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Players Populate Skyrim With Killer Rabbits, Ghostly Horses

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “Man, Skyrim sure is awesome but it would really kick ass if I could ride an undead horse while fighting Spider-Man?” If so, your prayers are being answered one by one. On Feb. 7, Bethesda launched the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Creation Kit for Steam Workshop, allowing modders to […]
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The Realistic Water Textures and Terrain mod, by "isoku," enhances streams and waterfalls with striking realism. The mod visually overhauls every form of water found in the world of Skyrim with its hand-crafted oceans, lakes, rivers, marshes, creeks, and even individual raindrops.

Have you ever found yourself thinking, "Man, Skyrim sure is awesome but it would really kick ass if I could ride an undead horse while fighting Spider-Man?" If so, your prayers are being answered one by one.

On Feb. 7, Bethesda launched the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Creation Kit for Steam Workshop, allowing modders to tweak and alter practically anything in the massively popular role-playing game. Once a mod is released, players of the game's PC version can immediately download it and change their game. Popular player-created additions include new magic spells, graphical tweaks and new geographical locations.

The Creation Kit has proved instantly popular. Bethesda said that gamers downloaded two million mods in the first three days of the service. As of this writing, there are over 3,636 mods available. Bethesda says it is not surprised by the speed with which both modders and players have integrated the new tools.

The response from fans "is really no different than [that of] the Construction Set we released for [previous Elder Scrolls games] Morrowind and Oblivion," said Bethesda vice president of PR and marketing Pete Hines in an e-mail to Wired. "We have a very large, loyal modding community that has been built up since 2002. When they get the chance to jump on a new game to play with and mod, they do it."

Hines added that the rate of mods being uploaded might decrease as modders become more familiar with the product and begin to tackle more ambitious projects.

When asked what Skyrim modders and players downloading mods have to look forward to in the future, he said that it all comes down to what the community wants.

"A lot of that will come from feedback from users," Hines said. "What else it needs to do that it doesn't do currently? What would make it more functional and useful? How does the system work for ranking mods? Right now, we're enjoying seeing folks use the Creation Kit and Workshop to put out great stuff, and we'll continue to support that process as we have been for the last 10 years."

Images: Steam, Bethesda