Nowadays, our relationship with robots is more and more frequent, and their functionalities range from being able to perform surgical operations and autonomously pilot any vehicle to somersaulting. Despite everything, one of the greatest obsessions in the world of robotics is creating androids in our image and likeness.
In 1970 Masahiro Mori, a Japanese robotics expert, established that the more a robot resembles the ideal model of the human being, the closer we can feel towards it. However, there is a point where excessive resemblance to a human would cause instant rejection in the subject. This concept was called the uncanny valley.
The concept has been strongly linked to the world of 3D animation, and this ended up permeating the world of video games. In three-dimensional cinema, it was the animation giant Pixar who laid the first stone with his short Tin Toy. In it we see how a baby plays with his toys; nothing unusual, but it was the realism of their expressions that caused panic in the audience.
Years later, the ambitious adaptation of Final Fantasy came to the big screen to offer something real and human, but its excess of detail created unreal and sinister characters.
The haunting valley in video games
The most recognizable example is LA Noire, the Team Bondi and Rockstar game in which we play Cole Phelps, a law enforcement officer in Los Angeles from the 1940s. Interrogations are one of the fundamental parts of this title: Based on the suspect’s facial expressions, we must deduce if he is lying, if he is telling the truth or if he is hiding something. As lauded as this feature was in its day, it aged fast enough to be comical and end the game’s immersion.
The brain needs a small lack of realism in the expressions to be able to fill them in ourselves , and in the case of LA Noire, with which a scanning technology was used in the actors who played it, it happens that each gesture and expression creates reactions completely human. And, being a 3D modeling, unconsciously, a feeling of unease is created because we are not able to assume a 3D modeling as something real.
A year ago Bioware gave birth to Mass Effect: Andromeda, the most anticipated title in the galactic saga that, due to little planning and devilish production rhythms, came to us a very forgettable product . Robotic movements and facial animations falling into the abyss of the valley weighed down the game enough to take an indefinite break.
Finally, it was the cinema that created the techniques of motion capture and facial motion capture that represented the new generation of video games and set the standards for future productions with 3D material.
A good example
A suitable example of realism is that of Nathan Drake from the Uncharted saga. His skin is realistic, the dirt, his complexion… However, we see that it is not a real modeling, but rather a character from a video game. Naughty Dog manages to stay on the edge of the valley, generating enough realism to cause empathy and not rejection.
The new interactive adventures, such as the Quantic Dream games (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls) and Supermassive Games (Until Dawn) have polished the motion capture technique since in these titles all the weight falls on the acting work, achieving so its characters perfectly transmit each of their emotions and establishing the path to follow in order to escape from the unsettling valley.
