Quote Originally Posted by Mirage View Post
I think a common problem that is a partial reason of the occurence of an uncanny valley is that as graphical quality increases, facial expressions (and other subtle animations) and lip syncing doesn't live up to what we expect from something that looks as human as what we're looking at.
I don't think it's something that's just limited to facial animation and lip synching though and includes all animation. I mean, I really don't think characters in Mass Effect look so real I'll ever be creeped out by them (except whatever the hell that character is based on Jessica Chobot. That trout is unsettling), but from what I remember of playing through the original ME, the animations were pretty bad. The characters were stiff and didn't move naturally at all and it was pretty jarring when everything else looked good for the time. Hell, when I played it it was a pretty great looking game if you looked at it while nothing moved.

But then you look at a game like any of the Uncharted titles and not only are they pushing as many (if not more) polygons per character and focusing far more on capturing expressive facial animation, they focus far more on including smoother and more natural animations in general. There are some that don't look quite right, but the characters, overall, move in a much more believable way. And some of that may even be animating the most subtle, never going to notice it in a million years sort of things like smooth transitions from one animation to the next, but when those subtle elements aren't there it's pretty damn jarring because we know how the human body moves. We see them do it every day. I've actually always admired Naughty Dog for their focus on animation because pretty much everything they've ever made looks incredible as a result.