I noticed that a lot of the features that are in Skyrim have their roots in popular mods from Oblivion. For example, the addition of weapon bashing, brutal kill animations and block timing(Deadly Reflex), an emphasis on more "magical magic" (Midas Magic), more attractive looking characters (HGEC, Roberts Male, and the million other body mods), and a bunch of other things like that. I was curious what you guys thought of that as a whole. For me I personally feel that Bethesda is amazing for doing things this way. It seems like Bethesda is taking great things from a lot of different forms of inspiration and putting them in their game to make it as best as possible for release date. Plus, when they add features from a popular mod, it goes out as a homage to that person's work and it allows the end-users to enjoy the new game in a similar fashion to how we enjoyed the previous modded Oblivion. Finally it provides a better "base product" for modders to work with to take the game to the next level. Overall I think its great that Bethesda Studios has been doing this, but what do you guys think?

Of course, Bethesda was inspired by both mods for oblivion and morrowind and other games, and also by other games, they play games, look at their features and think "this is cool, should we add something like this to skyrim?" Skyrim's features are not oblivion's mods, they are merely inspired by them.

They aren't trying to make a better oblivion, they're trying to make as good Skyrim as they possibly can right now.

Todd Howard has stated this tons of times.

seconded. but i dont think have better looking bodies was inspired by mods. they just didnt want any more armand christophe's
http://xbe.xanga.com/4a2c8715d9032206338795/z160483148.png

How would they have ever come up with the idea for less ugly NPCs if mods had not done it first? Makes you wonder...

Mods are one of the most powerful tools to judge what the players want in the games. Not considering mods used by large parts of the userbase would be a waste of a valuable resource.

I would definitely agree that Beth got some ideas from the Mods. I know for a fact that the changes to the bow were inspired by a mod.

Why wouldn't they get ideas from the mods?? It makes no sense.

I think it's very good, Bethesda is still the owner of Oblivion content, and therefore also it's mods. It's a great way for them to test what works best in the community, what mods are popular etc.. then simply implement them into Skyrim.

I was thinking of a different Question or a Thread Starter, what Mods from Oblivion that Fans made is in Skyrim.

The same goes from Morrowind to Oblivion.

You're right. The mod you are thinking of is Duke's archery mod. It's a fantastic mod.

I agree with OP, but you should also keep in mind that mods improve on the base gameplay. and since this is also what a sequel is all about...

I remember for sure that one of the Devs has said that they did take a look at mods when developing skyrim, so yr right