Often times people will hold the mod to a different standard than vanilla Skyrim. One of earliest complaints was the use of the word ain’t. The user(artist rendition above) never even played the mod, but swore it off as the devil based on a screenshot which had the term in the subtitle. His argument was that ain’t and ain’t no were slang phrases, and that he would sacrifice his first born child before I polluted his pure, fantasy playground with my jive-talking cyberpunk NPCs. It was then pointed out that the words are centuries old and are commonly used by vanilla NPCs, and much hilarity ensued.
Of course, there are complaints such as these that are completely baseless, and those that are derived from changes made in Skyrim. One common misconception is Khajiit only speaking in the third person, when vanilla Khajiit, immigrants directly from the motherland of Elsweyr, will never use their first name.
In fact, I too was guilty of this belief. Which is why the early Khajiits all spoke in the third person. It was Dar’Rakki thinks this and Dar’Rakki wants that. Then I overheard a few caravan conversations and realized this third person orgy simply wasn’t happening. Here are some examples for your persual:
Now, it’s entirely possible this decision was made in order to allow various NPCs to use the same voice. Still, it’s a decision that alters the lore nonetheless. So, when trying to reconcile which NPCs should use the first person as opposed to the third, I decided that some Khajiit were likely Imperialized as a result of growing up outside of Elsweyr. With NPCs like Qa’Dojo, I chose to use first person – as opposed to someone like Dar’Rakki or Gnives, who migrated from warmer sands.
Similarly, the word “N’wah” is pronounced entirely different in Skyrim than it is in Morrowind. This mod being a Skyrim mod, I believe I opted for consistency. So please, send your EN-WAH complaints to Bethesda. Or be like me and shrug it off.
This isn’t to say there aren’t mistakes. The irony is, fewer people notice the actual parts where I screwed up. NeoNudel I believe pointed out that I’ve been calling the White-Gold Concordat the White-Gold Concordant. I’ve also been referring to Thalmor Justiciars(Jus-ti-see-ars) as Thalmor Justicars, and the NPCs reflect that mistake. I blame Mass Effect, of course, because I certainly can’t be held accountable for my own foolishness. Interestingly enough, there are vanilla Nords who also dabble as Commander Shepard in their spare time. So that makes me feel a little better.
Shiiieeet, did you hear that? This here is a vanilla NPC and he said Justicar. Let’s all blame this guy.
Honestly these things add to the reality of the world. In the real world people pronounce things wrong all the time because there’s no one copy editing their conversations.
My theory on Khajiits is that they use the third person for people they are unfamiliar with and the first person for closer friends and family. It’s a shame there are no Khajiit marriage options in the game to lend some additional credance to this theory. I wonder if there’s some potential there for a quest where you meet a Khajiit, aid them in some way, and afterwards have an opportunity to invite them to follow you which leads to all future dialogue being in the first person?
Well, the caravan traders all speak in the first person and they barely know you. Again, it’s likely a result of Bethesda wanting to use the same dialogue with different Khajiit – which is fine, it just changes the dynamic so that first person usage is now the common practice. Another way to write around that is to say “Khajiit caravan traders were all trained in Imperial style English/Cyrodillic to help facilitate trade,” which is a pretty weak explanation considering most of the traders don’t deal with customers. It’s easier to just say some use first, some use third. Generally, I make those decisions based on the character type.
Marriage would be a good time to explore this debate. It’s just another thing I have to get around to making. Given the difficulty finding voice acting for females(see post below this one), it will likely be a male.
Kris, I may have told you this already, but your attention to detail in your scripts makes look forward voicing for you. Never once have I felt the need to “redo” any of the lines that you’ve given me. Keep doing what you do. You’re doing it awesomely.
thank you sir for giving life to these dolls that we are busy playing with.
I simply love this mod. And I would love to send in a voice recording to you sometime. Just need to find something to read for you. Being a small piece of this amazing project would be the greatest thing I have done with my life thus far. Thank you, a million times thank you, for making this mod. And a million more thanks to the volunteer voice actors!!!!!
Yeah, I’ve definitely been slowing down. You can read whatever you like, just give examples of range, beast voices argonian/khajiit/orc especially i’m lacking right now.