lacktheknack said:
I don't suffer effects of the Uncanny Valley. The "hilariously bad" faces in Oblivion didn't break the immersion for me at all.
I feel... so alone...
That's... not really an example of the Uncanny Valley[footnote]So named because of the sharp dip in the otherwise upwardly trending graph showing how we relate to progressively human-like robots, that will presumably climb back up again when the robot becomes indistinguishable from humanity - hence the "uncanny valley".[/footnote]. The point of the term is that, as you make inanimate objects progressively anthropomorphic, humans identify with them more and more.
This holds true for as long as the object/robot/virtual character in question remains obviously not human, but possesses human-like qualities. The uncanny valley kicks in when the similarities with humans are
almost perfect, but not quite - when the virtual being has more points of similarity with us than it has differences. At that point, instead of seeing the similarities, our minds latch on to the
dissimilarities, all the little flaws.
See, before you get into uncanny valley territory, all the little human-like details are layered onto something we know clearly isn't human - in the case of video game characters, it doesn't matter if it's supposed to be a human and indeed clearly resembles one, just so long as there's still a stylized element to the rendering: our brains will still register that what we're looking at isn't a flawed copy of humanity that we should find creepy, and so we continue to emphasize with them.
All that changes when you make that rendering
very realistic, but not realistic enough to fool us into believing we're looking at an actual human. What was familiar is now horrifying, like an alien being wearing your best friends skin and not-quite mimicking their personality - it will still
look human, but now there's something terribly
wrong about it that repulses us now.
Terribly rendered faces like the ones in Oblivion are nowhere close to being convincing enough reproductions of the human visage to induce feelings of repulsion thanks to the Uncanny Valley, we just hate them because they're terribly rendered and really ugly.
