Very few RPGs mention Skyrim as an inspiration
I would expect this to change in the next 10 years, as teenagers who played it begin making their own games.
A lot of AAA rpgs are building off Skyrin's ideas:
Witcher 3's open world was built off Skyrim's flaws, while also taking note of how it handled immersion and exploration. (Source:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ev-says-skyrims-story-and-quests-were-generic)
Although personally, I can't name any of the NPCs who gave side quests out and I think CD Projekt Red made some huge mistakes with the open world design.
Dragon Age Inquisition also took from Skyrim. (Source:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/3/7151567/how-skyrim-is-helping-to-shape-dragon-age-inquisition)
This is the loosest possible definition of 'Inspired By' that you could ever get.
Inspired by normally means the entire game was constructed with a different game as a reference point, while making a different game. What we refer to as clones or likes. Diablo-clone, Rogue-like. This would be the strongest possible definition.
When the devs sit down and start developing the game, everything about what they put in the game has to come from somewhere unless it's a 'daring new concept'. The resultant product will have immediate and easily visible similarities to older, established games. ie: it's obvious which strand of RPGs the Grimrock series is inspired by.
Both DA:I and W3 were the third entry in their respective series. The games didn't deviate dramatically from their previous entries and both previous entries pre-date skyrim and have virtually no influence from any Bethesda game, in any tangible and easily recognisable way. They may have sought to attract the same market, they may have sought to compete graphically, but there's no direct comparison between their previous entries and any Bethesda game.
In DA:I's case the game appears more of an aborted MMO than a walking simulator which was then marketed as 'open-world' to attract Skyrim customers. But even here it's not just Skyrim customers, but the general trend of all AAA titles towards the GTA/Minecraft magic well. In this regard Elder Scrolls isn't even the original inspirer, but itself just another clone of other products. All Skyrim does is tell us that generic fantasy worlds can sell in this format. The DA style is still so far removed from the Skyrim style that players of both would find very little to compare.
In the case of Witcher 3 the inspiration is a bit less loose, but at it's maximum is just plastering a normal Witcher game into a more open world, to which Witcher wanted not to copy or emulate Skyrim, but to show how they could make an open world game that was better than Skyrim, in effect not being inspired by Skyrim's quality but being appalled by it. So, technically, this still counts as 'inspired by', but in a horribly loose way that infers, possibly incorrectly, that Skyrim is the granddaddy of the open-world sandbox, and even then, if you accept that perception, it's a very negative form of inspiration. Skyrim, the game that inspired someone to make their game better.
But even then, even if you accept all of that, you still have to account for how it was the 'open-world, a bit Skyrim-like' aspects of both Witcher 3 and DA:I that many people (citation needed, but common knowledge etc) found most unpleasant about those games. ie: the fans of previous installments.
ie: A cynical attempt to attract some customers from Skyrim with a few not necessarily Skyrim-specific features is such an extremely loose interpretation of inspiration that, though it may well qualify on a technicality, is not really what the idea of 'inspiring' means when people say they are inspired by something.
