Pretty sure this won't age well - or that it's already aged out. There's only so much animators can do. In the film industry algorithms often augment an animator's work. Often they do the bulk of the work, and animators will fine-tune to get the exact effect envisioned.
Also, artistic animations can look great, but they can also be very inconsistent. Even more so when you need multiple people to work on thousands of lines of dialogue. It also requires an enormous budget - not all studios will have Gollum-like funding for every single NPC.
That said, I agree eye movement is a great way to convey feeling, and Horizon Zero Dawn did it well (and its DLC even better). Yakuza 0 is another example of doing a good job. The exagerated animation style also shows in the characters' eye movements. A great sample is this sequence that, very conveniently, shows a blind character that lacks eye expression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfVqfelfYHo
Young Aloy was worse than adult Aloy [1] but its like that for adult Aloy too, and most other games, although I found HZD worse than most in that respect. I haven't played Forbidden West yet, so I'm curious to see how much they've improved there.
The next step change will have to be some form of advanced kinematic rigging that creates advanced motion granularity akin to the graphical fidelity of nanite graphical tech.
UE5 is a step in that direction, but there is still lots of work to be had.
What will really be a game changer is AI that can generate the bulk structure having been trained on our best of the best hand built models and we can iterate on the emotional details.
I’m working on the “bulk structure” part, training models to generate random game worlds that roughly adhere to the rules, look and feel like everyone favorites right now (while avoiding copyright issues).
After that my goal is empowering consumers directly to nudge the styles in their preferred direction.
I’m mostly motivated by the MBA-ifying of everything. My goal now is to just have AI produce new content for me, even if such a thing puts game developers out of a job. I’m starting to experiment with cartoons as well. Optimizing for myself like we do.
I still want to comment because your comment doesn't do that demo justice.
It's the first time I expierienced that awkward feeling looking into reality while watching the video of that city.
We are Eye opening close to cross over uncanny valley after reaching it that soon.
There is zero chest wall movement. If you have a friend who works in medicine — especially emergency med or intensive care - send them this link and ask them how natural this looks. Bet most of them will immediately notice the same issue.