It will take a long time to get this right - good (method) actors are better at it! So perhaps digital isn't better than analog actors. Method acting is in my opinion superior to any other form of acting as the actors are actually using the parts of their brains that would normally be used in the same 'real' situation.
Fascinating insights, Mark. I know it's all too tempting to adopt the knee-jerk response "FMV = bad" that so many of our fellow gamers will perhaps take to their graves, but I know exactly what you're talking about!
Again, I would point anyone truly interested in the nuances of this subject to read Prints and Visual Communication by William J. Ivins. It is almost eerie how similar the problems faced and overcome by print developers mirror those of today's game makers. For instance, there is a discussion of how the print houses became masters of certain aspects of representing reality, such as a shimmering surface that looked more like real water than some other print house. I equate this to certain problems in modern games, which may indeed have realistic looking water or flowing grass that gets a lot of publicity, but then you look at how awkwardly the characters move or how a certain line of dialog is repeated over and over and everyone just sort of accepts that as a limitation of the medium. If you look closely at the old prints of paintings, for instance, you will notice a certain abstraction for things like shading--perhaps a cross-hatching or some other technique that certainly wasn't in the original.
Until photography came along, hardly anyone could actually claim to have seen a famous painting, building, or the like. They were only seeing artistic representations, and often crude ones at that. I equate this to modern 3D graphics. No matter how many polygons or whatever you have, that's not the point. The point is that they are artistic representations. Indeed, a whole team of artists is standing between you and the object, and you are only seeing their combined efforts at a representation. Try to imagine what it would be like if you had never seen a sky filled with clouds, but only drawings of it. That's basically what we're dealing with in modern 3D animation. Until we can develop some type of technology to actually show us the clouds (with no artistic intervention), then we've made the next great leap in visual communication--not just in games but in human communication itself. For whereas movies can depict precisely that, they are static and discrete, whereas a game is dynamic.
Where is the future? I see it in something like Microsoft's photosynth. I quote a bit here from the description:
You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With nothing more than a digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.
Again, I know most of us have the knee-jerk response to stuff like this, but I see great potential here for what I'm talking about. Just imagine, though, if instead of talking about photos we were talking about videos here. It's almost hard to grasp what this would be like, even, but a "videosynth" might be the way to go.
However, one factor missing from the discussion is cartoon animation. I recently went to see Up, one of Pixar's many computer-generated cartoons. There were plenty of people crying in the audience during that production. I personally had a strong reaction to watching The Secret of Nihm back when I was a kid.
Paradoxically, I think one reason these sorts of things work is that they are so abstract. They're not trying to show you something that looks indistinguishable from everyday life. Somehow, cartoon mice or a CGI boyscout can make us feel things that we just wouldn't feel if they were too distracted by how the artists had striven so hard to make them look realistic. I think that's because when someone tries that, you end up distracted because you are constantly searching for the cracks; the tell-tale indications of its fakeness. You are invited to look too hard. With a cartoon, though, (whether drawn or CGI), you aren't doing that because you know it's not trying to be realistic. A talking ogre or donkey can be "human" because we can let our imaginations run unhindered by that "hey--wait a minute" type response you get from something like the Final Fantasy movie you describe (and which I haven't seen).
Probably the best examples I can think of to illustrate this is Gollum in the Rings movies. As soon as that CGI character was on screen, I "dropped" out of the film and went into "hey--wait a minute" mode. Even though they had tried their best to make him look realistic, I could tell it was CGI and was unable to sustain my disbelief. On the other hand, a full CGI movie like Shrek never gave me that problem.
So, one possible solution might be to abandon realism and embrace cartoons--in my opinion, not enough games have taken this route. The Dig is one of my favorites that did--and that game definitely has cut scenes that can potentially make you cry. Of course, there is still much work to be done making cartoon-type animation flow fluidly and naturally in games, but it might be a viable approach. I definitely see progress being made in such projects like Facade, which do precisely what I'm talking about here--sacrifice realism, embrace a certain level of abstraction, and do a much better job depicting human feeling and emotion.
Fascinating but what about cartoons
Fascinating insights, Mark. I know it's all too tempting to adopt the knee-jerk response "FMV = bad" that so many of our fellow gamers will perhaps take to their graves, but I know exactly what you're talking about!
Again, I would point anyone truly interested in the nuances of this subject to read Prints and Visual Communication by William J. Ivins. It is almost eerie how similar the problems faced and overcome by print developers mirror those of today's game makers. For instance, there is a discussion of how the print houses became masters of certain aspects of representing reality, such as a shimmering surface that looked more like real water than some other print house. I equate this to certain problems in modern games, which may indeed have realistic looking water or flowing grass that gets a lot of publicity, but then you look at how awkwardly the characters move or how a certain line of dialog is repeated over and over and everyone just sort of accepts that as a limitation of the medium. If you look closely at the old prints of paintings, for instance, you will notice a certain abstraction for things like shading--perhaps a cross-hatching or some other technique that certainly wasn't in the original.
Until photography came along, hardly anyone could actually claim to have seen a famous painting, building, or the like. They were only seeing artistic representations, and often crude ones at that. I equate this to modern 3D graphics. No matter how many polygons or whatever you have, that's not the point. The point is that they are artistic representations. Indeed, a whole team of artists is standing between you and the object, and you are only seeing their combined efforts at a representation. Try to imagine what it would be like if you had never seen a sky filled with clouds, but only drawings of it. That's basically what we're dealing with in modern 3D animation. Until we can develop some type of technology to actually show us the clouds (with no artistic intervention), then we've made the next great leap in visual communication--not just in games but in human communication itself. For whereas movies can depict precisely that, they are static and discrete, whereas a game is dynamic.
Where is the future? I see it in something like Microsoft's photosynth. I quote a bit here from the description:
Again, I know most of us have the knee-jerk response to stuff like this, but I see great potential here for what I'm talking about. Just imagine, though, if instead of talking about photos we were talking about videos here. It's almost hard to grasp what this would be like, even, but a "videosynth" might be the way to go.
However, one factor missing from the discussion is cartoon animation. I recently went to see Up, one of Pixar's many computer-generated cartoons. There were plenty of people crying in the audience during that production. I personally had a strong reaction to watching The Secret of Nihm back when I was a kid.
Paradoxically, I think one reason these sorts of things work is that they are so abstract. They're not trying to show you something that looks indistinguishable from everyday life. Somehow, cartoon mice or a CGI boyscout can make us feel things that we just wouldn't feel if they were too distracted by how the artists had striven so hard to make them look realistic. I think that's because when someone tries that, you end up distracted because you are constantly searching for the cracks; the tell-tale indications of its fakeness. You are invited to look too hard. With a cartoon, though, (whether drawn or CGI), you aren't doing that because you know it's not trying to be realistic. A talking ogre or donkey can be "human" because we can let our imaginations run unhindered by that "hey--wait a minute" type response you get from something like the Final Fantasy movie you describe (and which I haven't seen).
Probably the best examples I can think of to illustrate this is Gollum in the Rings movies. As soon as that CGI character was on screen, I "dropped" out of the film and went into "hey--wait a minute" mode. Even though they had tried their best to make him look realistic, I could tell it was CGI and was unable to sustain my disbelief. On the other hand, a full CGI movie like Shrek never gave me that problem.
So, one possible solution might be to abandon realism and embrace cartoons--in my opinion, not enough games have taken this route. The Dig is one of my favorites that did--and that game definitely has cut scenes that can potentially make you cry. Of course, there is still much work to be done making cartoon-type animation flow fluidly and naturally in games, but it might be a viable approach. I definitely see progress being made in such projects like Facade, which do precisely what I'm talking about here--sacrifice realism, embrace a certain level of abstraction, and do a much better job depicting human feeling and emotion.