Procedural content would be nice if used well, as long as artists provide decent assets and situations to start with, although it would never replicate the myriad expressions of life and other things, it's a fine alternative.
Some smart thinking might be required after all, something that computers can't do, but we can provide them with "intelligence", this way small or large percentages of a world could be calculated for the purpose of variety.
You could provide people with tasks, dependent on the context and atmosphere of the game, not overly complicated stuff like someone working two jobs to put a roof over their head, but for instance the same person mowing the lawn on weekends, then cleaning the house, cooking, making school lunch for kids...
Someone doing holidays at home, putting up the tree, do all the shopping and cooking, like fried Spam and boiled potatoes, etc. Calling up at night from where this character is working to see if their kids did the homework, or some people doing anything because some tasks bored the crap out of them.
That would be for the AI.
As for the environment of games, random events are always welcome, like when in a racing game a car goes out of the track, or an old man who, while talking to you and in the middle of conversation, spits out dregs of a cigarette, because his cigarette doesn't have the filter tip..., etc etc.
Random map generators like Diablo 2 are useful examples of procedural content which can work fine to some extent:
Also, a game like Viking: Battle for Asgard would greatly benefit from a more varied set of clothes. Massive battles look very repetitive in that game.
In similar situations or games, a character in jeans, another wearing a skirt, a t-shirt, a jacket if it's chilly. a jmerry.., wearing things like that, would help people to probably recognize them in the scene, as individuals, not being the same clone repeating, like garlic repeating on you.
That's just my view on everything, because speaking from (the lack of) experience...it's tricky.
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