Random rambles, to sorta fit the thread. I think I will call this idea 'the Uncanny Ditches' hehe
So I didn't buy anything yet for the Steam sale, I keep going back poking around, window shopping, and then bailing on it at the last second lol. Last night again, I was mulling over whether to spring for another game on the steam summer sale, but then while looking around, sorta reaffirmed for myself a weird impression or a bit of taste that I seem to have developed lately. It concerns how characters and portraits are visually stylized in games. In general I find it somewhat off putting now when the Character/Avatar is too recognizable as a famous screen actor in a main role. When the facsimile there starts approaching a 1:1, such that it just looks like something filmed for a motion picture or TV I mean. This is different than when an actor has their performance mediated by animators or puppeteers where it's like a joint performance of some sort. I mean more the idea of just filming games as if they were live action movies, as opposed to fantasy cartoons or whatever abstractions there that I'm more used to. I guess I would lead with my exceptions, since those are probably more useful in determining why it works sometimes for me, but not others. There are some types of games where the lines are already blurred, either because the game is based on some very popular film franchise, say a James Bond or Star Wars. Or maybe it's a sports game, where it makes complete sense for the Athlete to look like whoever, or that Han Solo look like a young Harrison Ford. Similarly if the game already has a very stylized and familiar setting, say futuristic/space-y or medieval, ancient, WW2 etc anything that could either be like Sci Fi channel or maybe a Period Piece on Masterpiece Theater.
Obvious examples might be like Keanu in Cyberpunk, or Henry in KCD, where it just sorta carries. But then I was also thinking, once established, once the visualization has that really clear association in-place, would that limit how willing I am to accept whatever is going on when the performer takes on a different role? So for example imagining that Henry and Johnny switched games, would I still buy in to the whole neuromancery matrix angle in Cyberpunk without the Keanu connections to help buttress it and support it with the rest his filmography? Or like what if Keanu was the dude in Bohemia, if it would instead just feel like Bill and Teds? Probably more to the point, if Henry was the hologram smoking cigarettes in 2077, would I be able to separate the Character from the Performer in the same way that I typically do this with movies? I mean I honestly think it could work either way, in those particular cases, so somehow both those performers seem to pass all my weird imaginary tests here. But then when I was looking at Death Stranding or the part 2 trailers, and it's just impossible for me to see beyond all the very recognizable faces, where I just see them as sorta like TV celebrity faces. I don't know why, because in this case it's actually the actors, but it just reminds me of like every BG2 portrait where if I can recognize the face as somebody already famous, I wish they'd have chosen a different reference model so the face would be an unknown. This used to be a practical limitation, like we simply couldn't achieve that level of verisimilitude back in the day, but now it's more of a stylistic choice.
To get a complete performance it seems like it would make sense to just rotoscope and go full bore there, but for some reason I have this real knee jerk reaction against that. I think it's for the same reason I never liked Cartoon Live-Action Hybrid films when I was younger. The singular exception being Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but for just about everything else, live action would annoy me, as if intruding on the Cartoon. Prime example for me would be Pete's Dragon, which while a dragon flick and obviously gets a some bonus points for that, just never my go too.
Somehow I really still prefer it when the actor has the modern digital equivalent of hella prosthetic makeup, or a muppet rendition or just about anything to give it a layer in between. Or I don't know, but like say the Witcher part V, if it was just recast to be staring Henry Cavill as Henry Cavill, since he had such a command performance on the Netflix shows and they want people to get the expected popular thing, to me that just would feel sorta weird. Or again, maybe more to my point, like what if instead of getting ISB Supervisor Dedra Meero to play Yennefer in the Wild Hunt, they had just cast Anya Chalotra because she already had the look from the show? Then we wouldn't have gotten Denise Gough on that, which would have been a shame. Obviously the release order there was different, but it's sorta this back and forth now where flicks become games and games become flicks. So it just makes me wonder, how this is going to shape up in the future? The walls separating these different types of media are all coming down at once now. Already it's probably easier than ever before to just sorta AI some movie magic into game cutscenes and such, creating something that is functionally more like filming a live action than animating a performance for a game. By comparison animation is always going to be more clunky, and less expressive than a human being just performing whatever role in-scene. But then we also lose the stylized visual language coming over from cartoons when that happens. I just think it's all sorta fraught and don't really know what to do with my sense of taste on this anymore. For the longest time I thought the goal in an RPG would be HEX codes for faces, but I think a lot of that just results in people recreating familiar faces that sorta fit the movie mold. Anyhow just a couple thoughts there, not sure where they're headed. I didn't buy anything, but was listening to the Nier soundrack lol
Tainted Grail looks cool though! I think I'm leaning that direction, but indecisive as ever
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