Legion said:
...expresses a hell of a lot more emotion than this:
GAAH! What the hell is that thing?
You know, the worst experience with a game trying to forge an emotional bond and failing recently was the original Fable. Which is an old game, but I don't buy brand new games, so screw you. But that experience was painful. It put me in a shitty mood and I was already in a shitty mood and hoping playing that game would cheer me up a little. Boy, was I wrong. Worst part was relatively early in the game when I had discovered that Fable had a fart button, a belch button and a flirt button. Knowing I could eventually shag NPCs I decided to flirt with all the chicks because I could. So as I was running to something I passed this chick and stopped to flirt with her but accidentally hit the laugh button, whereupon my character started laughing at fucking nothing, which was probably weird. But then the girl and several other nearby characters all turned toward me and also laughed at fucking nothing.
Brrrrrrrr.
It was like Uncanny Valley of the Damned or something. I have never had a more unnerving experience while playing a game. Ever. I'm pretty sure this was not the intent.
I guess the lesson here is that there's more to creating an emotional connection between the player and the in-game characters than just higher pixel or polygon counts or the ability to seduce male or female characters for no real reason. Frankly, I had a much stronger-- not that much stronger, mind-- to the splicers in Bioshock. They also resided in the uncanny valley, but they were supposed to because they were insane and mere ghosts of their former selves. They would spout random-seeming lines as if they didn't quite know where they were or what was going on. There's a sadness in that which trickled just beneath the surface. A trickle isn't much, but it's more than the parched deserts of Fable or whatever the hell that picture is of above.