DraQ
Arcane
Key word being "helps".On the player side maybe. Tech helps a lot in creating better animations.
As far as body anims go they haven't chaged since 1998 - you're effectively animating a stick figure with only so many bones and vertices to work with.
Yes, if you have mocap, you can capture animations off a living person instead of having to make them comletely by hand, but it's neither necessary, nor sufficient for having impressive anims.
Facial anims are a bit of a different story, but since around HL2 they are also about talent rather than tech base.
And, funny thing, one of the most impressively animated games I have seen was Another World.
Yes, from 1993.