The games here are
Final Fantasy VII (1997) vs Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
Parasite Eve (1998) vs Parasite Eve 2 (1999)
Resident Evil 2 (1998) vs Resident Evil 3 (1999)
(You could place Parasite Eve between FFVII and FFVIII since it came out between the two and was used to prototype some of the tech for FFVIII)
The leap in quality with the human character models is especially impressive. Look at Sephiroth's beautiful visage here and just think that Square went from that to feeling like their animation was convincing enough to carry an entire sci-fi drama movie with a realistic human cast in less than 5 years
spoiler
Then of course you had Oddworld Inhabitants who came right out the gate with movie quality CGI. Their characters all being fish-faced aliens instead of humans probably helped
I loved the visual style of Final Fantasy 9 and Vagrant Story (both from 2000 iirc). The developers of these games were really making the hardware sing
Vagrant Story is one of the most remarkable games of that generation and I always find it strange to find it missing from retrospectives of that time. It was way ahead of its time in so many aspects it's insane
I feel like a lot of the non-Final Fantasy SquareSoft games just blurred into obscurity for most people. For the most part, I kinda get it - back in those days I didn't have access to the sheer amount of games media that exists online today.
Hell, I'd argue that too many people remember of Vagrant Story on the basis of it somehow being Ivalice.
Yasumi Matsuno is not allowed to have a good game become popular :/
Tbh, I believe the late PS1 era CGI were made by proper 3d animation studios, compared to the earlier ps1 where they were usually made by developers.
Yeah, they started using FMVs in 1999 because MPEG-4 came out and they could fit them on a CD.
I believe before that there weren't that much high quality 3d FMVs. But there were some high quality 2d animation and stuff with real actor, but those were mostly for PC games where they could divide a game in multiple cds.
Sony was getting devs set up for PS2 as well. They were really hyping the emotion engine stuff and probably wanted their main developers to be able to hit the ground running when it came out.
The FMVs made at the end of the PS1 era were supposed to be a teaser for what the PS2 could do real time.
The Tekken games on PS1 are like a self-contained model of this. The first one is like eugh, and the third one is like aw fuck yeah boyee
How could I forget about Tekken, possibly the best example to illustrate the point I was trying to make here
Check out the eldritch horror of Nina's sexy hair toss in Tekken 2's intro (around 44 seconds in)
They were probably really proud of that hair model
incredible stuff.Also looking at these on a flatpanel, waow are they ever compressed good. Them pixels tho.
and then we recreated it with real time rendering 20 years later with TressFX and Hairworks
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I don't think any of these were made with the PS1s engine. It's a CD system so I assume they just made cutscenes on a computer and ported them as video files.
I think it was probably a case of these companies investing more and more money and/or hiring compent CGI studios after realising that these impressive cutscenes (for the time) were a major selling point for the system.
Honestly I can never truly make fun of early 3D graphics because 3D modeling programs are a fucking nightmare even in the 2020s, I can't even imagine what they went through trying to use them in the 90s without the multiple decades of QOL development.
Same with early 3D game development. I'm always haunted by the knowledge that they didn't have skeletal animation for the PS1 for a long time and Crash Bandicoot was animated on a per vertex level. Like that is fucked up. I'm a weak, spoiled 3D modeler and trying to do that would straight up kill me. I would not survive the attempt.
damm right, it took me a whole month to learn blender properly then promply forgot how to do x y z.
I remember reading of one the team silent guys taught himself how to do 3D CGI for I think SH2? Amazing to think about.
It was the first one. He insisted on taking charge of the FMV cutscenes but his boss wouldn't let him because he was new. He then went above his head and showed off his skills to Konami bigwigs who agreed to let him have the job, but he had to do everything himself or his boss would get credit due to how seniority works in Japanese companies or something. He moved to the office and slept under the desk for the duration of the project
IIRC he also said he found the project difficult because every character in the game was white and he had no white people to work off of
Game still looks good today, same with 2+3+4, the graphics have aged well.
SH3 and SH4 more than the others. SH1 looks great for a PS1 title, but it is still very much a PS1 title. SH2 looks decent but it has some rather awkward looking character models. SH3 looks fantastic throughout, and while SH4 also has incredible character models the actual levels you play on are pretty barren and not that great to look at
SH3 looks fantastic throughout, and while SH4 also has incredible character models the actual levels you play on are pretty barren and not that great to look at
I was floored by the faces in SH3 and couldn't believe they were rendered in game at the time.
all i'm seeing between these comparisons is a better shader and more sophisticated hair on the right lol, it's the little things (if you can consider shaders & lighting 'little' haha)
Look at Sephiroth's model. He has a visible neck joint and his eyes are just textures on his head
i'd have to see the others in motion but i'd think they also don't have real circular eyes modelled just lumps and rigged eyelids if they have some blinking effects
Here you go if you want to compare:
I think the first thing you'll notice is just how primitive FFVII's cutscenes are compared to the three other Square games. Like the animation is super wonky too- check out the scene where the gang gets into the pick-up truck preceeding the motor cycle chase and look at how they walk, lol
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cpu and gpu technology was changing rapidly in the 1990s. I wouldn't be surprised if this is partly a product of the earlier game being started on like Nintendo 64 or some other earlier console and then the sequel being started on the Playstation so the software and art assets were just better suited for that hardware.
To be clear, these are all cgi cutscene assets that never left a graphics workstation. Nintendo 64 is somewhat involved in that Nintendo's insistence to stick with cartridges for the N64 with a max capacity of 64MB made Square and others run away to Sony so they could fill CDs with the beautiful FMV sequences seen here (as well as voice acting, CD quality music, etc)
Absolutely, the N64 was technically more powerful than the PS1, but had less memory for games to work with due to cartrages. Nintendo was actually originally working with Sony to make the N64 a CD system, but after the CDI butchered their characters they chickened out after Sony asked for joint rights to their properties. So basically Sony said "screw you we'll take our CD work we were doing for you and make our own console." At least I think that's what happened, it's been a while since I read about that. But basically Nintendo didn't technically insist on cartrages, they just didn't have the time to make the N64 a CD system after Sony bailed (They tried with an add on in Japan, but it was too late in the N64s life).
Which is the better console is up to personal opinion. N64 had better in-game graphics, consistently good exclusives and had no loading times. PS1 had massive 3rd party support, and CD, which had enough memory for impressive FMV cutscenes and CD quality audio. Also the ability to "please insert the next CD" made long sprawling RPGs popular on the system.
Both had their good and bad points.
It started out way back on the SNES. They were doing joint development with Sony on a CD expansion peripheral (hence that weird port on the bottom of the SNES console) but the project got scrapped. Oddly enough, around the time that Commodore went bankrupt once and for all, Nintendo's name was floated as a possible buyer so they could take over manufacture and sale of the Amiga CD32 system, which was basically just an A1200 crammed into a game console. That just turned out to be a rumor floating amongst Amiga nerds, though, when German business genius tech giant Escom bought out the rights to the Amiga and made the CD32 into the game industry titan that still dominates the global market today.
It's amazing how much business bullshit completely changes the course of a thing while taking none of the public eye
Highly recommend Giant Bomb's ranking Tekken endings for some sensible chuckles at early CGI
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