So finished LA Noire last monday and  I'm sitting here tonight enjoying myself playing some games played  Castlevania:LoS and The Witcher and the only thing I can focus on every time a cut-scene starts is how god awful the facial animation is.   Every game that I play now im wincing at how wooden the animation is.  
   
That is outside of a few games like Enslaved, Uncharted etc that have pretty decent animation.      I think if theres one thing I want the "next gen" of consoles to seriously  work on its animation.  Never really noticed how horrible a large chunk of games are at this. 
  
I might be crazy rambling again so... I dunno am I the only one here that feels this way?

It'll obviously catch up. I think Ninja theory has a wonderful face tech, obviously no where near La Noire, but very close. I can see the next rockstar games to implement the tech soon.  
 
As far as the next gen handling animation easier, completely agree, and I think the next wave of systems, even cafe will have larger disc memory to handle the extra render meat. Can't wait to see all AAA games implement this tech though.

It's probably the shock of how awesome L.a. Noire is. In a while it will pass.

Yes. Get over it. :)

I haven't even played LA Noire yet, and I'm in the same boat. 

it will go away after you've spent some time away from LA Noire. 

No, I haven't had that problem.

Sure it was pretty good facial animation.   But the bodies they were attached to looked horrible so it immediately brought me out of the illusion of how real they looked.  

This was my reaction after playing Half-Life 2 the first time.

I hope they implement real actors' performances in games that call for it but don't forget the value found in stylized animated faces. But yeah, if the next GTA doesn't have this it would be pretty jarring...or not so much jarring but a half step back as we've already seen real actors performing in a Rockstar game and we would all notice the shortcomings of the uncanny valley. Go back and look at Niko, great character design and voice work but compared to everyone in L.A. Noire (or Red Dead even) he's got a serous case of the thousand-yard-stare (or dead-eye, if you will).

So finished LA Noire last monday and  I'm sitting here tonight enjoying myself playing some games played  Castlevania:LoS and The Witcher and the only thing I can focus on every time a cut-scene starts is how god awful the facial animation is.   Every game that I play now im wincing at how wooden the animation is.     That is outside of a few games like Enslaved, Uncharted etc that have pretty decent animation.      I think if theres one thing I want the "next gen" of consoles to seriously  work on its animation.  Never really noticed how horrible a large chunk of games are at this.   I might be crazy rambling again so... I dunno am I the only one here that feels this way?

It never really changed my views of other games, pretty much kept the same opinions on them. Doesn't bother me.

Yeah, totally, facial animation is almost as important as rock textures to me.

I'm happy to say that I don't have the same problem.

I'm so used to blank, lifeless faces in videogames, that a single video game that get it right won't ruin all others for me.

I'm still amazed how no one else has been able to get that tech right. I mean no other game does it better real time than half life 2 and that came out 5+ years ago. I'm looking at you Mass Effect.

I think you need to realize that there is a continuum of when games are released. Older games will not have this tech and newer games may not either - that doesn't mean it should ruin or affect anything in any way. 

Sure it was pretty good facial animation.   But the bodies they were attached to looked horrible so it immediately brought me out of the illusion of how real they looked.  

Well there are games with good visuals and games with bad visuals. Thats how its always done.

It's incredibly difficult to animate anything human because the motions are so familiar to us that we instantly notice if something is off. No animator is ever going to be able to compete with directly mapping a human face, and doing that is incredibly expensive right now. That probably won't change with the next generation of consoles, at least not immediatley, so prepare for more disappointment.
 
That being said, I like the character animation is Portal 2 a lot more, maybe that's just me. I wish more developers tried using non-human or heavily caricatured art styles for their models, it comes off way less jarring and it can look incredible when done right.

It's true, I'm with the OP and have been feeling the exact same feeling.
 
I got this when I first played Crysis and then went back to a PS3 game, it was fucking disgusting. It was like I went back to PS1 or something.
 
Now when looking at QL's of The Witcher 2 or other new games, I can't help but notice their terrible lip syncing and robotic animation.
 
Goddamn I love L.A. Noire.. Rockstar just give me more.

Hasn't for me, been playing The Witcher 2 and think the game looks great. If anything The Witcher 2 is hindering my enjoyment of a few console games as they look like ass in comparison.