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bigtakilla on 23 January 2015
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artur-fernand said:
bigtakilla said:

Art direction can take you far my friend. Also, I'm fairly positive neither of us are devs and can say what the N64 or Playstation 1 was and wasn't capable of. The only thing I know CDs had the upper hand on was better sound quality (and despite rumors they both had voice acted games). It was a classic case of having a GREAT art direction, simple as that. 

Cutscenes (yet again) have very little bearing on the GAMES graphics. And both systems had them, in fact the Sega Saturn had them too (as well as the Sega CD the previous gen). Saying a game has cutscenes is far from saying it focused heavily on graphics. And it still doesn't place it ahead of the games that looked better on the same console. 

As far as the resolution of the backgrounds, I'd say they are similar. Some areas look better, some worse. Most everything being modeled in 3D was absolutely MINDBLOWING though, and more than likely the reason it got a 99 on metacritic.

Character models were also better in OOT than FF VII. Where any time the game would get graphically taxing, they had to use a chibi model, while in OOT, they could use the full size model though the entire game. 

But I think we are focusing a little heavy on different consoles that excelled at two different things. It's hard to judge. Still what about games that came out on PS that were better graphically than FF?

But still, the game was crazy expensive. All that money was going somewhere - most likely on the visuals. Not to mention, Sony had a huge multi-million dollar marketing campaign for the game, putting heavy emphasis on the graphics. Again, it was the cinematic feel of the thing. And then you have something like FFVIII which was absolutely insane at the time. When the game came out, I think it's fair to assume only MGS could rival it in graphics (not counting the Dreamcast, duh). And hell, just look at that opening of the game. It's pre-rendered and has nothing to do with the game, yes, but it's a good indicative of how much they cared about the wow factor on the graphics aspect. And I wasn't internet savvy at the time, but I can only imagine how crazy it was when FFX was announced, with the backgrounds rendered in real time and whatnot.

And FF is rarely the best looking game on the system actually. It wasn't on the NES, SNES, PS1 (though only a handful of games look better than FFVIII and IX) or PS3. Maybe FFXII was on the PS2, but you have stuff like GoW2 for example too.

Anyway, the point is, as Square's flagship franchise, FF has always aimed for great looking visuals.

It was the only huge game Playstation had when it first came out. They were going to boast whatever it had like it was the second coming of Christ. You'll notice that the campaign put infasis on the art direction over what the gameplay actually looked like. At the time it was the closest thing to looking like an anime there was, so they got big pictures of what the anime characters looked like and plastered them EVERYWHERE. A little marketing deception that worked wonders if you ask me.

VIII was fairly impressive graphics wise, but you got to remember it's biggest challenge was going against what most would consider the greatest game of all time. Everything had to be bigger and better. But by the time VIII came around every playstation game had an extremely cinematic feel. Resident Evil went so far as to have live action characters. Remember, with all that cinematic feel, they still didn't even have voice acting in 8, while other games at the time did. But the success of 7 and a cash flow unlike Squaresoft had seen or will ever see since allowed them to do that.

Now has FF always went for great looking visuals? Yes. But it was never the forefront of their games until X. I have already previously agreed with that , and it marks the downfall with an uncontrollable airship and room and hallway level designs.