You've hit the nail on the head. The 'uncanny valley' syndrome is very obvious with alot of the 'next gen' games and even animated films like the first Final Fantasy movie. Honestly, I think this kind of problem will eventually be dealt with in the same fashion that say, textures, are dealt with nowdays. At some point, people realized that hand drawing realistic textures was just not the optimal approach - hence, photo-reference. People got good at manipulating raw image of actual things. Games will probably end up doing the same thing, with the little nuances of emotion being captured from real actors and mapped onto 3d characters (similar to the way Kong was created). Right now, there are some procedural methods, like the way Valve did their lip-sync, but even that is far from perfect. Imagine if you could project even the tiniest facial twitch from your face, to a 3d model. This is the kind of technology we need to bridge the uncanny valley. In the end, though, it all comes down to actors or animators giving performances and breathing life into the characters - the way it always has.

Btw - I was moved by this performance and am excited to see what becomes of the project. Indigo Prophecy was a very interesting game.

interesting read here, seems i certainly forgot about the little guys...lol

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12833951/

battlefield 2142 anybody??

Doc B...