I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject lately. I’ve got mixed feelings and I feel like sharing. To make it a little simpler, I’m going to discuss two things:

• Is it cost effective?
• Would I act/feel differently towards a more life-like character?

The cost

Would creating life-like characters be worth the effort and money invested? The closer we get to photo-realistic visuals the more problems we encounter. The most evident being the character models themselves. Not only does this NPC need to look real, it needs to move in a believable fashion. Even with the highest quality motion capture in today’s games, I feel like we are still a ways off. If I see one hitch in a characters step, unless it is supposed to be there, it isn’t good enough.

Beyond the animation, do the characters look believable? Again, I feel like we aren’t quite there in terms of the technology available. The industry can create realistic looking characters, but you can always spot a flaw in them. It wouldn’t take much, a texture issue or pixilated shadow and you are pulled out of the experience.

Are we able to provide quality voice acting? I think we might actually have this figured out. I’ve played through Mass Effect 2, the voice acting is pretty convincing. It isn’t perfect by any means, but coupled with incredible visuals and the movement of a life-like NPC I think it would pass muster.

Would I act/feel different?

Thankfully, muster isn’t all I require. Everything needs to be perfect, otherwise what’s the point? If, however, it is decided that crossing that valley is feasible, will I care about the character. You can have all the great visuals with amazing voice acting, but am I going to feel different towards a human looking NPC. That depends on a few things.

Will the character act human? Will it convey emotion in such a way that I am convinced my decision impacts them more so than a stylized character? A better way to think about it would be to put a stylized and a life-like NPC in the same situation. If I’m pointing a gun at a stylized characters face, would I be less inclined to pull the trigger than if it were a human looking character?

My brain says no, pull the trigger. It’s a video game, 1’s and 0’s can’t feel pain. However, my gut says if the life-like character looked up at me with a tear streaming down its face, sad eyes and saying “Please don’t do this, I have a family at home” I would think twice about doing it. Ultimately I would still do it. Sure, if the character impacted me with a great performance and sold me on the emotion, I might feel a little remorse. Soon after, I would remember it’s a game and would move on.

If we reach this point, how will developers handle achievements? If they are anything like the achievements we have in today’s RPG’s, players are rewarded for being good and bad. I think it would be interesting to see how many developers would implement the “Achieve 100% evil” award. If they were to put that in the game, how many gamers would fail to attain it because they couldn’t kill an NPC that looked and acted so much like them? Would the developer accept just a bad deed, instead of murder? Would they put you in that situation to begin with?

Personally, once we reach that level of fidelity I think it would be a short amount of time before we were used to it. I’m sure people over the years as characters became more life-like wondered how they would handle the decision. Sure this character looks like a cartoon, but it has a human like personality. Is that enough to save its life? If in Fable II you were asked to shoot your dog, could you do it? I certainly couldn’t, I love dogs.