Essay Idea
The Uncanny Vally in Mass Effect 2 and Half Life 2. The human characters featured in these games are incredible graphically detailed and they are modeled after real people.
Alyx Vance (left) from Half Life 2 and modeled after Jamil Mullen (right)
Commander Shepard (left) from Mass Effect 2 and modeled after Mark Vanderloo (right)
Even though the details from the game characters are quite similar to their real world counterparts they fall into the Uncanny Vally as being robot like with human features. We humans know how every movement looks in facial expressions and can tell whats not right and this uncanny look in game characters disturbs us. Even though these characters are very detailed in trying to replicate human emotions and expression, we are disturbed by this as they are life like, but are still showing some robotic movements to them.
That is a really interesting subject, another great example is how they modelled the main character of Stars Wars Force Unleashed, on Actor Sam Witwer. You can also see that he does also the voice of the character in the game, it is just Calls George Lucas to direct a film with him as the main actor.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vanityfair.com/images/culture/2008/03/cusl01_lucas0803.jpg
http://here-without-you.com/sam/sam.gif
However it can become Uncanny when you often play the game and the character looks slightly lifeless or too unnatural/robot-like.