Now, I have confession to make. I don't actually like the mocap'd models of BG3 for the most part.
(…)
But there is a lot to be said for these models capturing people's expressions. It allows for a level of emotional reaction to what a character is saying that is much more than what you get out of simply reading a few lines of text on a screen. Helped by the fact that the VAs are generally fantastic.
Yes, I have been thinking about that. I thought even low detail Deadfire’s portraits helped a lot in giving a face to each NPCs. I am also thinking to Persona5Royal and how they had different conversation portraits for key NPC for different emotional states.
I do wonder how the game would work, if instead full blown cutscenes they would created mocapped animated portraits. Something like Blizzard use to do. I did find cutscenes in BG3 to be distractingly janky, but I do agree there is benefit to seeing expressions of NPCs (Tav, not so much). The downside I think, would be that even that approach would be expensive to make (I mean look at Tyranny’s attempt at static dialogue dolls) - they require both high fidelity and variety for NPCs, and high quality animation. At this point cutscenes could be an easier sell for the wide audience.
