"There is no uncanny valley any more," declares French developer

[Wrestlevania]

French developer Quantic Dream has told GamesIndustry.biz that it intends to secure some of the biggest names in Hollywood for its upcoming PlayStation 3 title, currently known as Heavy Rain.

With a new in-house motion capture studio, the Fahrenheit developer believes that it can successfully portray actor's emotions – not just physical movement – with actors now interested in the script and story behind the game rather than worrying about the technology.

"When we showed The Casting everyone agreed it was nice and it really showed that there was a potential for creating virtual actors, but we're still at this frontier where we don't totally suspend disbelief. We still have this uncanny valley to bridge," offered Guillaume de Fondaumière (co-founder).

"But today, I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time."

Fight fight fight!

[Roderick]

Failure!!

I still want to destroy Beowulf.

[toblix]

"But today, I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time."

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Nappi]

I don't believe it until I see it either. And even if the game doesn't scare the crap out of me anymore, it doesn't necessarily mean they have crossed the uncanny valley. They might have just limped back a bit to a place they consider safe.

[Nachimir]

Bollocks.

[n0wak]

Pics or it didn't happen.

Excuse the rough photoshop job

I don't believe it either. Besides, we've already had plenty of expressive characters. Link in Wind Waker comes to mind. You don't need to be 99.98% photo-realistic to be expressive. Pixar proves this.

[lobotomy42]

Ah, Quantic Dream! The studio that has never ever been pretentious about anything at all. Nope! No over-promises or ridiculous hype from these guys before. No, siree, certainly not.

[brkl]

I can't wait to see how completely stupid they can make their next plotline. It's going to be epic.

[Nappi]

I can't wait to see how completely stupid they can make their next plotline. It's going to be epic.

Hey, Fahrenheit won the best story award at Gamespot in 2005. Surely the plot was excellent.

[Wrestlevania]

(In all seriousness, I wonder if GameSpot ever really will be able to shake this perception of being bought now.)

Anyway, this is just another "well known" game designer courting media interest by talking shite. Braben, Molyneux, Dyack -- they all do this on a fairly regular basis. More frequently if the launch of their next game is imminent.

Personally, I never found the Heavy Rain trailer impressive with regards to the uncanny valley. It's still a talking clockwork mannequin.

[Marek]

:scary::scary::scary:

Scary face says hi.

[miffy495]

That's pretty much all Heavy Rain will ever be to me. If I hear the name, I picture that face. It's possible the game would be good enough to shake that, but it'd have to be really damn good.

[brkl]

Hey, Fahrenheit won the best story award at Gamespot in 2005. Surely the plot was excellent.

Holy shit, if I'd known that, I'd stopped even visiting Gamespot years ago.

[Wrestlevania]

That's pretty much all Heavy Rain will ever be to me. If I hear the name, I picture that face. It's possible the game would be good enough to shake that, but it'd have to be really damn good.

I didn't realise that was from Heavy Rain! Thought it was someone's mucking about with Alyx in Garry's Mod.

Edit: Further hilarity...

[brkl]

That's not uncanny at all.

[Nachimir]

In fairness, stills look much stranger than an animated model. Real faces work this way too; try photographing a speaker at a conference and you'll catch them pulling all kinds of weird expressions that are so fleeting you don't notice them while just watching. Very few people are naturally photogenic as a result, even if they're good looking.

Quantic did a good job on the body language with the Heavy Rain tech demo, even if they are over-hyping their stuff to the point that they'll inevitably under-deliver.

[Nappi]

Fucking hell! That's not even remotely funny Wrestlevania.

[DanJW]

Hey, Fahrenheit won the best story award at Gamespot in 2005. Surely the plot was excellent.

It was good. Up until the third act, when you die and then come back to a world of silliness.

Anyway, expressive characters not withstanding, hopefully they'll remember to include more gameply in this next game.

Oh, and N0wak, your image broke

[eljay]

The image is fine for me, are you sure you aren't misunderstanding what the image is Dan?

Parody of Post-its the sticky labels.... I could see how you might think "Post-pics" is an image hosting company

[DanJW]

Yes I did

[elmuerte]

The first half of the game would probably be ok, just like the previous quantic dream games. Only the first parts were ok(ish).

GET READY!

hmm.. I wonder... Hard Rain: "GET READY FOR EMOTION!!"

[Nappi]

"GET READY FOR EMOTION!!"

[brkl]

Actually, that expression works if she's about to grow fangs.

[n0wak]

[Marek]

Hahahaha. Brilliant.