Talking to non-player characters (NPCs) in Skyrim VR may be easy—requiring a quick selection from the dialogue menu—but it isn’t exactly an immersive way of interacting with the world though. With a new speech recognition mod, called Dragonborn Speaks Naturally, all of that changes.

The Dragonborn Speaks Naturally mod allows you to do just that—choose the dialogue option you think fits best by reciting it naturally. This essentially lets you add your own voice to where a voiceless protagonist once stood, letting you truly put yourself into the +25 Armor Daedric boots of the Dragonborn.

DSN works by hooking directly into the Skyrim code where the dialogue menu is updated. It also starts a background service to handle the speech recognition. When the background service identifies the dialogue line, the Skyrim hooks execute to select the spoken line.

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The mod works with both Skyrim VR and Skyrim Special Edition, but because it directly hooks into Skyrim, it will be prone to breakage when when/if Bethesda push updates.

“I will try to keep this mod up to date with the latest version of SkyrimVR and SkyrimSE as quickly as possible,” says Cuebit.

You can download the mod here.

Installation

1. Install xSHADOWMANx’s Dll Loader
2. Download the latest archive and extract it to your SkyrimVR/SkyrimSE directory (where SkyrimVR.exe/SkyrimSE.exe is)
3. (Optional) If you need to set your language locale for your needs, the default is your system-installed language. This can be changed by modifying the /Data/Plugins/Sumwunn/DragonbornSpeaksNaturally.ini file and restarting the game.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Alexander Mejia

    I’m glad to see other people experimenting with voice in games. We’ve been working on a game based off Speech for three years now and getting ready to launch in Arcades soon called STARSHIP COMMANDER.

  • Doctor Bambi

    I’ll definitely be trying this out. I’ve found reciting the dialog lines and then hearing the NPCs respond has a really profound impact on immersion.

    The only thing that kind of sucks about this, it that your headphones muffle the sound of your own voice. I don’t know if a mod is already out there for it, but I wonder if you could pipe your voice in from the microphone, and then process it to match the acoustics of the environment.

    • brandon9271

      Just pretend you’re wearing a medieval helmet.. your voice would be muffled anyway ;) having your voice echo in a cave would be amazing though!!

  • gothicvillas

    hehe i’ve been role playing anyway and talking out loud! So this mod is very much welcomed :) Going to download it tonight

  • jj

    voice attack works wonders for this type of things as well

    • jj

      I was wrong, this does different stuff!

  • oompah

    Skyrim Special edition is great
    In the Original Skyrim if u got closer
    to objects ( i.e. flowers etc)
    u would only see blurred
    images but not now .
    U see objects in detail now, thank you Bethesda
    Its the best virtual world , very beautiful
    where u can keep ur worldly worries
    away for a while
    I wish it was on cloud gaming
    Any IT gods listening ahem reading?
    Google, Jeff bezos, Intel, MS, Apple,
    Nvidia, AMD etc etc..
    I urge Bethesda to keep alive the
    online game forever
    till nukes do us apart hah ha

  • Cool!

  • Net Shaman

    Don’t seem to work despite my efforts :/

  • Zachary Scott Dickerson

    I got this working last night, very cool.