Characters in Skyrim are so lifeless compare to Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored, etc
One thing that has never progressed in The Elder Scrolls series are the characters animation, they have always been so stiff.

Take a look at the hands of someone in the game, it look like stiff claws or just frozen dead hands without the ice on top.

Those games are far far more compact than Skyrim. Skyrim is a big game that uses a lot of processing, those other games aren't a sprawling as Skyrim is and I don't think they have as much to do as Skyrim.

In the age old form of rhyme: Smaller scale = more detail.

So why can people create mods that make the animation better and the models better and it will still run well? O.o
Oh yeah, add some graphics mod on top of that for overall world and you still run it fine.

Creating characters with better animations, better models doesn't take a lot of processing while playing, that's foolish. Clutter, shadow effects, textures on ground, tree's, walls, etc - that take up processing beyond way more than creating non-stiff-claw-hands-models.

Try to run them altogether in a console and you will burn it.
And because there are so many modders out there... you know, they have an schedule to build and finish the game from scratch. While the modders already have the game presented for them to modify and make really wonderful things.
But as the game is made to run in a lot of systems (low end pc′s and consoles) and because of the time restrictions...
Nonetheless, as stated before:

You run those mods fine on a PC, sure. What if you're using a PS3 or an Xbox and there's a lot of NPCs around in the same place? Will it still run fine? Modders don't have to worry about that, you don't have to worry about that, but gamesas does.

Edit:
Argh, Fhynrood, you sniping [censored]! If you wake up one night with the severed head of an Ogrim in your bed, you now know why!!!

More time plus its a small detail that they are tweaking, they didn't build everything from the ground up just added a few bits and pieces more to the coding for their animation.And I believe that the PC can process the information better than the consoles but Beth wanted to make it even on all the platforms so they kept every system the same.

Because the operating capabilites of the 360 & PS3 use ancient technology from the stone ages in comparison to PCs.


I believe the next-gen: Xbox 720 & PS4 will be able to accomplish this.

Isn't consoles the worst thing to happen *nods* imagine Skyrim if consoles never came to excist.
Just plain PC!

Really awful developers have to set their standard on the limitation of Xbox 360 or 720 or whatever may come.
Just means we all will be dead before we really get to see any real progress in the gaming world.

They can create mods for that because they don't have to allow for consoles I'm guessing.