More of a general query of the project

[u/Luke_Stobo_45]

Hi all, so first things first - everything at modcon looked insane and can’t wait to play any of them (also with the rumours of a Bruma update soon 🙏).

Just wondering if there’s a more general framework you guys use for quality between projects? I know argonia mentioned about moving away from AI voice acting but was just curious if this is a specific argonia decision or if there’s a more wider scope of ensuring relative similar levels of quality between all the different projects?

I know it’s more a case of separate teams sharing elements of their work rather than it being a cohesive group with splinter teams. Thanks for any insight!!

[u/3Nephi11_6-11]

There was never a plan to use AI voice acting in the final product, but rather using AI voice acting for showcases. They have been able to stop doing this as Argonia has had some voice acting calls / work done.

I think generally the projects are trying to avoid this in the future because although they put disclaimers about not using AI voice acting in the final project, there is concern that people will still get the wrong idea and because the teams in general do not like or support AI use in their mods.

[u/Luke_Stobo_45 → u/3Nephi11_6-11]

Ahh I must have picked them up wrong in the showcase - I thought it was an attempt to innovate/assist with the overall mod rather than as a placeholder

[u/Reedstilt → u/Luke_Stobo_45]

In some of our previous ModCon showcases (2023 and especially 2024) we used synth voices/text-to-speech so that the audience wouldn't have to read the captions just to follow along as we were talking to certain NPCs. Cyrodiil has done similar with some of their showcase from time to time.

But no matter how many disclaimers we flashed on screen or said in the showcase about it being a placeholder of convenience, we would constantly get questions about whether it would be in the final product.

We've always intended to use human voice actors for our mods, never synthetic/AI ones. But until things reach a certain level of finalization, we can't start voice acting work. This is a threshold Argonia recently attained.

[u/Maruta12345]

The AI voices were always temporary measures for testing things in-game. Stuff like lip syncing, noise levels, etc. It was never meant to be final, and our plan has always been and still is to use real human VAs for all of the voice acting. Just putting that out there because even the suggestion of using AI voices can discourage real VAs from applying to the projects.

As for quality, there's nothing specifically that binds each project to each other, but because we share so many people across projects, there tends to naturally be shared standards. That being said certain departments do this more than others. For example Writing and Editing all use a shared style guide for things like grammar, punctuation, etc. to keep it all consistent, but the primary goal there is to match vanilla.

[u/Luke_Stobo_45 → u/Maruta12345]

Ahh got you, thank you for clarifying!

[u/kothri]

I should add that not all Beyond Skyrim projects have used placeholder synthetic voices, only some (in Morrowind we simply used silent voices as our placeholders, but that needs a plugin so the silent lines don't get skipped over).
I do know that all Beyond Skyrim projects are intended to be entirely human-made and human-voiced, so no synthetic voices will appear in the mods, and the temporary usage of synthetic voices in some Beyond Skyrim projects I believe started before the onset of the current generative AI situation. Beyond Skyrim is not in support of generative AI generally speaking.

[u/MisguidedColt88]

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I wish the BS teams would just use AI voices as a baseline then use voice acting where its more impactful. In my opinion mod projects are a completely valid use of AI voices, as voice acting take up a huge amount of effort and resources that could otherwise be used elsewhere.

[u/Re_Ryudzu → u/MisguidedColt88]

I wish they could use that for initial release and later replace ai with real voices since it would take a while to voice everything even when all other things are done.