The uncanny valley is real

[Drake Ravenwolf]

^

[Moga CMDR]

Sometimes. Sometimes it's up there with the best, if not the best realtime cinematics I've seen in a game.

The further they push the envelope, the more picky we become. So I think it's a thing that won't completely go away. I also think some characters, their faces, personalities, animations and what not look and work with the technology better than others.

But I wouldn't make a blanket statement that this game is uncanny. There are moments.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Ya, it's not terrible, but the fortune teller's eyes don't point in exactly the same direction and Emma's mouth... esh
Also characters heads when you are following them and they are trying to look at you while walking away from you...

[Hoey]

in my country we call you "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥". Such a small thing and you seem to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it.

[TheManInTheAlley]

Originally posted by Moga CMDR:

Sometimes. Sometimes it's up there with the best, if not the best realtime cinematics I've seen in a game.

The further they push the envelope, the more picky we become. So I think it's a thing that won't completely go away. I also think some characters, their faces, personalities, animations and what not look and work with the technology better than others.

But I wouldn't make a blanket statement that this game is uncanny. There are moments.

Perfectly put.

People have short memories, and many seem to forget Peter Stormare's facial expressions in Until Dawn. That was some uncanny valley. In fact, it pretty much happened any time a character would be scared, or would grimace. But even then it was celebrated because of how great it looked in general. This is nowhere near as rough.

I'll give it to the naysayers, though, my first playthrough I was asking myself why they hired Grace and the actor who portrayed Nick when they both had such as bad case of lazy eye.

[Moga CMDR]

Nick was one of the performances that never worked for me. I don't think I can put a firm finger on it just yet. But it may be a combination of things that didnt work as well. That said, still good compared to most of what I watch.

To me, Grace having lazy eye is part of the character. And I want to say she gets worse as the game progresses, as if they introduce her with a mild lazy eye, and make it more extreme as the game progresses.

of course, I may be crazy. But I still think her character had that intentionally, she's supposed to be offputting and odd.

Also, keep in mind that the eyes are easily controlled by animators! I saw some other post that said it was bad mocap. Sorry, the eyesballs are not mocap. (and even mocap can be manipulated). So we can safely say that Grace's eye's being off kilter was part of the story-telling.

Lastly, mimicing lazy eyes in art is always hard. Because people often see it as a mistake. I still have a piece of art I made in the mid-90s of a subject with a lazy eye. It was a perfect match to my source picture. Exactly. My art teacher said it was off, I showed her the source, she agreed I copied it correctly. She then said I shouldn't have because it's confusing.

Oh wells.

[Fear2288]

The eyes bother me a lot.

It’s not as noticeable in this game sometimes but in many of their games the characters have this odd habit of not looking at the person they’re speaking to.

Their heads will move, their bodies and arms/hands will move to convey expression…but their eyes will just sit in a motionless looking-straight-ahead position.

If you want a good example of what I mean look at most scenes in House of Ashes with Rachel.

She almost never looks at who she’s talking to, nor does she ever seem to squint or blink.

Speaking of facial mocap - remember when the developers of LA Noire spent a majority of their budget on their new ground-breaking facial mocap tech that was going to revolutionize the way video games handle that…oops.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

That section where you play as Dylan following Ryan to the radio shack - Ryan always tries to look at Dylan even while walking away from him. His neck just looks so weird

[Jccali1214]

For me, it's close ups of Emma that show off the valley the most.

[Moga CMDR]

Originally posted by Jccali1214:

For me, it's close ups of Emma that show off the valley the most.

Emma has a big mouth and very animated lips. I had to look at her eyes and not her mouth when she had closeups.

When you compare her mouth animations versus others, there is a huge difference.

[HappySpaceInvader]

The problem is since Until Dawn was release 7 years ago, we’ve seen far better, including The Dark Pictures Anthology from the same developer. Now they release this game at full triple-A price, and it just looks horrible compared to contemporaries, or even some last gen games (such as The Last of Us 2 which, whatever else you may think of it, had some astonishingly convincing facial animation).

Regarding Emma’s mouth… I wonder if they couldn’t use all of her mo-capped performance and had to re-record some lines and manually animate the mouth? There are one or two moments where it looks vaguely ok.

There’s also a scene with two characters swimming in a lake, but the water looks like black paint, especially when they’re splashing it around… they should have just cut that entire scene entirely.

And what’s with the frequent fades to black that hang there just that bit too long? Is it the game trying to work out which scene to load, given your choices? Again, this wasn’t noticeable in any of the previous games from the same developer.

I think if this game had been released at $40, there wouldn’t have been so much of an outcry.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Emma's mouth is just too big, its like putting anime eyes on a real person - suddenly you realize how disproportionate that is