In January, Nat Clayton highlighted a neat tool for modders that was used to give a fan-made trailer entirely AI-synthesized voice acting. That tool is called xVASynth, and it’s the work of software developer Dan Ruta, who just updated it to version 2.0.
The video above demonstrates what’s new with the help of some familiar voices, recreated by AI models trained on voice data to recreate a specific character. Not perfectly, of course—they have the clipped, hurried tone that gives away synthesized speech, as well as occasional mispronunciations—but good enough for mods. You’ll hear characters like Cave Johnson from Portal 2, Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite, Butch from Fallout 3, Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village, and Widowmaker from Overwatch all extolling the improvements in xVASynth 2.0.
Those improvements include support for installable pronunciation dictionaries via a community project called xVADict, which adds the unique words games are full of. There’s also a 3D visualizer to make searching through hundred of AI models from dozens of games easier, clustering similar voices and letting you add filters to narrow them down. Audio quality has been improved, and an additional slider for energy control added alongside the existing sliders to modify the pitch and duration of individual lines.
Plenty of Skyrim mods already use xVASynth, from Phenderix Magic World to Positive Undressed Reactions, and it also supports games like Cyberpunk 2077, Civilization 6, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and The Witcher 3.