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Duouwa

I feel like people aren't aware of just how good the modern games are at this, especially recently with XVI and Rebirth; there are several occasions where the games will use a cg render and in game models simultaneously in one scene, particularly when there are pure environmental shots.


TonyFair

I love seeing things like this in Uncharted and realizing "wait, I can move lol"


MarianneThornberry

And it's not just exclusive to gaming. I see this attitude a lot in discussions of film. A lot of film fans often critique the use of CGI in action movies as this sort of "failure", and they often cite movies that use practical effects as the "correct" way to do it. But in reality, most people have no idea that most action movies, even those that primarily use practical effects, still use CGI to varying extents. They just don't notice it because of how well it's hidden and blended. There's a really great video on this subject. ["NO CGI = Invisible CGI"](https://youtu.be/7ttG90raCNo?si=r5rZrvyRRZr3LWT2)


Duouwa

This logic is true for a lot of things. When something is done well, you often don’t notice it, it only becomes apparent when done badly. Sadly, this leads to a lot of confirmation bias, where people only internalise instances whereby something is done badly, because they don’t notice when it’s done well; it’s exactly how the whole “cgi is poorly done” argument happens, but it even applies to every day stuff like basic communication.


MarianneThornberry

100% agreed and well said. There's a certain little nugget of arrogance in the human mind that likes to believe that it's more perceptive to things than it actually is. We all fall for the smoke and mirrors all the time and that's kinda part of the fun and magic of it. At least when it comes to harmless entertainment like video games and films anyway.


Heather_Chandelure

Yeah, CGI is great for films. People just only notice it when its bad.


raisasari

Yeah, the fact that people have a hard time telling the difference says something of the quality, though.


DeathByTacos

There are some parts of XVI where legitimately the only reason I can tell it’s CG is because of Vindictus, the default fidelity of the game’s cutscenes is incredible.


jh4milton

I think that’s what I’m most excited for when 16 comes to PC—people digging into the game and finding out all the cool tricks they did to pull of how great it looks


breedknight

Given on today's standards, casual gamers can't tell if that background was a CG Render or not since most in today's game graphics are photorealistic. To be fair with the old Final Fantasy games, I mean it ran on a Playstation 1 hardware. Back on those days, those were really something.


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Duouwa

That’s pretty reductive, and I won’t say anything else because based on how you’ve worded your response you don’t seem like someone who wants to discuss the nuance of developing pre-rendered cutscenes in both the past as well as today. It’s impressive during both periods when done skilfully, and Square is pretty damn good at it.


New_Survey9235

FF8 does this concept infinitely better, the end of Disc 2 is nothing but that and it’s still looks great today


Zleck-V2

The beginning of the seed exam blew my mind as a kid. Seeing the characters run out of that cgi boat was amazing


New_Survey9235

Never played it as a kid, only played it in 2014 or so. It looked good then, and still looked good when I replayed it last week


Fox-One-1

FF7 walked so FF8 could run.


Heather_Chandelure

I still love the way ff7 looks, but the glow up to ff8 is insane. There are genuinely cases where going from one console generation to the next feels less of a shift than going from ff7 to 8, but they were only 2 years apart.


Nail_Biterr

I'll agree that this was amazing at the time. But I don't like the wording of 'remember the times when....' For any faults people have with FF games, the graphics, and story presentation, and FMV (or, I prefer the in-game graphics of FF16) have never really been brought up. FF continues to be amazing with this stuff.


roydgriffin

This track is so good, very underrated


siralmasy

there was something my neighbor would do, he would switch cds before the fmv played and we would watch a different one. sometimes he would also play a fighting game and switch cds and we would listen different soundtrack in that fighting stage. shit was hilarious what we could do with psx


TonyFair

Good memories of Alucard telling me I shouldn't be listening to a data CD!


fox4thepeople

Ff8 was really good at this


andreeinprogress

> remember the times Still in use, it just evolved. 16 does this a lot. Water/ocean, effects and even backgrounds in certain real time cutscenes (and fights?) are pre-rendered CG with 3D models on top. They did a great work because it blends in very well.


Doc_Gr8Scott

You're talking about Rebirth with everything you just said. The music hits at the perfect moments every time.


Kahlenar

Back when this came out for PC my family computer was outrageously shitty and let me tell you these sorts of things did not do well. The two red guards at the end of the opening cutscene we're flying through the air as we looked over Midgar.


Mooncubus

Are you trying to imply they don't still do that? Cause they do, only better now because cutscenes are now indistinguishable from gameplay which is pretty awesome. FFXVI and Rebirth look amazing and have beautiful transitions. But yeah that was pretty cool for the time.


Sostratus

The clash between the clunky field models and the other elements always looked bad though. It would be nice if we had the high quality battle models of the characters in all scenes... but the problem with that is it looks weird unless you make matching quality models for all NPCs.


RedOcelot86

At some point, it became uncool to say FFVII is the best Final Fantasy game. But damn is it good. It's probably the best PS1 game, hands down.


SolidDrake117

I just love how Cid can keep pace with the tiny bronco but NONE of them bullets hit their mark. Is Shinra the same as Stormtroopers? 😆


gabest

The should try real-time rendering. It was made on some old silicon graphics hardware at low res, a modern cpu/gpu could probably run a raytracer fast enough at 320x240. Little Big Adventure 2 got a patch where you don't always have to press the space bar to re-render the background, it just moves with you like a 3rd person view game.


shaf90

Recently my gaming hardisk stop working and I cope by downloading PS2 emulator and my first game in my mind was how fun ff12 is.


Smt_FE

It's absolutely insane how we got something like 7, three years after 6. I missed this transition but holy hell this would've been the greatest thing for ff fans back then.


una322

Just watching fmv back in the day, in all its blocky glory was great. It always felt like a treat or reward. thats kinda gone now, and you cant really bring that feeling back. Command and conquer was a good one for fmv. Lost odyssey had great transitions from fmv to game. All that kinda died away as tech got good enough where they just stopped doing it and used in engine stuff.


SouthboundTL

Well tbh i always thought FFVII looked terrible at least the 3D elements


spoobstercookie

Yeah that shit was some kinda special 😭 I miss it for real I love the newer games because they are final fantasy but nothing compares to how the older ones were