Best Games With Lifelike Animation

Video games that use realistic, lifelike animations excel at captivating players and enable them to form immersive connections with the game world and its characters. Detailed character animations make video game characters relatable, which leads to empathy and emotional investment.

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There are several games that have made a name for themselves for crafting highly-detailed worlds and human characters. Today, technology allows developers to convey a wide range of human emotions, like happiness, sadness, anger, etc., through their virtual characters, resulting in dynamic storytelling and interactive narrative experiences. Here are some of the best video games that successfully showcase the power of lifelike animations that succeed at captivating their audiences.

7 Detroit: Become Human

Empathize With Androids Who Grapple With Their Sentience

• Expressing Emotions: Realistic facial animations in Detroit: Become Human allow players to witness how robots start feeling emotions as they discover their sentience.
• Subtle Body Language Cues: The story in Detroit: Become Human follows a branching, choice-based narrative, which decides the fate of many characters in the game. When making a choice, players can see various body language cues like approval, denial, fear, trust, distrust, etc., for any character in question.

Detroit: Become Human is an interactive, narrative-driven, action-adventure game with plenty of well-animated cutscenes. Players embark on an emotional journey where they decide the fates of various robots — called Androids ­— who begin to gain their sentience.

The game does an excellent job of animating these robots, who initially look emotionless, but later develop the ability to express a wide range of emotions, such as sadness, fear, and joy. Players pick up the characters’ emotional states through well-designed animations that convey these feelings.

6 Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Highly-Detailed Character Animations That Transition Seamlessly Between Gameplay And Cutscene

• Realistic Facial Animations: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End excels at delivering realistic facial animations for all important characters in the game. Facial details like frown lines and squinting of the eyes look real and believable.
• Detailed Climbing Animation: One of the gameplay elements in Uncharted 4 involves climbing various structures found in the game world. To make climbing more realistic, appropriate animations are used to showcase the struggle and weight of the character as they try scaling surfaces.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is an action-adventure game where players follow Nathan Drake’s quest to find a hidden treasure. The game uses lifelike animations to add depth to the gameplay where every punch, gunshot, and recoil feels authentic. As the player explores the world on foot, they come in contact with various terrains, where each terrain responds uniquely to their movement. For instance, walking on a gravel-covered slope causes small stones to slide down the hill, adding to the realism.

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Various actions like walking, sprinting, and jumping take into account the character’s weight, making the actions align with real world physics. The developers have also nailed the character facial animations, which makes conversation seem authentic in cutscenes.

5 God Of War: Ragnarök

Detailed Combat Animations And Facial Expressions Succeed In Hooking Players

• Visceral Combat: Building upon its predecessor, God of War: Ragnarök, makes combat more brutal and visceral, a large part of which is achieved through excellent character animations that account for Kratos’ axe swings and throws.
• Emotional Storytelling: The game continues to expound upon the father-son relationship between Kratos and Atreus. The game uses motion captured facial animations to showcase subtle expressions on character faces to convey a range of emotions.

In God of War: Ragnarök, players can feel the intensity of combat each time Kratos throws his Leviathan Axe or swings his Blades of Chaos to cleave through multiple enemies. Animations are used to realistically depict flinches and staggers which make combat encounters impactful and satisfying for players.

In moments where Kratos and Atreus interact, detailed facial animations and body language cues are used to showcase character expressions, which add depth and complexity to their relationship. As players witness Kratos’ love and protectiveness for his son, it endears the character to players and makes the entire journey even more compelling.

4 Red Dead Redemption 2

Realistic Horse Animations And Interactable Environments Breathe Life Into The Game

• Alive, Immersive World: The world of Red Dead Redemption 2 is brimming with a variety of interesting NPCs and wildlife. What brings these characters and animals alive is the true-to-life animations that direct how NPCs go about their lives, and how the wildlife engages in prey and predator dynamics.
• Cinematic Storytelling: Red Dead Redemption 2 uses detailed cutscenes to explore the relationship of the main character, Arthur Morgan, with various important NPCs in the game. Realistic animations capture the characters’ various emotions, like anger, worry, and hope.

The level of detail and animation quality in Red Dead Redemption 2 goes above and beyond anything ever seen before in video games. The game accounts for every minute animation detail like accurate weapon reloading, running out of air after prolonged whistling, and the intricacies of hand-to-hand combat.

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Red Dead Redemption 2 leverages facial animations and body language cues to make interpersonal conversations believable. Special animations are used to show how the character reacts to cold and struggles to walk in knee-deep snow, which further adds to the immersion aspect of the game.

3 The Last Of Us Part 2

Natural Character Actions And Improved Combat Animations

• Enhanced Character Details: In The Last of Us Part 2, animations are used to exhibit granular character details like natural lip movement, frown lines, and accurate eye movements.
• Intense Combat: Combat in The Last of Us Part 2 is hard hitting and gritty; getting shot or hit by melee weapons staggers Ellie. For instance, getting shot in the shoulder can cause Ellie to flinch or even fall down, which corresponds to the weight of the bullet.

The Last of Us Part 2 excels in nailing down its granular character animations, like how Ellie struggles when fighting enemies who are bigger than her. Similarly, when Ellie throws a glass bottle at an enemy, players can find shattered glass pieces burrowed into the enemy’s face. This level of realism makes combat appear emotionally charged.

The animation quality extends to Ellie’s interactions with other supporting characters. Conversations flow smoothly between characters and accurate lip movement and hand gestures further add depth to the interactions.

2 Horizon Forbidden West

Experience Fluid Character Movements And Facial Animations

• Realistic Machines: In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy must overcome giant mechanical enemies that move differently to their human counterparts. The machines’ unpredictable movements keeps the player on their toes as they anticipate incoming attacks.
• Improved Player Movement: Aloy’s navigational abilities are further improved. Smoother animations are incorporated to make traversing feel dynamic, resulting in fluid transition between sprinting, climbing, sliding, and navigating treacherous environments.

Building upon its predecessor, Horizon Forbidden West pushes the boundaries of graphical fidelity and character animation. A large part of the gameplay involves taking on challenging robotic enemies, called Machines. These Machines are replicas of organic animals, but behave differently. Machines have special animations that dictate how they move around the world, learning about these enables players to strategize around how they'll be taking down these enemies.

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The developers have also pushed the bar in terms of facial animations, which makes Aloy seem alive when she interacts with other NPCs in cutscenes, or when players decide to hop into photo mode.

1 Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2

Utilizes Next-Gen Tech To Design Realistic Character Models And Tops It Off Motion Captured Animations

• Excellent Facial Animations: Since the theme of Hellblade 2 is primarily about overcoming mental trauma, a lot of work has gone into animating Senua’s face to showcase the various emotions she feels, and the reactions she has in the face of fear and confusion.
• Advanced Motion Capture: The developers have employed the use of advanced motion capture technology that translates human movement into animations, resulting in natural and believable character movements.

Hellblade 2 invites players to participate in Senua’s mind, where she grapples with mental trauma. Her struggle with trauma is exhibited through her raw emotions, which are beautifully captured through groundbreaking facial animation.

Even during combat, Senua’s struggle against her enemies is showcased through her detailed facial animation. In moments when the game slows down between combat, players can see how Senua grinds her teeth or how anger sweeps across her face. Additionally, every sword swing has a palpable sense of weight, which adds realism and intensity to each battle sequence.

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