I dont know about you guys but I was like this after seeing all the new content from E3. http://files.sharenator.com/RandyMarshJizz_New_Skyrim_Trailer-s635x477-140227-580.jpg
It got me reminded of all the concept art that was shown to us earlier. When a fairly large creature is slain, like a mammoth, do you think their body should stay there and slowly decay? Like in this picture http://zoknowsgaming.com/wp-content/gallery/elderscrollsvskyrim/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-7.jpg (its cool how the mammoth has been dead for a while and is slowly sinking into the snow)

So far the game looks incredible and can't wait to try it on my PC but a really cool feature would be that not just dragon carcasses are left behind in the game.

Would be cool, yes. I'd love to see ravens picking at a rotting corpse.

What would be even cooler would be a necromancer spell that lets you re-animate the corpse at any point during the decay.

It's not something I can see happening though.

Yeah it could be a simple summon spell that when casted consumes the dead body in a black flame or something evil looking and a skeletal version of that creature is reanimated for a few seconds would sound good. That would be awesome but just a rotting carcass surrounded by ravens for mammoths would be great.

In all honesty, guys.
I feel that having decaying corpses, both killed by "unknown" and by your own hand, would absolutely kill any platform the game is on.

Can you imagine the cache dump by the end of a 300 hour game? How many bodies you would have had to hunt through? Then the game needs to remember every detail. How the body was dumped. How long it has been sitting there for. In what conditions was it dumped (snow, swamp, etc). How many creatures, and what type have been living off this corpse?

Absolute pain.

A gorgeous concept, but not feasable...

huh... thats a pretty good point,since the cache dump would make the fps plummet

It would be nice, but I doubt all too realistic for us to see now.

Imagine the file sizes!

Honestly, while it would be cool to see skeletal mammoth remains frozen in the tundra, all I would want from decaying bodies is to not walk through an area 20 hours of gameplay later AND THE GOBLIN I KILLED IS STILL LYING THERE.

Just despawn the corpse after a time... please.

What if the creatures decay up to a certain point / for a certain amount of time and then they despawn? For example, you kill a random bandit in the woods, you come back one or two real life hours later and you see bugs on the body, bones becoming more easy to spot or prominent, hair falling out etc. You come back say three or four hours later and it's just a skeleton, 5-6 hours later and it's been despawned.

The idea of the body being covered up by snow as time goes by is brilliant.

I would just be happy if as soon as it is dead they pounce on it like jackels lol, feasting on it, but in like 2 game hrs its gone, nary a bone left, all dragged off by wolves, birds, bears, what have you.

This is a great idea. I'd like to see something like this while wandering around:

http://img.ezinemark.com/imagemanager2/files/30002494/2010/10/2010-10-06-16-36-09-2-in-zoroastrian-religion-the-deceased-is-left-on-t.png

And to the people who disagree: that's fine. It's your opinion. But I swear, some people will complain about anything just for the sake of complaining. And this isn't specific to this thread. It seems like a theme throughout the various threads.