L.A. Noire, Rockstar’s detective work simulation game, might not have set the world on fire, but it did impress critics and fans with its ambition. Instead of animating characters to match the dialogue, Rockstar used a special motion capture technique and real actors to produce more life-like reactions and facial expressions for its characters.
Since this “Motionscan” technology records an actor’s face and dialogue in real-time, that means even the actors’ mistakes have been preserved for posterity. The Australian company behind the technique is named Depth Analysis, and it has posted a gag reel for the game to its home page.
Though the reel contains the types of mistakes commonly seen in movie or TV gag reels, the fact that the animated characters aren’t quite life-like enough to be considered outside of the uncanny valley makes their very human reactions all the more interesting. Also, seeing a videogame character sneeze convincingly is bizarre.