Time is money in every industry but as technology improves what once took 5 hours of mo-cap can be done by tweaking 20 sliders in a procedural scheme, with better results and faster turn around time, it doesn't take long for there to be a paradigm shift. It won't happen now but in a few years probably. The technology is too lucrative since it has broad application to many industry ( movies, games, locomotion research ie. robotics ) and there are enough people researching it that it will eventually happen.

-ddn

Yeah that will be great. I think Kylotan is right though that nothing is absolutely perfect, at least, not when games are pushing the envelope anyway. I suppose you could make a seemingly flawless game if it had very limited scope, but then the lack of scope means that it is in fact flawed in that respect. Really though, the bar is set so high for games these days, that they have so much to do to really be 'special', that they are inevitably going to fall short somewhere or other.

So there will be a point eventually where most big games can easily perfect animation thanks to their own, or bought in technologies, but there will be something else that gamers expect and these companies will still struggle to deliver on that as well.

For example, I loved COD4, the graphics astounded me, fantastic environments and animations, and the gunfights were extremely fun, and I loved the variety of the sniper missions etc, and I loved being able to place land mines and things. Great stuff. And yet, it still wasn't a perfect game for me, because it was just a simple shooter really. Compared to even old games like System Shock, there wasn't much depth. The areas were pretty linear, there were no real RPG elements like inventory, customisable stats, etc. There were an extremely limited number of usable objects in the game, just a few guns and rifles compared to an RPG which might have a hundred or more weapons, swords, bows, staffs, daggers, wands, etc. There was barely any story at all, very little dialogue and no choices, unlike many RPG's which have a book's worth of dialogue, and dialogue options that can trigger completely different dialogue chains.

I think Fallout 3 animation was hurt a lot by having very little dynamic biped walking routines. Characters don't walk sideways as they turn to move, they don't blend between turning and walking, they don't rotate smoothly to face directions, they don't step up onto things, they just kind of trot forward, like a train car.

It doesn't cost much to add this stuff. My game has many non-humanoid characters, but my humanoids still have three speeds of animated movement, with four directions per speed (including unique animations for strut/drunk/injured/etc). It's all blended together with a pretty simple engine that mixes any number of animated states together at once. For example, a character can start walking backward/sideways as they turn left and transition into full run, all at the same time. During the turn, they'll lean right and lift their left arm to balance themselves. Etc. I'm only one guy, here. If Bethesda has any good reason for not improving these things, it's most likely that they just didn't see it as an important issue.