Why some NPCs always speak the common language ? Why all humans races speak the same language ?
1/ My mod replaces vanilla audios only. If a mod use a audio replaced by my mod, and if this one dont overwritting my mod, the dialogue will be in the new language. But many mods add dialogues, totally new or audio mixes already existing in the game. So they won’t be replaced by my mod. Most of the time they will be in English (that's why i think english is the better choice for you common language).
2/ My mod replaces "race voice-type" only. I voluntarily limited my mod so that it’s not just anything/mess in game. Many characters of all races dont speak with the voice-type files of their race. There are several voice-type, here the list.There are racial voice-types, and general voice-types. Each voice-type has several audio files: specific dialogues, general dialogues, etc, and many audios are used by multiple characters. For example, the character Selveni Nethri uses not the voice-type Femaledarkelf but the voice-type Female-cowar. But some of Selveni Nethri’s dialogues are used by her and others of those dialogues by other characters as well, and not necessarily black elves. I decided to not change the non-racial voice-types, so it wouldn’t get too f***ed up. I prefer that a dark elf in skyrim speaks the common language, rather an imperial starts speaking the language of dunmer, or an orc speaking three different languages...
For me, Even if the experience is imperfect, it remains interesting and you can try it even with a very modded skyrim !
Overall, the languages of the Orsimers, the language of the Argonians, and the languages of the Khajiits cover a large part of the members of their races. Almost all.
The language of ancient races and the language of the Daedras also, but they are rarer to Skyrim.
The language of the Altmers and Bosmers, and the language of the Dunmers are the least "effective" languages of my mod. Many of them use different voice-types.
Love this... the lack of voice diversity in the game has bothered me for a long time, so this is a hidden gem out there that needs a lot more recognition. The elevated gaming experience from this mod cannot be understated. Thank you so much for giving more life to this game for a Skyrim veteran.
Development idea!! Wish there was a way to distribute languages from this mod to specific characters with SPID or something in order to really diversify the voices in the game! You could then diversify all voice types and characters via language setting, applied in any way you prefer.
Example: Both the vanilla Orcs and the Argonians have 2 voice types each, male and female. By distribution of English, Polish and Russian voices among either of the races, they would have six different voices. Polish and Russian come from the same language group and could, with some imagination, be heard as dialects within that race, but more importantly, their voices would be more varied. That's just one example on how to to work with such a new version of the mod.
Irileth and Jenassa etc. wouldn’t have to sound the same, by giving either a different native Dunmer language, while the other retains the original English voice. By distribution per character, the possibilities would be endless!
I'm not sure about SPID but in any case it would be possible to create a lot of new voice-types with the creation kit and redistribute them, to something similar to what you describe. It's an interesting idea and I've done a few tests like that in the past, which I abandoned. It would make this mod better, but more complex, and require hundreds of patches to make it compatible with many other mods... And that's not at all the spirit.
Any chance for Redguard to speak Turk or whatever the Turkish Speak? They had a major Empire also. Mongolian for the Orcs would be perfect but thanks for what you have done. I cut the pestering down not understanding what they are saying and the bards are a nice change being they sing the same 2 songs over and over.
I love how Dark Elves sound in English, so I probably won't change them. I'm only bilingual, and I'm using VR, so subtitles are off. I guess I have to decide which race(s) I want speaking Spanish, and which I want speaking French (maybe).
Or maybe I'll just go full Ape mode and have every possible race speaking one of the different languages. Who knows?!
My only concern (with the Spanish, at least) is that I've tried it and there isn't nearly as much diversity of accent with it. The Nords just sounded... Mexican. I'm concerned that whatever race I have as Spanish is going to lose it's "zing" and just sound Latin American instead. Obviously I understand that as a native English speaker I'm going to detect English-accents much quicker than I would detect accented Spanish.
Does anyone have recommendations for what races work best for what languages? Or should I just figure that out myself?
I would recommend only the Beast Races since they seem to have the lowest and most isolated populations, even if they speak a different language Dunmer live inside the walls (despite being in a slum in one of the cities) and Altmer are here for diplomatic reasons so they would be speaking the common language when we interact with them (and I agree the british accents are sexy). Japanese for Argonians (because it has no roots in common with English [except words directly borrowed after WWII] and Jel has no roots (pun intended) in common with any other language) , Polish for Kajiit, Russian for Orcs (Because orcs are mer and Kajiit are mer adjacent so both being in the same language family makes sense). I also pre listened to the intro dubbed in all 3 languages and they do pair really well with those 3 races.
If only you could make it to where races use their own language when speaking to someone of the same race but tamrielic when speaking to another race or you. (I know you can't because of the game's limitations, I just think it would be cool)
Alright - I decided to buckle down and give the mod a try...
It's fantastic! Especially if you're already a Skyrim veteran, and it's not like there's story details you're afraid to miss. Having people speaking in multiple languages really helps with immersion and a feeling of life to the world. It was fantastic having a Khajiit hurl French insults at me during a fight, and my Dunmer follower shouting back at him in Spanish.
I only just installed it and played one session with it, but I cannot be more pleased with my decision to give this mod a try. Seriously, it's so good. All the default master languages are options, so you can have a slew of different languages if you like.
I stuck with a more tentative approach; having all the Mer races speak Spanish, and the Beast races speaking French, and everyone else remaining English. Based on my research of Skyrim's Demographics, that puts my experience at 20% Spanish and 5% French, and the remaining 75% of the population still speaking English.
Finally, unlike the average DnD 5E campaign, what languages you know will actually matter!
I notice the file size is very large - 3.2 GB. Is there a reason for this? I'm considering using this for my Skyrim VR setup, but i don't want to risk the performance issues from injecting such a large mod...
The large file size is due to numerous customization options. Once installed, the mod's actual size is about 8 times smaller (at least). I bet you won't encounter any issues.
Available now in Miscellaneous files. You can choose between English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish to become the language of the Forsworns.
Same as the others: only forsworn NPCs using their racial voice-type will have their language change, others will always use the common language !
With this mod, all the human races speak the common language (ie your skyrim localization language). It’s not great, but I think it’s the best for the mod to be the most functional ! I would liked to give specific languages for Breton, Imperial, Nordic, and Redguards, but they all share too many dialogue files (here, the different types of voices), so there would be the risk that many non-redguards speak the redguard language, and vice versa for the others human races. It would be technically possible to isolate each dialogue files, and to do something even better. But it would be a very crazy work, it would probably be functional enough (but not perfect) for a vanilla skyrim ... but totally not for a very modded skyrim (many npcs would speak several languages, without logic). So I’ll never do that.
If necessary, I could give a new language for redguars with a unique type of voice. But there are only two, I think (Isran and Nazir); so I’m not sure it has a huge interest. But if you want, i can add that as a miscellaneous file of this mod, it's easy to do.
You can read the mod description and the sticky post for more information.
43 comments
Why all humans races speak the same language ?
1/ My mod replaces vanilla audios only.
If a mod use a audio replaced by my mod, and if this one dont overwritting my mod, the dialogue will be in the new language. But many mods add dialogues, totally new or audio mixes already existing in the game. So they won’t be replaced by my mod. Most of the time they will be in English (that's why i think english is the better choice for you common language).
2/ My mod replaces "race voice-type" only.
I voluntarily limited my mod so that it’s not just anything/mess in game. Many characters of all races dont speak with the voice-type files of their race. There are several voice-type, here the list.There are racial voice-types, and general voice-types. Each voice-type has several audio files: specific dialogues, general dialogues, etc, and many audios are used by multiple characters. For example, the character Selveni Nethri uses not the voice-type Femaledarkelf but the voice-type Female-cowar. But some of Selveni Nethri’s dialogues are used by her and others of those dialogues by other characters as well, and not necessarily black elves. I decided to not change the non-racial voice-types, so it wouldn’t get too f***ed up. I prefer that a dark elf in skyrim speaks the common language, rather an imperial starts speaking the language of dunmer, or an orc speaking three different languages...
it remains interesting and
you can try it even with a very modded skyrim !
The language of ancient races and the language of the Daedras also, but they are rarer to Skyrim.
The language of the Altmers and Bosmers, and the language of the Dunmers are the least "effective" languages of my mod. Many of them use different voice-types.
- Lazy Voice Finder - FInd voice assets just you want by BowmoreLover
- Multiple Languages Voices Unified Central SSE by EHPDJFrANKy
I didn’t have these tools when I did "LDS"... With this, i think you can do better and easier than me!
veteran.
Development idea!! Wish there was a way to distribute languages from this mod to specific characters with SPID or something in order to really diversify the voices in the game! You could then diversify all voice types and characters via language setting, applied in any way you prefer.
Example: Both the vanilla Orcs and the Argonians have 2 voice types each, male and female. By distribution of English, Polish and Russian voices among either of the races, they would have six different voices. Polish and Russian come from the same language group and could, with some imagination, be heard as dialects within that race, but more importantly, their voices would be more varied. That's just one example on how to to work with such a new version of the mod.
Irileth and Jenassa etc. wouldn’t have to sound the same, by giving either a different native Dunmer language, while the other retains the original English voice. By distribution per character, the possibilities would be endless!
I'm not sure about SPID but in any case it would be possible to create a lot of new voice-types with the creation kit and redistribute them, to something similar to what you describe. It's an interesting idea and I've done a few tests like that in the past, which I abandoned.
It would make this mod better, but more complex, and require hundreds of patches to make it compatible with many other mods... And that's not at all the spirit.
But maybe one day, I'm keeping the idea in mind !
Or maybe I'll just go full Ape mode and have every possible race speaking one of the different languages. Who knows?!
My only concern (with the Spanish, at least) is that I've tried it and there isn't nearly as much diversity of accent with it. The Nords just sounded... Mexican. I'm concerned that whatever race I have as Spanish is going to lose it's "zing" and just sound Latin American instead. Obviously I understand that as a native English speaker I'm going to detect English-accents much quicker than I would detect accented Spanish.
Does anyone have recommendations for what races work best for what languages? Or should I just figure that out myself?
It's fantastic! Especially if you're already a Skyrim veteran, and it's not like there's story details you're afraid to miss. Having people speaking in multiple languages really helps with immersion and a feeling of life to the world. It was fantastic having a Khajiit hurl French insults at me during a fight, and my Dunmer follower shouting back at him in Spanish.
I only just installed it and played one session with it, but I cannot be more pleased with my decision to give this mod a try. Seriously, it's so good. All the default master languages are options, so you can have a slew of different languages if you like.
I stuck with a more tentative approach; having all the Mer races speak Spanish, and the Beast races speaking French, and everyone else remaining English. Based on my research of Skyrim's Demographics, that puts my experience at 20% Spanish and 5% French, and the remaining 75% of the population still speaking English.
Finally, unlike the average DnD 5E campaign, what languages you know will actually matter!
Same as the others: only forsworn NPCs using their racial voice-type will have their language change, others will always use the common language !
Thanks a lot for to link my mod profile here, and to name me.
I have added and linked your mod, in the 'F.A.Q.' section of the description of my mod profile too.
Best of lucks with your projects mate.
Take Care !!!
I would liked to give specific languages for Breton, Imperial, Nordic, and Redguards, but they all share too many dialogue files (here, the different types of voices), so there would be the risk that many non-redguards speak the redguard language, and vice versa for the others human races. It would be technically possible to isolate each dialogue files, and to do something even better. But it would be a very crazy work, it would probably be functional enough (but not perfect) for a vanilla skyrim ... but totally not for a very modded skyrim (many npcs would speak several languages, without logic). So I’ll never do that.
If necessary, I could give a new language for redguars with a unique type of voice. But there are only two, I think (Isran and Nazir); so I’m not sure it has a huge interest. But if you want, i can add that as a miscellaneous file of this mod, it's easy to do.
You can read the mod description and the sticky post for more information.