For years devs have been under the misconception that making characters look real is the the way to capture the essence of a human, but it's misplaced. Yes, it's important but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is how they act and interact with the environment as you play. ND are actually pushing this to the next level and hopefully UC4 can improve on TLOU in this regard ... but that will be a tall order.
your character should never be static when you put down the controller, he/she should move as a human would move. We have those animations already but it doesn't take long for them to eventually recycle. What we need is a system of animations that has a huge library of single animations with the ability (depending on situation, mood, character etc) that are able to mix two animations together to form a new one, thus creating the illusion of a living, breathing character. Every single element of the game needs to be contextual too. If a character happens to love nature, he may pluck at wheat or run his fingers through it when he's cutting through a wheat field. If they have a fear of water they may hold their arms further above the surface of the water when crossing a stream. All these little animations help create the illusion of reality AND build character.
If you animated a stickman in a realistic way, you would hit the uncanny valley because the actions of the stickman are perfect but our brains won't have the 'human' normal reference points. This is the same as having something that looks real but doesn't animate in a 'human' way, which of course is the flip side of the argument.
Animations, contextual animations are for me the next big evolution of gaming. People think they have it now but they don't. Most of the animations are convenient for the devs to put in, like Nathan Drake touching a surface when he gets close to it. This is just an animation associated with 'closeness' but what we need now is animations associated with 'character'. Imagine searching for materials with Ellie and she suddenly just walks over to the book case, removes a random book and starts flicking through it? Or she might just stare at a painting of a deer for a long time which then informs the animation system on Joel to move over and gentry persuade her away by grabbing the crook of her arm. Spaces should be constantly filled with these 'human' things.
