So impossible that Hyrule town had prerendered backgrounds with 3D modeled buildings.

Prerendered backgrounds are 2D, rendering 3D backgrounds in real time is much more graphically demanding than prerendered backgrounds. 

One of the biggest reasons for FFVII's massive appeal at the time was the cinematic feel of the game. Sure, the character models are ugly, but the cutscenes were unlike anything anyone had ever seen. So much so, that if the game was not successful, Square would've probably died right there. So I'm not sure why you see FF not focusing on graphics for quite some time now. 

And Hyrule Town background resolution is terrible, faaaar below what something like FFVII (which had MUCH MORE pre-rendered backgrounds) had. Unless my memory betrays me. It was impossible, yes.

What's boring about a no-button combat system^^

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?

i dont wanna care about this game. it hurts every time a new ff is coming out... cant they just make hd remakes of the older games till they found someone who can make a good rpg?

Not really fussed about whether or not there are airships in the game. The world seems huge, I'm liking what I am seeing so far.

In general, to me it didn't do the series any good to move to such detailed models, the art direction suffers immensly, in my opinion.
I always loved the pixel art Final Fantasy games, also 7 and 9, perhaps also 12, but this gives me absolutley nothing, like 8 and 10.

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 wouldn't be a massive downgrade (slight maybe) because they are already able to have airships in the world along with many other monsters/characters and objects present.  They call it one fully connected game, but the player isn't even going to see everything everywhere they go,  just a lot more than what was possible on past consoles. So what's even the point of the draw distance?  I honestly wouldn't care if there were sudden pop ins or if there were a slight downgrade  in graphical prowess.   That's how important controllable airships are to FF.

I have serious doubts a japanese company can make a sandbox as impressive as say GTA5. Let's be honest, Japanese developers aren't known to specialize in this.