AI Voiced Morrowind is Here (and it's kinda insane)

when I was a kid my first impression of Morrowind was not the greatest and I often wish that the game was filled with all the same exotic voices that I was hearing from the properties being shoved into my GameCube has anyone ever told you yeah you have a screw loose and although my opinion on morrowind's design certainly changed over time my childhood fantasy is today's reality and that is thanks to kazima's voices of Varden Phil a groundbreaking mod bringing speech to the entirety of our favorite Province through the use of artificial intelligence now in just a second I will show some character demos with my own reactions in there so if you're just here for that feel free to skip there using the timeline but first I would like to talk a little bit about the engine that has made all of this start turning and this revolutionary change to the game possible but you're gonna hear enough from me throughout this video so I'd like it pass it over to one sir Michael Kane to explain a little bit about 11 AI take it away Michael thank you coffee 11 Labs is an easy to use Cutting Edge and groundbreaking platform for AI voice generation that automatically uses context to create lifelike inflection this makes it an obvious choice for hobbyists and modders alike who are trying to bring life into their creation you can even try it out for free which really democratizes the use of this technology oh and great work on the video so far coffee excellent work that was great thank you sir it's it's I love having Alfred at my fingertips like that I'm like Batman's sitting in here on my cave I got a couch a guitar I'm I'm nowhere near as cool as Batman damn it but as you can hear there 11 Labs is not your standard voice over technology it actually scrapes The Prompt for context and then adds in breaths pauses inflections and all the best places that it can find and although it does a phenomenal job you can of course still tell that it is an AI but as Sir Michael Kane said it certainly is enough for a moderate to breathe life into their creation and add that immersion that many mods excluding the mega projects like skywind or Sky Oblivion are lacking in all honesty voice acting a mod with a team of one or two or three was almost entirely out of the realm of possibility until this comes along and that is really cool and it's not just the technology itself that is opening up and encouraging modders to act in this way in fact kazima the creator of this mod has loaded up a GitHub page that explains Lanes how to add voices into the game how to extract dialogue from the game and how to make your vision a reality but now that we're grounded now that we know what's going on under the hood and all the incredible groundwork that kazima has laid let's hop into Morrowind and see what our brave new fully voiced Out World actually looks like so to start here showcasing the mod we of course need to begin with the first person that most people talk to in this game and that is going to be our little buddy fargoth here now I'll try and keep mainly quiet so you can listen to the lines but I'll interject here and there with some of my own thoughts and then we'll wrap up the video at the end so far goth let's hear what he sounds like when he has so much more to say you the one that boat dropped off odd to see a boat arrive at that time of the day hope the Imperials treated you okay I swear they took my ring it's still so weird for me oh my God okay tell me about your ring Fargo tell me about your ring I swear one of the guards has it I had it last week before their weekly let's shake down far goth ritual an engraved healing ring family heirloom of mine you haven't seen it have you see this right here again shows the power of the 11 Labs AI the let's shake down fargoth you know it has inflection it has character there is there is something else kind of going on there that elevates this just above your normal typical kind of tick-tock voiceover that we're all so numb to nowadays darn well if you see it let me know it's an engraved ring of healing I know it's in there somewhere if that just crazy it's just mind-blowing now one thing you will notice is that for example if I click on a little secret or something like a little advice which fargoth does not have unique dialogue options for so as kazima is working through the mod they're actually targeting unique dialogue options first of which I think there's about 15 000 in the game when you include the 90 000 generic lines on top of it well now you know why there's so many lines that need to get done but the generics are going to be the last to get done and these are going to be your things like little advice little secret my trade background stuff like that that any villager could say in any place so if you download the mod today those are going to be some of the key ones missing but now let's hop over here to our reels trade house as I have learned from playing this mod and see how everybody's favorite early game Merchant is doing welcome to Ariel's trade house I barter for goods or coin I also have a small selection of spells for sale no credit you want a little advice that's free that's all that's free would you like to hear about our most popular potions our most popular Scrolls that's again they're the most popular potions or most popular Scrolls come on Scrolls do you want the Scrolls see don't ask the fans of this game they'll take all the freaking Scrolls especially the old ones super popular give me the Elder ones Vigor and vitality are our best selling bargain items restoring fatigue and health respectively allm City intervention and divine intervention transport you instantly to the nearest Temple or nearest Imperial Shrine good for routine or emergency transportation heartwise helps with persuasion summons and drathis's winter guest does a lot of damage out of touch handy to whittle a too tough opponent down to size I I'm just this is still just so weird for me it's so much culture shock after like I said Decades of playing this game with Imagining the voices in your head like you're reading a storybook it never sounds the same even if we have you know some of those Baseline samples uh that we do hear from the characters like a Real's greeting there when he says entire sentences and paragraphs and thoughts it's like what it's happening it doesn't feel like Morrowind but again another of the voiced characters that has had some of their unique lines done that are here in satanine priscar flat foot let's catch one or two lines from him and then we'll head up to balmora you look like you could use a friend Outlander perhaps I can be your friend I'd like you to help me recover some gold I wonder whose gold that could be okay riskar that's right see I had a bad run of luck playing nine holes and lost a bit of money normally I'd be fine we can usually keep some gold in our pockets just from the money the locals pay us for protection but I know some of them are holding out on me especially that little fetcher fargoth he's come up here the worst I know he's stashing it somewhere I'd like you to find fargoth's hiding place so chrisgar here I I this one is a little more AI to me this one doesn't have as much personality uh as the first two that we listen to but that should give you a bit of a flavor of what this is starting to shake out as again kazema's is not a replacement for voice actors it's more of a stand-in kind of a a 90 of the way they are 85 percent of the way they're Band-Aid to bring voices into the game and make it possible with a team of just a couple people or or even one person but now let's head over to balmora talking to darvame this is the Port Village of sedanine Outlander in the bitter coast region I'm a caravan and I manage the silkstrider portal tell me your destination if you're looking for a ride or if you're new to sedanine I can help you with local services or any specific place in say the name you're looking for or if you want someone in particular maybe I know where to live God I say it's not a replacement for voice actors but some of these do sound really good they sound better than they have any right to sound being AI generated that's for sure but now that we are back in our true home of balmora well we obviously have to go and visit the the man that everybody really wants to see papacayas so let's head over across the bridge and talk to Caius and fulfill everybody's dream of of having a fully voiced you know Father Figure well maybe I shouldn't say father figure that's giving him a lot of credit with the drugs and the spying yeah maybe not farther figure from okay but regardless Caius let's let's hear what you got what yes I'm Caius cusades but what do you mean you were told to report to Caius cosets what are you talking about I was directed here by the mighty Azura whether I know it or not so you've been told to report to me and deliver a package perhaps you'll let me look at it I I can but one thing I will note here is that you will see that Caius skipped over the dialogue so you say your name is Jeffrey because my assumption here is kazima did not want to have to worry about dealing with player selections and making a line for each possible selection like a race and certainly things like names which could literally just be anything you can't prep a voice line for that because you'll never know what it is before starting the game it's a very good design there by kazima so we'll hit yes and see get get a couple more lines out of papakayas here yes very interesting so it says here the emperor wants me to make you a novice in the blades and that means you'll be following my orders are you ready to follow my orders do I need to like look him in the eye now like I feel like I'm reading along in the dialogue still and I'm like outpacing like do I need a stare do I need to just like face off with guys here where where do I look now because there's no there's no other emotion on screen it's a little disorienting good welcome to the service novice how you belong to the blades where the Emperors are you can't look anywhere you are forever even with voices you are doomed to read the text otherwise if you like you can improve your modest skills with our blades trainers now or if you're in a hurry I can give you orders right away but don't forget to visit the blades trainers let's let's get those orders first thing Pilgrim you're new and you look it here's 200 Drakes go get yourself a decent weapon or armor or a spell and second thing you need a cover identity around here freelance Adventurer is a common profession with the fight that is my profession at this point and every time I played around Imperial Legion advance in the ranks gain skill and experience or go out on your own look for freelance work or trouble then when you're ready come back and I'll have orders for you it's it's still just so weird I'm not used to it yet it again it's phenomenal the technology is amazing the accessibility is amazing uh you know for people who do have uh issues with vision and can't actually read the dialogue of Morrowind but God it's still it's so ingrained in my uh how I perceive this game having the lines spoken to you does alter the soul a bit it changes the impact of some of the lines and now the last person that I want to demo here and there there are of course more characters that do have voice lines done again excluding those generic lines um I do want to showcase one of the Beast races and then we will hop back out of the game to deliver some of my final thoughts so I actually walked right past him that's the problem is when I'm looking in the camera but let's talk to Revere the traitor and see how khajiits have fared in the AI Voice New World Order ravier knows why you are here you want to buy Revere's famous Daedric weapons what you say these are not Daedric weapons no you are right but Revere is no liar they're engager weapons demon and devil weapons will be as sharp as fine Daedric and as light as a netch air sack the man and he's not wrong it's a short time but long enough to punch through the toughest armor ravier buys them direct from the talvani you'll not find any cheaper in all balmora now I will say that I feel like Revere's voice has been the most believable at least to my ear I feel like Caius and riskars were the worst and maybe that's because they were the most generically like human normal run-of-the-mill dialogue like like a voice that we'd expect to hear just in normal conversations or our brain is much more trained to be like that's wrong I don't like it you're an AI but with a beast race like Revere here whatever I mean I I couldn't tell the difference with Revere I mean this one's really good I I would have a tough time picking out Revere's original lines from this so there you have it a voice acted Morrowind what an insane thing to think about I mean honestly the first time that I had this mod installed I was on stream and was like literally losing my train of thought as I was going through dialogues because I was just so flabbergasted that these freaking people were reading the lines that I've seen it silent for literal decades but outside of the novelty for us long time players of actually hearing a voice behind the text whether that's for you or not and to be honest I I think I'm too rooted in my old ways I don't actually think I will be playing with this mod despite how incredible I think it is but what I really am excited for is the accessibility that comes with having voiceovers in this game once this is complete and once kazima has fully added in all of the voices and there is a progress tracker on their GitHub where you can see how far along they are in completing all of these speech lines in the game once that is complete Morrowind is now fully accessible to folks that have Vision impairments Bethesda just wasn't thinking about accessibility settings back in the early 2000s they were trying to stay alive as a company so for some folks this may be the first and only time they've ever been able to experience this incredible game so that's amazing anything that opens up Morrowind two more people is a great thing in my opinion builds the community expands the fandom and keeps this thing alive and churning and I love to see it and additionally like I mentioned a little bit earlier having this technology opened to people just freaking existing or having a freemium model that is realistic and that people can pay for well that empowers modders to create that Vision that they have in their head that makes them want to go and drive and just realize the world that they're trying to build where previously maybe they weren't able to do so again voice acting is pretty rare in many mods even for Skyrim or Oblivion especially ones with a larger scope so being able to pair this down and make it possible is something that is truly incredible and that I think has a bright future for mods to come I just hope that people include options to turn these settings off like I said I'm I'm still not ready for a voice tomorrow and yet just despite how amazing I think this mod is no it all isn't sunshine and rainbows of course there are some ethics questions that come into play here with the fact that we're sampling and doing an imitation of a voice actor's voice and using it online so that they weren't paid for and that they didn't sign off on saying and I am not an ethicist I am not a lawyer here talking about fair use so I'm gonna reserve my own personal judgment until I understand the technology a little bit better and kind of see how this thing shakes out but I am not going to sit here and pretend like this technology not necessarily this particular application is all sunshine and rainbows there will of course be bumps and bruises along along the way but if you're not sampling real voices if you're using voices that you've created or using samples from people who have consented to it having this kind of generation ability I can't wait to see what modders do with it next but there you have it folks the future is now a fully voiced Morrowind is almost upon us be sure to share your comments on how that is going over with you down below I would love to see what everybody thinks because I know there's a lot of varying opinions on the topic of not only this application of AI but the technology in general but if you liked what you saw here today be sure to stop by my second channel here on YouTube and drop a follow over on Twitch if you want to catch me live showcasing mods like this and with that being said ladies and gentlemen I will catch you on the next one

Channel: CoffeeNutGaming

Views: 41,099

Keywords: ai morrowind, ai voices, morrowind voices, morrowind ai mod, morrowind ai voice mod, kezymas voices of vvardenfell, morrowind 2023

Id: hCL3F2TbYIw

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023