Bethesda games have always been huge in scope, in every aspect except the voice lines. Notoriously, each Bethesda game only has a handful of actors for its NPCs, so you'll hear many characters who sound exactly alike to each other, and who often repeat the same lines.
Skyrim is one of the main culprits, with players complaining about the game's lack of voice variety for a long time. Now, a modder is doing something about it – and it doesn't use AI. No, Nexus Mods user spdude is going to the trouble of recruiting new voice actors to bring the NPCs around Skyrim to life, giving the world some much-needed variety.
Skyrim Revoiced will add new voice acting to Skyrim
As you can hear in the video, the Skyrim Revised project is well underway. Here, we get a preview of some of the NPCs who now have unique voice actors, helping to differentiate them from the other NPCs dotted around the map.
Modder spdude has created a similar mod in the past, Skyrim Vocal Diversity. However, these new voice lines were generated using AI, so understandably, many players want to get away from it. With Skyrim Revoiced, we can see that spdude has gone to the effort of casting new actors, making it feel more human. The mod creator says it should change the voices of 50 NPCs, and they expect the mod to be ready for download soon.
At the very least, Bethesda seems aware that the lack of voice diversity in its games is a problem. Oblivion Remastered actually remedied this by adding more voice actors to the game, so now, each race is played by a unique actor. You still have the issue of the main characters in the main story sounding like your average merchant, but this at least brings Oblivion up to par with modern Bethesda games. So, hopefully, The Elder Scrolls 6 adds even more variety. Bethesda certainly had time to bring artists to the booth…
In the meantime, this work by spdude and the artists they partnered with is impressing Skyrim fans. In fact, it's wild to see what the community is capable of so long after launch.
- issued
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November 11, 2011
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Alcohol use, blood and gore, intense violence, sexual themes
- Engine
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creation
- Extensions
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Skyrim: Dragonborn, Skyrim: Hearthfire, Skyrim: Dawnguard
