Remembering Final Fantasy's Pre-Rendered Backgrounds

No video

Remembering Final Fantasy's Pre-Rendered Backgrounds

Рет қаралды 4,160

Жыл бұрын

In this episode we take an In Memoriam look back at one of the most fleeting yet persistently popular aesthetic elements of Final Fantasy in the latter 1990s. Pre-rendered backgrounds were a high fidelity middle-ground of mid-late 90s videogames that married the cutting-edge of 3D renders and matte painting, with the tech-limitations and compromise of fixed camera angles and static environments. The result was an aesthetic novelty that became synonymous with the golden era of Final Fantasy in Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy IX; and have since had a renaissance with smaller development studios nodding towards this significant era of gaming.
--
A huge thank you to my Patrons who are supporting these Game Discourses:
- -
- Rebecca B
- M!
- Eastern Fox
- Wendriel LF
You can become a Patron here: / gamediscourses
OR
Support with a Coffee: ko-fi.com/game...
Find me on Twitter: / thealleywayjack
--
In this Final Fantasy pre-rendered backgrounds analysis we consider:
- The unique elements and construction of pre-rendered backgrounds
- The aesthetic importance of pre-rendered backgrounds in Final Fantasy VII compared to earlier Final Fantasy games
- The nuance of animation that brought pre-rendered backgrounds to life within the game series
- Some examples of pre-rendered backgrounds in Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX
Thank you for checking out my Game Discourses
#finalfantasy #finalfantasyVII #finalfantasyVIII

Пікірлер: 48

@tiagocosmos Жыл бұрын

I love the prerendered aesthetic. It has a charm to it that no amount of photorealism can achieve.

@KT-rq9id 11 ай бұрын

can you imagined if we got pre-rendered backgrounds in 2023? you could actually do 8k resolution but optimize the game and loading time incredibly well. I'd love for this kind of remake, not the ff7 remake we got instead.

@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 9 ай бұрын

@@KT-rq9id ff7 remake is trash for ao many reasons. I love pre rendered backrounds and ive always wondered if there was a way to improve on them.

@KT-rq9id 9 ай бұрын

@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 Yeah. Imagine the 8k pre-rendered backgrounds, with classic text dialogue (no voice acting), and classic turn based. With pre-rendered backgrounds, you'd also be able to focus more on higher quality character models, and less loading time, less resource heavy. IMAGINE THAT in 2023. Would've been a true, faithful, legendary remake.

@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 9 ай бұрын

@@KT-rq9id thats the remake we deserved. I do think voice acting can be done in a way that doesn't lose what you get from text boxes but I've never seen it done. Instead of innovating it, they abandoned their own genre while it still has so much potential. It's sad. There are so many options for how to improve it without the limits of 90s technology

@KT-rq9id 9 ай бұрын

@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 Haha yeah. The remake we truly deserved is also ignorantly perceived by most people. They think the remake we just described is a remaster. That's not a remaster, not even close. What we got instead was a reimagined version of FF7, being falsely mislabeled a remake. A remake is something similar to RE1 REmake. As for voice acting, I prefer my FF7 chars to have no voice acting at all. The novelty of the original FF games was that reading experience, that gave you your own interpretation of everyone's voices.

@DanielDailey639 Жыл бұрын

FF7 hits the sweet spot where the backgrounds leaves some things to the imagination, but communicates quite a bit more than the old pixel art can.

@supremeoverlorde2109 Жыл бұрын

I really enjoy the pre-rendered backgrounds. FFIX has many of my favorites. The aesthetic of Memoria is one that has always stood out to me in particular.

@MrJCMasterman Жыл бұрын

Since my first FF game was FFX, I didn’t grow up with pre-rendered backgrounds in my early RPGs, and so I’m not really nostalgic for them. That being said, I do think they have a certain aesthetic quality to them that sets them apart from 3D environments, and you nailed it in the analysis when you said ‘painterly.’ They definitely have that diorama-esque painting feel that 3D environments can’t really replicate. I think it’s because we immediately associate that kind of viewpoint as though we were looking at a painted portrait.

@orlandeuce6567 5 ай бұрын

BEST BACKGROUNDS EVER

@jordanmartel2937 Жыл бұрын

It’s the artistic quality of the backgrounds that are very appealing. Similar to studio ghibli backgrounds. So much detail and the fixed perspective of them showing you want they want you to see. 3d forces too much realism and strips back detail. No matter how good the graphics are, you cannot get the level of detail the was present in these backgrounds. Every single aspect of these backgrounds were handcrafted. As opposed to games these days which reuse assets all the time in different locations to fill space.

@AlleywayJack 6 ай бұрын

Very late reply to this but yes, I agree completely and the Ghibli backgrounds are a great comparison because I think they are amazing and painstakingly designed like the pre-rendered BGs of Final Fantasy. Your point about 3D backgrounds is bang on, I was watching a development documentary about Skyrim awhile back and they essentially just build libraries of textures and reusable assets like rocks/trees/rooms and have artists drag'n'drop to populate the world; so on the one hand you cut down the development time and have huge environments to explore, but on the other as you say, it's just filling space.

@leoallan2225 5 ай бұрын

I love prerendered backgrounds, I don't think many if any N64 games did that, 3D wasn't that great back then these backgrounds had way more detail than the 3D could deliver back then especially for long games, I can't imagine alot of Square games like FF, or Chrono Cross without them.

@R_Didsy 10 ай бұрын

I hope you do decide to make a follow up to this. It's actually really difficult to find much information on the specifics of the development of pre-rendered backgrounds. There's had handful of resources that touch on them at a surface level, but your video was the closest I've seen to how they were constructed at a technical level. Cheers

@Jazon2901 Жыл бұрын

I'm always so happy when I see you post a new video and I enjoy each and every one thoroughly

@AlleywayJack Жыл бұрын

Thanks man 🙌

@Jaopazo 10 ай бұрын

This is the content i like, thanks for talking about this.

@DarthJF Жыл бұрын

When I first played FFVII I thought the polygon block characters were ugly and off-putting, but there was always something captivating by the pre-rendered backgrounds and the clever camera movements and short animations that made them feel alive, which managed to suck me into the game world. That plus how well the backgrounds meshed with Uematsu's music had huge impact in why I became a life long fan of the series.

@KT-rq9id 11 ай бұрын

when did you first play ff7?

@DarthJF 11 ай бұрын

@@KT-rq9id 2000

@KT-rq9id 11 ай бұрын

@@DarthJF so, you were already playing the dreamcast or ps2 around that time?

@DarthJF 11 ай бұрын

@@KT-rq9id no, I got PS2 in 2001 Christmas. I got interested in Final Fantasy when FFIX got released and saw a review of it, but ended up buying VII first. Not sure why but probably because the store didn't have IX yet. By that point I was used to late stage PS1 graphics and despite FFVII being only three years old, the polygon models were already looking terribly outdated compared to other games I was playing. Still, I gave FFVII a shot and it became one of my favourite games of all time.

@KT-rq9id 11 ай бұрын

@@DarthJF Yeah, FF7 still looks funny from back in the day. when you compare RE1 to FF7, it was quite the difference. hahaha. but hey, FF7 taught us little lego polygons can be incredible. I've seen PC mods that HD the crap outta the original ff7, but i still like my lil polygon models, they invoke emotion

@acerimmer8338 Жыл бұрын

Such a shame Square lost (erased) the source code for FF7/8/9. It would've been wonderful to have these pre-rendered backgrounds in all their high-res glory in proper remasters. They are so beautiful and detailed. I miss static perspective in gaming; really made games feel cinematic and artistic. (Oddly enough that's what all these modern games say they try to do but a third-person perspective is completely uncinematic and modern games all look the same.)

@AlleywayJack Жыл бұрын

Games development in the 90s must have been crazy. I can't imagine a AAA title losing code these days with all the version control etc involved. It still baffles me this happened, it's such beautiful work.

@Sentinel_ICBM Жыл бұрын

I'm glad you mentioned the garden battle. One my all time favorite FF moments as well!

@drownthepoor 6 ай бұрын

Wonderfully explained video. Great sections highlighted. I'm in the middle of a documentary video about the Playstation, and I ended up here deep-diving into pre-rendered backgrounds. You explain a lot of the components used very well here. I was really looking for more information about how they got the FMV's in FF7 to blend with the renders such as the ones you cited. The windmill in Nibelheim or the moving gears in the 2nd reactor mission. I'm led to believe in at least some cases these were playing directly off of the disc. The doc is kind of comprehensive look at the origin/history of the console, it's hardware and pipeline, and the techniques used to make the games. My thesis is that PS1 shaped how games were made or even thought of forever; despite being less of an advancement than the N64.

@georgelopez-zt4qz 6 ай бұрын

I want 4k pre renders today… that would be cool

@phanithC137 5 ай бұрын

Amazing video 📸

@NYSOUN 6 ай бұрын

Hey, where can I find the original source of the images at 4:44? The render without the matte painting and with the matte painting

@AlleywayJack 6 ай бұрын

Hi, you can find those images on forums if you search for pre-rendered ff backgrounds as they've been discussed a lot.. I find those specific images on the website of an artist who worked on the game but I'm struggling to find it again, as I went down a rabbit hole looking for source images. If I can find it again I'll drop it in the comment.

@NYSOUN 6 ай бұрын

thanks a lot man @@AlleywayJack

@AlleywayJack 12 күн бұрын

@@NYSOUN Very late reply here but I stumbled across that artists portfolio in one of my google docs, hope this is still useful for you: www.christianlorenzscheurer.com/htmlpages/games/finalfantasyIX/matteart/icecave2_matte.html

@HAZARDOUS88 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for this video, I love the ones in FFVIII so much!

@Returnofdogman Жыл бұрын

Very well spoken and informative video thanks I learned a lot, would the cg developer be able to 360 degree pan the pre rendered background objects in 3d before it was taken a picture of in 480p?

@AlleywayJack Жыл бұрын

Thanks glad you enjoyed it. That's a great question and while I'm not absolutely certain, I read the CG renders were used in pretty cutting edge software at the time and Final Fantasy was farmed out to companies specialising in background design such as Kusanagi Studio. Also, certain backgrounds were used for FMV sequences so there was definitely a need to finesse them and light them from different angles, but regarding the painterly finishing for the majority of backgrounds they were finished from one viewpoint only, maybe even in software like photoshop, because they would only be viewed from one perspective and compressed. The painters worked hard to actually hide the imperfections in the polygonal CG renders rather than work on them from differing angles it seems. Hope that helps!

@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898 10 ай бұрын

What are some modern JRPGs that use pre-rendered backgrounds?

@AlleywayJack 12 күн бұрын

Sorry I somehow missed this comment. The Pillars of Eternity games are some popular modern examples, but my personal favourite is Disco Elysium, which has a lot of documentary content from the programmers to show how they designed, layered and painted their backgrounds - not a JRPG but a very good game IMO.

@goon_kidd9106 Жыл бұрын

i thought the street scene in ff8 where zells house is located was done extremely well for its time.

@AlleywayJack Жыл бұрын

Yeah! How they pull focus to blur the background as you run through was very cool

@conway2023 Жыл бұрын

I love the Raidou Kuzunoha games for this anesthetic; it's not quite the same, but a similar feeling. The original Yakuza 1 to a lesser extent as well. The main path down the town in Raidou 2 and the main street of Ginza stand out to me.

@natecw4164 Жыл бұрын

Curious what you'd make of the backgrounds in Silver. They were clearly responding to the visual style of FF7. It's an interesting look.

@AlleywayJack Жыл бұрын

I will need to check it out!

@jvdach4652 Жыл бұрын

I'm the opposite, I never really thought the pretendered backgrounds were appealing. I always vastly prefer Pixelsted or dynamic active backgrounds. Good video though.

@Spookyjordan 7 ай бұрын

When you talk about the theme songs to certain areas in ff7 ff8 and ff9 play a 10-15 second snippet of the theme along with the image of that area. Cause if you don’t, you’re just giving people a reason to click off your video and go find it themselves. A large percentage of which won’t return. Don’t give your audience a reason to click off your video.

@mytimetravellingdog 4 ай бұрын

bloody hell, FFX 3d sections look absolutely awful in comparison to pre-rendered stuff. That was a generation too early (and the less said about 12 the better).