Last Friday, a new Skyrim mod called Say My Name appeared on Nexus Mods, created by Dan Ruta. Its purpose is as simple as you would guess from the name - it seeks to replace the Dragonborn moniker in dialogues with any name of your choosing.

　　The Say My Name Skyrim mod works thanks to xVASynth v2, a free AI-based app also created by Dan Ruta that creates new voice lines using neural speech synthesis. Here's what you need to do to make it work.

　　Step 1. Download and install xVASynth. You will need the following voices installed, as these are the ones with "Dragonborn" lines:

　　sk_femaledarkelf

　　sk_femaleeventoned

　　sk_femalenord

　　sk_femalesultry

　　sk_femaleyoungeager

　　sk_femalecondescending

　　sk_frea

　　sk_femaleorc

　　sk_malebrute

　　sk_maleorc

　　sk_maleyoungeager

　　sk_malenord

　　sk_maleargonian

　　sk_maledarkelfcynical

　　sk_maleeventoned

　　sk_malekhajiit

　　sk_maledarkelf

　　sk_maledrunk

　　sk_maleeventonedaccented

　　sk_malecommander

　　sk_maleguard

　　sk_delphine

　　sk_maleoldgrumpy

　　sk_galmar

　　sk_ulfric

　　sk_kodlakwhitemane

　　sk_arngeir

　　sk_esbern

　　sk_tulius

　　Step 2. (Optional) If you want to distribute files to others, install the .lip/.fuz plugin for xVASynth, which will also generate the .lip and .fuz files for you. Make sure the .lip format is set to Skyrim, in the app settings, once you enable it

　　Step 3. Download the batch file from this page, and open it in a text editor such as Sublime Text, or Notepad (not Excel). Do a Find+Replace of "___" with whatever name you want the NPCs to speak out.

　　Step 4. (Optional) If your name has strange or unusual pronunciation, you can tell xVASynth exactly how you want it to pronounce it in the generated lines, by adding the pronunciation in the ARPAbet menu. I'd recommend you do this anyway, just to make sure it's always pronounced the same (correct) way. REMEMBER: You need v2.0 models for this, so make sure you've got the latest voices. Note, you need v2.1.1+ of xVASynth to use ARPAbet for names with _ underscores.

　　Step 5. With Hz set to 44100 in the xVASynth audio settings, drag+drop the batch file into the batch menu in xVASynth, and start.

　　Step 6. Once the files have finished generating (located in <xVASynth.exe>/resources/app/batch/say_my_name), copy the Data folder into your game folder (or install via Vortex)

　　There are some limitations to this Skyrim mod, such as subtitles remaining untouched and voice lines only covering the vanilla game. Still, you can check it out in the example footage below where NPCs seamlessly pronounce the name of Todd Howard himself.