“And you put all your thoughts into it, but there's a limit to what you can create on your own. The characters start lacking features. I think I only know about 20 to 30 different personalities.”
Kojima says video games were born completely digital like animation, and there is a limit to what one person can create alone: when he makes CG from scratch the characters start to lack features, and he believes he only knows about 20 to 30 different personalities. He contrasts stylized or deformed animation (as in cartoons) with photorealism, arguing that in a photorealistic realm CG made from scratch simply looks like CG, so you need an actor to play the role and be scanned. The same applies to voices: no matter how advanced AI becomes, you need source material for the data. He says you cannot bring a character to life by yourself — Shioli’s life experiences have shaped who she is, and handcrafted actions tend to seem manufactured — and he predicts that because we cannot recreate live action, capturing actors will become the norm, at least for photorealistic work.
“Well, as you know, video games were originally completely digital, right? Same as animation. […] when I create some CG from scratch, it just looks like a CG. […] But with photorealistic animation, you must have an actor play the role and scan that. It's the same thing with voices too. No matter how advanced AI becomes, you need source material for the data. […] You can't bring a character to life on your own. With Shioli, her life experiences have shaped who she is. […] We can't recreate live action, so I think this will become the norm.”