Hrm...Skyrim didn't invent open-world games. They existed long before Arena as well.
According to this quote:
According to a post from the http://social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-3-Inquisition/Dragon-Age-3-Inquisition-General-Discussion/Skyrim-style-open-world-16354208-1.html on March 22, the Technical QA anolyst disclosed that the "looking at Skyrim" statement means that they are just recognizing that a certain segment of the population enjoy exploring in more open and non-linear game levels.
It sounds like they're just acknowledging that people seem to like open-world games rather than actually taking any influence from Skyrim.
