Characterization in games

I've always wondered why some games left me with a much richer experience regardless of how the mechanics functioned.  Specifically; "why did playing Fallout 3 feel like such an empty experience while Fallout New Vegas left me with a much richer feeling?".  

Somewhere into playing Fallout 4...building this...building that... and going somewhere and shooting things I realized one thing: "I'm bored".   Why am I shooting things?  The usual excuse of "Because they are shooting at me" just seems empty of meaning.  I don't feel invested...I don't feel motivated to helping this person or that...why not!?

So I ended up pulling out an old favorite "Bully".   This is just a stupid little fun game that was ported over from the consoles to PC.  The targeting sucks.  There are too few buttons doing too many things.  However, the game was fun.  It was like someone telling a joke with a straight face the whole way through...so you don't take it for anything more than it is.  Most of the students are stereotypes with characterization that are very simplistic.  The main protagonist and antagonist, however, were extremely real right down to their body language, voice influctions, gestures, posture and what they would say...everything.  You sat there going "I get who this person is;  I must know them from somewhere because what they are doing and how they are doing it seems so right". 

Suddenly it hit me:  I am not engaged in this game (Fallout 3 and 4) because the characters in this game do not really engage with the player.

Case in point:  this is your father's reaction to you intentionally nuking an entire town in Fallout 3 Liam phoning it in   The point is: the more you are exposed to non-engaged characters, the less invested you are going to be.  There is, however, the 'Minecraft' proviso:  You can draw any picture you want on a blank slate.  'Blank' and 'Bland', however, mean two different things.

Thinking about it, I believe the game that had the most amount of well defined characters was Far Cry 3.  That is characters that had face and body language, Tone, intensity of voice, proper wording for their character...basically everything that makes a computer character more human.  It is fair to state, however, that FC3 did use plenty of cut-scenes to convey this character...but that is also to its credit - the characters were given that much respect to be portrayed in cut-scenes.   Far Cry 4 also had cut scenes to portray its characters as well - not that it really mattered.  Most of the FC4 characters were unbelievable; I've seen children's cartoon characters with more dimensions.  It disturbs me this trend toward unrealism in characters.  Seriously, game creators,  if you are going to get your children to make a stick character in crayon on the canvas then just leave it blank...and call it 'Minecraft'.  Microsoft picked up Minecraft for 2.5 Billion from Mojang.  Missing the point completely, they intend to add a set story (/facepalm).  This is the continuing saga of the large corporation picking up a sweet product and pooching it so hard that the pooch needs to apply soothing gel and antibiotic cream.  Back to my original point:  Using words is just one of the ways we, as people, communicate.  Face, body language, vocal influctions are the ways which are usually overlooked...especially by those who are not used to a lot of face to face interactions...which, unfortunately, is the new trend.  The thing is...I can't feel as invested rescuing an animatronic mannequin as I would a thinking, feeling human being.  Funny about that.