Question about dialogue access

[mtalken]

I'm very new here, so first off, hi!

 

I'm actually doing a project for a graduate class dealing with the linguistic features of certain characters in Skyrim and how things like inflection, paralinguistics (movements and motions of certain characters as they speak) and the various conversational paths that are available for each character create either more or less realistic characters.

 

My question is: If I get the modding software on my computer, is this stuff that's really easily accessible by looking at the information within the modding program about a particular character?

 

For instance, is it possible to get into the information about Brelyna the mage from Winterhold within the modding program that includes everything they say?

 

So far, I've just been using YouTube videos and my own savegames to go through different parts, so I can transcribe everything they say, but I'd like to include things like the random statements made by characters like Serana when you enter a city, and obviously going around to every type of location and every city multiple times to try to get every single thing she could possibly say is really boring, really time-consuming, and something where I'm likely to miss a few options and skew my results.

 

Thanks in advance for your responses! I didn't want to try to get the software and spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to use it only to find out it doesn't actually help me in the slightest in this endeavor.

[Hangman4358]

Cool!! If I may ask, what are you doing your graduate work in? Linguistics itself or psyc or some other cognitive science? Reason I ask is because I graduated almost a year ago from UCSB with a BA in Linguistics and German and love just linguistics

 

As to your questions.

 

It is possible to find what you want to find. It's it not super easy to access it though. There is a lot of searching involved, especially if you don't know what you are looking for exactly and just want to find everything. You can't just find an NPC and get direct access to everything they say. There are really 3 ways NPCs are given dialogue.

 

1) via quests of generic dialogue that is applied to them via their voice type and that every npc with that voice type can say if the conditions match.

2) via quests they themselves are part of.

3) via quests that are created solely for their individual lines which are not generic and not actual "quests" the player can "do"

 

I use the term quest here because that's technically how the game handles everything that is happening in the world. What you would need to do is find the NPC and then right click on them and hit "show use info", this will show you EVERY part of the game that links to this NPC. From their you would need to find quests and once you are in there you need to find the lines of that NPC. It will be tedious I can tell you. That's the bad part

 

Now, for the good part: Once you do find their lines, you can just do a copy and paste of the lines subtitles. The lines and subtitles don;t always match 100% because the subtitles have a limit of 149 characters. But you can also listen to the actual recorded line. This will even give you multiple different recordings if the same line was recorded for different actors or voiceTypes.

[greentea101]

You could use VFRT to easily see all the lines of dialogue for every voice type, but you wouldn't be able to filter them by NPC (except for the few NPCs that have unique voice types).