[potatolicious]

Agreed. There's a distinct lack of R&D in what is IMHO more important than graphical fidelity - conveying emotion and motion in games. Valve made waves with its (honestly somewhat primitive) facial animation system, and not much has been done with it until now (LA Noire has done something really cool with it and is coming out soonish). It's amazing how much effort we'd spend crafting the perfect artillery shell explosion but your CO yelling orders at you moves like a mannequin.

We've made a lot of gameplay progress into action-RPGs (Mass Effect and the like), and I for one would like to play a game where facial expressions and body language actually mean something (e.g., the character is lying, but instead of smacking you over the head with it, the game can be subtle about it).