There seems to be a bit of confusion about what the Uncanny Valley is. Del has the right definition, though I'd say not the right examples (except for Spirits Within anyway) since games like FFX, XII, and even stuff like Uncharted aren't really trying to be true to life representations of anything. Really detailed and based on generally realistic proportions and what not, but not really going for photo realistic, which is where the Uncanny Valley really applies.
I wouldn't really say it's affected the games this generation any more than any other generation though. At least not the good ones. With the right art style and animation that's actually good, you can have realistic looking models that are well animated and look good without really trying to achieve photo realism at all.
It's still an issue for some games though. L.A. Noire is probably one of the better examples. They spent something like five years and god knows how much money to be able to digitally scan actors facial features and performances and what did it get them? Facial animation that looks substantially worse than what Valve was doing in HL2 back in 2004 when they had procedural facial animations built into the Source Engine. Valve's system accurately captured a range of emotions, without trying to retain and use so much detail that slight variations from real expressions would be off putting. But L.A. Noire tried to capture every last facial detail and translate that to models that lacked the visual fidelity, nor the sort of animation technology required to replicate the actual movements in every detail. Both are realistic in their own way, but L.A. Noire tries to push so hard for photo realism that the end result is painful to look at.
That's not really the Uncanny Valley so much as Bethesda not being able to model or animate anything worth a damn. I don't think they've employed any animators who've actually seen another human before, let alone studied anatomy.Originally Posted by Pike
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