Skyrim mod adds AI voice acting for all the Dragonborn's dialogue

Aside from various grunts and dragonshouts, the Dragonborn is a silent protagonist. If that's not your thing, Mathiew May's Dragonborn Voice Over mod for Skyrim Special Edition will let you hear every dialogue line you select repeated out loud.

You can select from a handful of voice packs, each created with ElevenLabs AI. Skyrim's protagonist has more than 7,000 lines of dialogue, so you can see why it's easier to get an AI to generate dialogue than having someone sit down and record it. So far three voice packs are available, all based on women's voices. As well as the default, other modders have contributed voice packs based on Wang Yuanji from Dynasty Warriors and the female Sith Inquisitor from Star Wars: The Old Republic.

May says this mod is a work in progress, with more voice packs to come as well as an update that will decrease the response time between player-character dialogue and non-player character responses. As you can see in the Dragonborn Voice Over showcase video, there's about a two-second pause before NPCs reply after each AI-generated line. (It's worth noting that video doesn't use the current version of the default voice, by the way. And if you're wondering why Ysolda's dress looks weird, that'll be the Vanilla Skinned Mesh Physics Clothing mod.)

We've recently seen other Skyrim modders use AI to add a fully voiced NPC companion to a quest mod, and make NPCs say a name of your choosing instead of calling you Dragonborn. There's also an ongoing project to give every NPC in Morrowind fully voiced AI-generated dialogue.

An older mod added a bunch of Bruce Campbell's lines to let you play Skyrim as Ash from the Evil Dead series. Other mods replaced the default player grunts using the PC Head Tracking and Voice Type mod as their base to add combat barks taken from characters like The Witcher 3's Geralt and Ciri as well as Lara Croft and Wonder Woman. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they're used as the basis for more sets of Dragonborn dialogue.

For a couple more examples of Dragonborn Voice Over in action, here it is with the Sith Inquisitor voice based on voice actor Xanthe Elbrick's performance, and below that are some of the lines from the Wang Yuanji voice pack based on Tara Platt's performance in Dynasty Warriors 8.

If you're looking for more reasons to return to the home of the Nords, check out our lists of the best Skyrim mods and best Skyrim Special Edition mods.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.