Ok, the one BIG UBER problem that Skyrim is going to have is the 'Black Audio' hack for convocations.

Personally, I do not like the idea of blank audio files as place holders. It is a lazy short cut.

I think we can do something better. I think we can do Voice acting for Skyrim.

Things we would need:

1. Voice actors. Self-explanatory.

2. Stand lines. This is something that could be done quite well. We come up with a list of common things we think we would need NPC's to say. Things like 'How can I help you?' or 'Thanks for doing business with me' ect, ect. The voice actors would then record them self doing it for others to use. It would also act as a sort of ad for people, so Moders can maybe find the right voice for what they want an NPC to sound like.

3. Rules. Simple ones just saying if you use it on a mod, then you need to credit them, and it you use it outside of Skyrim mods then you need to ask first or something.

Meh...Oblivion had a "Voice Actor Guild" and im sure its still around for Skyrim, thing is not everyone will be able to or will even WANT to use voice acting, silent voice files will always be used by those who prefer text to voice and there are TONS of mod makers who feel this way. Also size comes into play a lot, sure voice is fine for small to medium mods with only minor voice acting ( 20-30-40 lines) but for most large projects ( 100's to 1000's of lines) voice acting is just normally not an option here .

That is true. Tho, I think it is a good idea to at least try and do something. Its a pitty the CK dose not have some sort of voice editiong stuff in it, so you can make an NPC say what you want in a Microsoft Sam way... but it would be better than nothing.

Ya something for basic lines for multiple thing's would be helpfull for a lot of people im sure, i have been using the built in voice recording to make my own character voices and spoken lines in game,.

We need Ultrys Universal Silent Voice. (Was is Ultrys?)

I think it was Ely's ( sp) but the OP is talking about avoiding these type of workarounds.

Sure, if you want every NPC to sound like mentally challenged robot.

Personally, I think it's a good idea to have a voice library available. If I were a voice actor, I would just start creating my own samples and make them available. Redoing one of the vanilla voices and then adding stuff to it would be a really good way of going about it; that way, you could extend the dialogue of any NPC that uses that voice with all of the additional responses the VA generates just by swapping the files. That would make it possible to extend the dialogue for vanilla NPCs for any mod. It would be a lot of work, but what isn't?