Another reason why I’m less impressed with the next gen. I’ve noticed it the more I looked at the demos of PS3 games and experienced it first hand when I tried to play a demo of Virtua Fighter 5. I told my sister “As fun as Virtua Fighter is, something about those graphics looks really wrong.” And she said “You noticed it too?” A note to all video game developers. Enough with the plastic look! You can polish and polish and polish all you want and pride yourselves on making super realistic graphics, but there comes a point where it just looks wrong. As for me, I’m sticking with my Panzer Dragoon games and games like Okami where the developer realizes the finer side of beauty in graphics.
I know what you mean I’ve noticed they’ve tried to make it look so realistic that it just isn’t and theres something about them that just makes then un-realistic.
I like how VF5 looks. I do agree that some games have a problem with that though. Then again, that simply means they didn’t have good art direction. They’re artists, they should know what looks good and what doesn’t without the need for theories like in the article…
The Uncanny Valley phenomenon is a valid issue in gaming and CG in general. It’s why we’re more accepting of, say, something like Pixar, but despite being beautifully rendered, Final Fantasy Spirits Within just seems odd. Your mind is built to be able to interpret abstract images without problem, but when you get to a certain point (around 85% realism or some arbitrary number like that), your brain starts to freak out.
It’s actually one of the reasons why movies/games like Jacob’s Ladder, The Ring, Silent Hill, etc work as well as they do. When Samara walks, she’s actually walking in reverse (they filmed her walking backwards, then played it forward). The slightly odd movement of her joints, and the fact that her hair sways oddly makes your brain just sort of throw its hands up in the air and give up.
It’s also another reason why I personally enjoy more minimalistic art styles in games (Zelda: WW, Ico/Shadow of the Colossus, etc), as you can more easily show emotion through exaggerated expressions, or through subtle environmental (coloring, lighting, music) enhancements.
It’s also a huge problem I have with a lot of RPGs that try to have huge, over the top emotional moments, but fail to achieve them because of lack of proper facial/body animations. Devs that are shooting for high emotional indexes in their games really should be investing more energy into developing better facial animation engines.
Realism for it’s own sake will always be tricky. This is an illustration I’ve always used: it’s been pretty easy to make cars look very realistic in-game for a while now, but there’s a reason advertisements in performance auto-magazines have used illustrations since even long before CG rendering. Exaggerating reality, just a little, in this case exaggerating the clean form and color of a sports car, will make people drool more. Which is why games like Burnout (2) or Project Gotham Racing (at least the original) look ‘better’ to me than the photorealism obsessed Gran Tourismo series lately.
Mass Effect is an excellent example of balancing realism with an artistic sense of priority to achieve the real goal, a certain kind of ‘real’.
Sure, but that’s more of a method of calling attention to your ad as a differentiation tactic. Realism vs fantasy with cars doesn’t have the same effect as it does with human models (which is a much more innate, almost instinctual reaction). If you look at car mag covers, they’re always pics of real cars (with real girls) simply because that is more appealing to the general public.
(Brother was an editor at a car mag… we’ve actually had this discussion before when talking about the Uncanny Valley. Pretty funny that it’s come up again.)
I think the Namco girl (she has a name but I don’t remember it) pulls it off on that level though. She’s definitely on the realistic upslope from the uncanny valley, yet with an exaggerated simplicity of form and perfection of complexion.
Actually, I would argue that she’s at the top of the start of the downslope of the Uncanny Valley. The fact that she’s devoid of most detail shows that she is not striving for realism, and at least to me, she looks fairly robotic.
If you want an example, though, of something smack-dab in the middle of the Uncanny Valley, watch Polar Express.
Another reason why I’m less impressed with the next gen. I’ve noticed it the more I looked at the demos of PS3 games and experienced it first hand when I tried to play a demo of Virtua Fighter 5. I told my sister “As fun as Virtua Fighter is, something about those graphics looks really wrong.” And she said “You noticed it too?” A note to all video game developers. Enough with the plastic look! You can polish and polish and polish all you want and pride yourselves on making super realistic graphics, but there comes a point where it just looks wrong. As for me, I’m sticking with my Panzer Dragoon games and games like Okami where the developer realizes the finer side of beauty in graphics.[/quote]
Well it’s kind of ironic that you say that when many of the surfaces and monsters in Orta look too polished, shinny, and look almost plastic. I’m not saying that’s bad as the game looks amazing, but it’s something I even noticed when I first played the game.
Well I think it’s easier to notice in Orta during her close up shots than it is with the monsters. I felt the monsters really did look like they were made of skin and bones and flesh. But even then, Orta didn’t look like somebody waxed everything with Turtle Wax like, say, NBA 07. I think there’s a reason why the ending when it called for Orta to act emotional was done off screen.
That doesn’t show any humans though, so that shows no evidence that this game will or won’t fall into the uncanny valley. XD
As to Virtua Fighter 5, the only problem I have with it is that this “plastic” look is caused by an attempt at sweat effects. It’s not like they are aiming for photorealism either, otherwise Jacky’s hair would’ve been toned down even moreso. XD Although I do think that art direction wise the VF series was at it’s best around VF3, when it was fairly realistic but did still have some anime-ish exaggerations.
Y’know… they should do another Virtua Fighter Kids, no way could that fall into the Uncanny Valley. XD
