Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Current facial animations are VERY BAD (uncanny valley)

I haven't been playing this game for a very long time, so I decided to check how the game looks. To my unpleasant surprise, the visuals feel worse than it was before because of the "new" (I haven't seen them before) facial animations.

The facial expressions the characters are making are just jarring and falls into the "tired face" meme category (hello, ME:A). Characters expressions often don't fit the situations, and the expression itself is so exaggerated that the game hits the uncanny valley.
Note: Uncanny valley is the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it.

The examples that I remember (there are dozens of them):
1. In general, facial expressions can change from happy to sad or angry so fast and often that I sense that all game characters have a bipolar disorder.
2. Wyll recalling some probably scary events have his eyes popping and and mouth open like he just shit his pants... WTF??? he's just telling a story to Tav, why he's scared now? The only place where such expression is appropriate is the faces of the Flaming Fist when the dragon is diving on them, in ANY other situations it is just ridiculous during the dialogue.
3. When Gale starts to tell the story about him and Mystra just after a couple of words Tav shines with unchecked happiness like the kid, who got a candy... It's absolutely inadequate.Then Gale tells Tav to feed him magic artifacts and before you even can response Tav gets an expression of extreme anger like he's about to slash Gale's throat. The reaction feels like the one from the patient of a mental asylum.
4. Another extreme happiness comes from Mayrina dialogue when she tells Tav about her dead husband. What Tav is so happy about? The reaction feels like Tav is enjoying her misery.
5. Happy face during the tadpole checkups... what's so fun about your tadpole eating your brain?

When people irl express something on their faces it usually persistent even if they are provided with some info on the opposite spectrum of emotions, i.e. if you're happy it's not lasting just for one sentence in the dialogue but the whole day if nothing drastically changes. Also most adults hide their negative emotions and do not immediately show their displeasure, anger and so on to people with whom they acquainted. Extreme emotions must be very rare and only in extreme circumstances, not during the calm conversations in the camp.
At this point I'll be happy if the facial expressions are completely removed from the game, it's better than to have bad ones. Since the release was announced I'm not sure if, at this point, it is possible to check and fix all the dialogues before their own deadline.

Discuss...

The animations overall in this game are atrocious. Unless they are really hiding for 1.0, I cannot understand how they misused all the new personel and studios and ended up with this result.


It doesn't seem they are using any sort of motion capture. All the movement in this game are unnatural.

I'm much more bothered by the partially oversized body proportions. Dwarves / Gnomes / Halfling hands etc. are just as big as their heads or these huge wolves compared to humans. Even the big, massive bears (Bosk, Tuffet) are devalued by this.

The face animations make me instantly regret whatever face I have chosen at character creation since they are so awful. But then all faces become awful, so it doesn't really matter.

I am still unclear as to what is happening with the PC voice-over. Has this been abandoned? Presumably fear, happiness etc would be better communicated by the PC's voiced responses. I fear we are no longer going to get that for our custom PC, but presumably we will get voiced acted responses when we are playing one of the premade characters? Or will they be silent too and only speak if they are NPCs?

The actual animations are pretty good; they are just over the top. It's a common issue with motion capture because emotion in humans is very subtle, especially around the mouth area. If they reduced the range of motion on the mouth animations by about 60% they would get a much more believable result, but animators become fixated by the "sad must mean downturned mouth, happy must mean upturned mouth" trope, whereas in reality mouth movements are very small and implied much more by the nose, cheeks and eyes. Take an example of an animation you don't like and block out the mouth you will instantly feel like it's 3x better. A real world example of this is when poeple are trying hard to fake emotion they do the same thing - just watch vids of Amber Heard in court and you will instantly recognise it and get the exact same sense of disbelief and surreality...

They are using motion capture for some main story events. It can be noticed when you first meet Lae'zel. I am sure it is captured, and they showed the capturing process in videos. Other animations look pretty solid to me compared to other RPGs (not ACTION RPGs)where you can see NPC faces. The last one was probably Fallout New Vegas, and I should probably be silent about its animations.


If you are talking about a companion-voiced narrator - yes, this feature is probably abandoned right now. And I am sure there will be no voiced responses when playing as a premade character - making a voiced protagonist is a huge blow to immersion, and all studios who make RPGs know that.

I'm not very far in my patch 9 playthrough, so I haven't seen all the animations you described in their current state.

But in general, I quite like the animations (even though there are a few instances where my Tav's expression changes moods a bit quickly).

Personally, I think the animation of the eye area, in particular, is very impressive: even though I can only play with medium video settings, there is still so much detail in the animation: The eyelids close or open the right amount to convey the emotion, the eyes tilt, the muscles tense and relax, the eyebrows crease, and so on.

I noticed this especially in the dialogues with Astarion, I think his animation might be the most complete so far.
He has a very lively facial expression and gestures, and to me, his animation looks very convincing.

The state of NPC animations seems to vary a bit, but since this is early access, I think there will still be some polishing.

All in all, I think the animation is pretty good. And I like the use of dialogue cinematics very much.

Animations aside, i just don't like how my character always looks like she's about to cry when she shows any sort of emotion. I tried a human pally and a tiefling mage and it's the same.

The good news is, that "study" about the "universal human emotions" is actually fake.

The bad news is, it's infected all of pop culture.

The terrible, horrible news is, If you start mimicking Bg3 emotions... you may be stopped at US airports on suspicions of being a terrorist.

No, but seriously. It cracks me up how we have one man to thank for so much BS.

Very true!

I mostly play High Elves and use the same head model (I think it is 3), my character usually looks quite calm. It's odd that the facial expression for the different head models seems to differ so much, although they all have a neutral/calm expression in character creation.
I wouldn't like it either if my character would look like she's about to cry.

My elves and half elves can look rather easily amused. The tiefling somehow turned out the most normal. When he's not angry. Because holy fuck. That's some mighty teeth

The slightly amused smile my current Tav sometimes has fits the character I imagined really well, so it didn't stand out to me. It seems like I accidentally created a fitting Tav for that face 😄

The Tiefling fangs are very impressive, a Tiefling Tav could easily compete with Astarion. Or bite back 😄

I'm now imagening a new tiefling option during vamp reveal that's just:

[Bite first to establish dominance]

😂😂😂

They really are at each other's throats.