Speaking to pretty much anyone in Skyrim can feel very... unnatural. Sure, Balgruuf will chat your ear off if you let him, but only his mouth will really ever move. The rest of him just sort of stands there like a creepy mannequin. And it’s the same for pretty much every other Skyrim NPC--as soon as you start talking to them, they stop whatever they’re doing and just stare at you, which doesn’t exactly feel like a natural conversation.
What would help is if Skyrim’s NPCs talked a bit more with their hands. Pointing, waving, scratching their chins, rubbing their eyes, and doing any number of things that a normal human would do over the course of any conversation. Then you might be convinced that these NPCs are real people and not just marionettes designed to give out quests.
Ender the Dialogue Animation Remix mod from CHIMgarden. The mod “adds over 30 dialogue gesture animation variants according to NPCs personality, role in society and by armor type.” Not only does this mod work with vanilla Skyrim, but it’ll also automatically apply these new gestures to any new NPCs you add to the game.
Gestures are assigned based on a character’s “personality,” which is a hard thing to define in the vanilla experience but becomes far more apparent thanks to the Dialogue Animation Remix mod. Intellectuals will scratch their head or their chins when they’re thinking about something, while angry or gruff characters will frown and throw up their hands at you. Others will point to give directions or open their palms to show they have nothing to hide.
Dialogue Animation Remix mod is easy to install and works with any custom NPCs or follower mods that you might have already installed. You also don’t need to start a few Skyrim save file to get the Dialogue Animation Remix mod to work.
You can download the Dialogue Animation Remix by heading over to Nexus Mods here. It also works great with the Bandit Lines Expansion mod, which adds over 500 new voice lines to spice up your random bandit encounters. You can get that mod over on Nexus Mods too.