  L.A. Noire PS3  Xbox 360 
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Uncanny Valley that is!
Ok, let me frame this a bit. This is in reference to the game L.A. Noire for the PS3. Haven’t played it first hand yet, but I’ve been watching my buddy play it and it seems like a pretty ok game. However, I have one MAJOR gripe with it, the descent into the uncanny valley.
See, LA Noire had a lot of great reviews for being one of the only games to break through the valley. What they did was map facial expressions and movements, like much of the motion captured games before, but also integrated some weird facial overlays that helped to give it a more “realistic” feel… But… Instead of actually transcending the valley, it crashes like a meteor down to the fiery depths of uncanny hell.
So here’s where it went wrong: The game itself has something like PS1 graphics, I mean, they’re like something awful… ok, maybe PS2 GTA:SA era, but still, there’s no excuse for this on a PS3. It’s like, all the processing power of the machine was used up in the facial animations. Speaking of, this is what really REALLY gets me… the facial animations look good; too good. Juxtaposed with the stale graphics and what you have is the equivalent of a TV screen head on mannequin and calling it a person. I mean, this is some Tron (1982) junk going on here, but at least Tron was, at it’s worst, pure awesome… this… this… Is just freakin creepy! Just imagine if Mario had a real face in your 8bit NES game. Yeah, it’s kinda like that.
And that brings us right around to the beginning. I’ve tossed around this terminology, “the uncanny valley”, which I kind of expect most of you gamer types to already know its meaning, but just in case you’re unfamiliar, I’ll explain here. I won’t get into the full history here, but basically, it’s a theory by Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor, who’s study revealed that: As you move along the line from things that are 0% Human likeness (a toaster) to a full fledged Human being, an observer finds the figure to be increasingly psychologically acceptable. Such a stuffed animal, barbie doll, bipedal (walking) robot, cartoon, etc. However, this breaks around the 75% mark, and that’s when things take a sharp turn for the worse. See, at some point (speaking generally), that figure no longer looks “OK” or “healthy” in our minds, rather it becomes “creepy” or “strange” or even “terrifying”. So basically, the closer something looks to being Human, the creepier it is. It’s a strange reaction linked with psychology and you can see its effects most drastically when playing many older games that try to be “too realistic” and end up just creeping you out… or even movies (Final Fantsy) or, most notably, robots with human looking skin. So here you have it, the uncanny valley; resting place of all things creepy. Actually, I plan to write up an essay about how this applies to art, which is very fascinating (well, ok, to me anyways).
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Can’t say I’ve hit the valley, unless it is like you showed where the one excellent thing contrasts harshly with the rest, then the inconsistency bothers my OCD. The three examples that come to mind is the downloadable faces and attire from the original sims, which was fan made. Some of those were photos, which therefore move less and looked awkward in the game.
Another is the photo textures employed sometimes in second life, they don’t look like they would be natural when most of the textures were rendered and created on computers.
The last is first rank warlock horse in our own WoW. If you look closely you can see the veins; it looks like a photo shopped picture plastered on the model and drives me nuts.
If the whole thing looks realistic, it can’t look weird to me, I just praise the quality; inconsistency is the only thing that can bother me in this regard.
typically, it’s just that! it’ll be mostly correct with just one thing that’s wrong, which makes everything wrong.
actually, people tend to have different reactions to the valley… you might not feel the “creeps”, but you’ll at least feel like something really wrong. to me, the uncanny valley isn’t just a place for the creepies, but also a place for the “hmph, that don’t look right” feeling. not just the visual acknowledgement something is wrong, but the feeling that it is. just like a picture that’s obviously photoshopped… you just get that weird tingle in your gut that something’s not right with this picture.
ha, yeah, the texture thing is one big give away with the valley… though you can almost always find it when watching game people speak, particularly their mouths and teeth.
I can honestly say I’ve never noticed before. I mean I’ve noticed when games have good graphics or bad, and when they try to seem realistic, but its never gotten to the point where its creepy to play cause they look to real.
Thought having different parts of the game look inconstant bothers me. >.< Some games, when a new update comes out, the new stuff looks great and the old looks horrible. Games should look the same throughout and not like some chop job done by an amateur.
Like I said to Niv, I think the reaction isn’t always that of “creepy”, but the feeling of something not right.
that said, I agree totally with you with the whole update/DLC thing! I think we see a lot of issues with this because many times they outsource the production supplemental content and even if they don’t, the original developers have moved on to other projects. this is more of an issue with the quality control department, though. what’s worse, even quality between teams working on the SAME PROJECT can vary! like look at the textures in wowlands! you can see some items/textures/graphics contrast in quality with others from the same expansion. bad form guys! bad form!
Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2. The graphics update from the first game allowed for more expressive faces, but they clearly spent a little too much time on Miranda. The aliens are alien enough, and even the other humans don’t really set off any alarms, but by my third conversation with Miranda, I was getting nervous. That half of her expressions were aimed at the camera instead of my character didn’t help things at all.
sigh… acting 101, NEVER look at the camera! good find!
speaking of… one of the least amount of valley I’ve seen recently is the intro to Civ5. very well done! I think what they did better than most was use a lot of depth of field. that is, the blurred stuff you’re not focused at. cg is really good… too good. and I think the developers forget this and get carried away with details. detail isn’t bad, but if you don’t account for the imperfections of the filming media, then it looks fake, thus, crashes into the valley.
so cg people! don’t forget to take it down a notch when you make your projects! blur it, mess with lighting, add zoom/detail limitations! anything! >)