Faces do get better, and I'd be pretty content with something like Mass Effect 1 (not exactly state of the art anymore), unless we're going for very emotional s

Faces do get better, and I'd be pretty content with something like Mass Effect 1 (not exactly state of the art anymore), unless we're going for very emotional scenes in close-ups -- where most real-life actors fail, too. One problem where in my opinion the advances aren't exactly exponential is body language. If I'm looking at the NPC talking to me, it's not just his facial motions, teeth etc. that I'm aware of, it's also the movements of his body - shoulders, arms, etc. This is still pretty bad. Most of the time they're just flailing around in a pretty uncoordinated manner. It gets better for highly "scripted" scenes, but the usual "shrug / fist pump / scratch yourself" animations are bad. They've gotten pretty good at the purely physical parts, i.e. what muscles and body parts have to move if something connected to it moves (skeletal and muscular animation), but there needs to be a better "body language AI".