Todd Howard's favorite Skyrim mod is one he thinks Bethesda should have made

Skyrim Hearthfire
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Todd Howard says his favourite Skyrim mod is one that he wishes Bethesda had made instead.

In an interview with IGN, Howard said he "hates picking favourites," when asked about his favourite mod from the past ten years, but there are a number he's particularly impressed with, including the well-known Sky UI update. One of his absolute top picks, however, is something far more simple.

"The one I really like - this is gonna sound stupid. There's one I like where someone added fast-travel markers when you bought a house. And it's something that should only take like an hour. It's one of the things where you think 'why didn't we do that?'"

Howard says he's also a fan of more "systemic" mods; "it's gonna sound like a biased pick, but the stuff we do with Creation Club, working with those creators - the survival mode, fishing - I really love when our developers are working with people in the community and getting it out there, so I think those have been particularly impactful in the game.

In fact, it's those creators which have fuelled much of Skyrim's enduring charm. "When you think about the legacy of our games, one of the reasons we're sitting here ten years later is because of our modding community, and what they've done with the game. Even though we did all this stuff and kind of made it our own, you open up this menu and there's this even larger list of things [...] and I think that's fundamental to what we want to do with games." That makes it sound like there's no plans for modding to go away, which is good news for those who already have their eyes on Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6, and even Fallout 5.

Howard also hinted that Elder Scrolls 6 might not release until 2026.

Ali Jones
News Editor

I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

Read more
Skyrim
Skyrim Special Edition accounted for 65% of all Nexus Mods downloads last month, proving that the wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 is nothing more than a skill issue
Skyrim
Skyrim fan completes personal quest to yeet the entire RPG's map into Unreal Engine 5
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Aerith and Tifa suited
"There are mods that could shock some players": Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director agrees mods "breathe life" into games like Fallout and Skyrim, but says please keep it clean
Skyrim
Skyrim's iconic opening was done by Starfield's quest lead, but only after he was brutally called out for "everything we're doing wrong" in front of the Bethesda team
Skyrim
Vanilla Skyrim reaches a whopping 2 billion mod downloads, surpassed only by Skyrim: Special Edition's 6.2 billion record
Skywind
After 12 years, the modders merging Morrowind and Skyrim say their project would "come out faster" if "we were all working with Bethesda," but it would be "much worse"
Latest in Action
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Former Xbox boss says GTA: San Andreas and its infamously NSFW Hot Coffee minigame "signified a maturing of the industry" and put games "on par with movies and music"
Death Stranding 2 PS5 screenshot
Death Stranding 2 pre-orders are estimated to go live this month, and will reportedly include a $230 collector's edition that I pray doesn't come with another creepy baby statue
Assassin's Creed Shadows Claws of Awaji expansion Naoe and Yasuke in Awaji forest
Assassin's Creed Shadows roadmap, DLC and future content
Grand Theft Auto 3
A GTA streamer is trying to beat every single 3D entry without dying, and in 33 hours he's made it as far as San Andreas but keeps getting caught in Vice City purgatory
The Last of Us 2
Naughty Dog has done it: it's remastered the PS5 controller with a Last of Us-themed DualSense announcement 24 hours after Neil Druckmann dashed our hopes for The Last of Us 3
Latest in News
Balatro
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Kingmakers
Kingmakers is a strategy game about taking on medieval armies with a gun, but its devs thought the giant mech was too much
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
Daredevil recap: The Defenders
Marvel fans are discussing which of the Netflix series characters would have survived the Blip