This video is from Todd Howard's speech at the DICE 2012 keynote in Las Vegas, spotted on Eurogamer. It shows the results of a week-long Bethesda game jam, in which developers were given one task: "Do anything you want, and add it to the game." The results were impressive. Enormous crab monsters, a lycanthrope skill tree, seasonal foliage, moving platforms, adoption and house building were just a few of the ideas the team came up with.

Our first reaction to most of them is "why didn't you just PUT THIS IN THE GAME?" Watching spear-fighting work for five seconds on a demo reel doesn't sum up the number of bugs that it might cause over the course of 50 hours, of course, but surely some of them could be slotted in without too much trouble.

Todd Howard mentions in the video that these features could appear in future updates. If they're not, Skyrim's modding community is bound to take up the challenge. The release of the Skyrim Creation Kit yesterday has given even more encouragement to Skyrim modders. There are now more than 700 mods currently listed on the Steam Workshop, check out our round-up of the best and weirdest Steam Workshop creations for highlights.