Review of A.I Mods
At the time of writing the two heavy hitter A.I mods out there are AI Follower Framework and Mantella. Here are the pros and cons for them.
Pros
- Out of box every vanilla Skyrim character can have dialogue in their vanilla voices, with minimal performance dip
- Easier installation process
- Helpful discord community
Cons
- Lead developer is not as active as AIFF (But they did update the mod just this month)
- Out of box voices are already impressive, but if you want more impressive it will cost you heavy performance
Summary: For me, the highlight of Mantella was the radiant dialogue. It has a feature where it grabs two random NPCs in the world causes them to start a conversation between each other. Based on their character backstory, their dialogue will go accordingly (And it's very very lore-friendly and sometimes quite entertaining). This makes the world feel lived and breathed in a way I've seen no other mod accomplish. Secondarily Mantella also allows you to engage with them in conversation, and they will respond accordingly (AIFF has this functionality too and to a greater extent, but Mantella does it out of the box).
A.I Follower Framework
AI Follower Framework (AI-FF) at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
Pros
- Far more functionality for followers
- Developers are more active (for example, at the time of writing this they are working on a faster more performance friendly voice matching TTS)
- Helpful discord community
Cons
- If you want performance friendly your followers will use a default voice (Mimic-3 has a selection of voices to choose from, but it won't be "their" voice).
- If you want followers to have their respective voices it will take VRAM (you will need a good computer)
- If you want performance and their respective voices it will cost you (Elevenlabs or a cheaper alternative; Runpod)
- Installation process more complicated than Mantella
- Configuration process is more complicated (every NPC must be individually configured)
Summary: The goal of this mod is not to give every NPC A.I awareness, but just a select few (could be anyone really but usually just your followers). But the functionality they have goes far beyond than Mantella. Where in Mantella AI NPCs will only speak in accordance to their biography and what you say to them, AIFF NPCs respond to what's happening in the Skyrim world-space. The followers will have playful banter with each other, comment on quests and enemies and all various sorts of situations. Think of a super followers with potentially infinite dialogue.
TLDR: Mantella for world-building, A.I Follower Framework for followers