from time to time to offer advice. That would be pretty awesome.