Video Game Character Faces Enhanced to Photorealism; Hot or Not?
Popular youtubers have shared a video in which they brag about the effects of implementing photorealistic faces for characters in video games. The effects of their actions are at times grotesque.
The Corridor Crew's YouTube channel posted a new video, titled "We try Putting Photoreal Faces in Video Games." As the title suggests, the creators took a dozen video game characters and, with the help of the AI Stable Diffusion XL image generator, presented the characters in a slightly more realistic version.
Over the course of the 17-minute video, the creators sit on a couch and watch the results of their work. Among the characters touched by the invisible hand of the artificial intelligence were Aloy from the Horizon series, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect, Sarah Morgan from Starfield, and for dessert even Mario, although this attempt came off very... disturbing and it's best forgotten.
Interestingly, the result - despite the obvious enthusiasm among the creators of the video - did not win the appreciation of viewers at all. The comments section under the video quickly became full ofopinions that the vast majority of the original and often imperfect artistic vision is much better. The flawless faces of the "makeovers" (well, maybe with the exception of Mario) look as if they were created using an Instagram filter. Here are some sample comments:
"A perfect example of why graphic style and personality will always surpass whatever standards you set for "realism," declares @drunkhas.
"Yes, Lara Croft looking like she's transformed from spending hours in a damp cave exploring to an Instagram cosplayer from a temperature-controlled photo studio; well done!," jokes @KevinFu5100.
"I'm watching this and still prefer a lot of original works. Many of the AI-generated images look like they were taken with an Instagram filter. There are no imperfections. They all look like perfectly smooth skin, as if they spent 5 hours in the makeup chair,"points out @lawnjart16.
The community was also appalled by the words of Corridor Crew co-founder Niko Pueringer, who said in the video that players can only form a strong bond with perfectly designed characters with photorealistic looks. Countering the creator's misconception, viewers began to cite examples of video game characters from the 1990s, who - despite often being little more than a lump of pixels - won the hearts of millions of gamers around the world.
Corridor Digital is an American studio based in Los Angeles. It is known for creating short videos related to pop culture. In 2016, the studio became famous for its web series Rush inspired by Battlefield. For some time now, Corridor Crew's YouTube channel has been featuring videos in which Corridor Digital members evaluate visual effects from various movies, TV shows and video games. Some time ago, the creators were heavily criticized for using artificial intelligence to remake copyrighted works (via The Gamer). Corridor Digital has also come under fire for an original anime they created using AI (via Dexerto).
