User blog comment:Jimeee/Dragonborn officially released on Xbox Live/@comment-68.171.231.85-20121205003239/@comment-3492791-20121208185159

As I said in the past, implimenting spears would require a total revamping of the combat system, becuase a spear thusts, not slashes. They would never make this kind of technical change for a single weapon type, and thus I said any attempt to imclude them would be only in name and they would be reskinned greatswords.

I turned out to be partially right, but to spite me they made them arrows instead of a greatsword, because that is just the most logical choice anyone could have ever made about spears.