Speak your dialogue lines out loud in Skyrim VR with this voice recognition mod

Skyrim's protagonist is famously silent, but a new mod allows you to give them a voice: yours. Dragonborn Speaks Naturally adds voice recognition into the VR version of the game, which means you can speak your dialogue lines out loud to select them during conversations. Neat.

Dragonborn Speaks Naturally works by running a background speech recognition service that hooks into Skyrim's code and identifies lines of dialogues, selecting them in-game if you say them out loud. It'll work with whatever microphone you want to use, although creator Cuebit advises against using the HTC Vive's built-in mic. You should also try to get rid of any background noise like the whirring of a fan before trying it out, and ensure your microphone volume is turned all the way up.

I imagine that if it accurately picks up your speech then it might make you feel more involved in the game, almost like you're having an actual back-and-forth conversation with an NPC. I often find myself saying dialogue lines out loud without thinking when I'm playing Skyrim, so if you're anything like me then it should feel natural. But if it fails to pick up what you're saying, or if you stumble over a word, it'll just be annoying.

Thankfully, most people that have downloaded it seem impressed with its accuracy. Some users say it's causing their game to crash, so it might take a bit of tinkering to get it to work properly.

You have to install this dynamic-link library loader before following these instructions on installing the mod.

For more cool mods, check out our definitive guide to the best Skyrim mods.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.