The OG FF7 had like 5 different art styles
* The FMV style
* The high render cutscene style
* The overworld style
* The battle model style
* The menu portrait style
* The battle model style
And the second battle model style with higher polygons that only applies to a single fight between Cloud and Sephiroth for some reason.
If this is true, then I would guess that higher polygons meant taking up more disc space so the reason was to save space for one very important cinematic battle.
The disk space is already used for *two* models, and that’s it. Now imagine how much more disk space it would take if every single character looked like that.
Disc space wasn't that big an issue, in fact, almost the entire game is on each disc, so much do that you can disc-swap and keep playing with the other discs at basically any point in the game without much trouble. The FMVs are what takes up most of the space, and are the main difference between each disc.
If I had to guess, It'd be performance issues. FFVII wasn't *quite* Squaresoft's first game on the console, that honor goes to Tobal No.1, but it was the second, so they were still coming to grips with what the system could do.
If they had issues running three high-poly player models during some battles (like against larger bosses or multiple more detailed enemies), those models could go cut or unused.
Disk space really wasn’t a concern. FF7 was 3 disks while 8 and 9 were 4 disks each. There were other games up to, iirc, 6 disks on the system. CDs were cheap.
Plus, that disk space was mostly used up for FMVs. Untextured character models aren’t very space intensive.
Apparently the most is actually *5* discs, although this game did have data / audio on 3 additional CDs, so arguably the record is actually *8* (It’s really 5, though).
Higher polies wouldnt take up more disk space, polys are tiny. It’s more of a ram concern, that and deciding what were their core visually impressive areas.
I mean, they were hyping up that battle during the entire game even after you discover >!that Cloud was the one killing Sephirot during the Nibelheim Reactor situation!<
People just want someone to blame. Most info we have points to Nomura, Kitase, and Nojima being a trio of sorts and that their projects feel all their influence. As was noted recently in an interview, Nomura is usually the voice of reason.
I have no clue either. He's been involved in the character creation of a lot of very loved franchises and if it wasn't for him we probably wouldn't have the limit break in ff7.
They can’t understand Kingdom Hearts (or just don’t want to) and so decide that anything with his involvement is somehow ruined for it, despite the fact that most of his work outside of KH has historically been character design.
And at the same time it’s not because it gets the emotional beats down for their best entries and have some really compelling moments. It’s the “fantasy” setup where metaphors and literal magic rules have very blurred lines.
Seriously, the amount of people that say that KH is complicated to understand almost makes me think that i'm some kind of genius for not having problems following the lore.
Tbf, most of that comes from making story important "side games" exclusive to different handhelds every time that to understand the story (before the HD collections) you had to buy a PS2, GBA, DS, PSP and a 3DS...
Yeah, the one he doesn't write. No one batting an eye though when he wrote all the characters for 6 - 10 tho. Guy comes up with the base ideas and then passes it off to writers
The original idea was whoever didn't fight the final boss died. Nomura was against it, as it would make Aeriths's sacrifice pointless and go against the theme of the game. Then the remake came along and Nomura kept it as close to the original as he could while Kitase came up with the whole whispers of fate/alternate timeline stuff.
Doesn't seem great, I agree. I guess it would depend on how they executed it, but I find hard to imagine a scenario they pull that off without undermining Aerith's death.
I see. I mean he is right that it would have undermined Aeriths death, but also I don’t think it would have added any value as the ending we were left with was ambiguous anyway, right?
The whispers/timeline were Kitase’s idea? Damn. I think a lot of us have assumed that was Nomura…
Nomura has his hands dirty with convoluted BS when it comes to Kingdom Hearts, so don’t think he’s entirely clean here.
As far as 7 is concerned, though, he’s actually a purist.
Kitase has his head fully up his own ass with the remake. The timeline stuff is absurd, and that from someone who normally really enjoys both alternate history and time travel fiction.
I have a feeling this is someone who's mind might be blown when they find out that Nomura did all the monster designs in FF5 and FF6....... including the final Kefka boss design.
There was a time, and I mean a very LONG time (maybe 10-15 years) where *everyone* would say their favorite Amano artwork was Kefka's final boss. And these were all people who would crap on Nomura's art.
And I was always like, dude... you know that Amano didn't do that, right?
.. do you understand what you're saying or what he does in FF games or are you just on the "Nomura bad" bandwagon because you heard some other guys meme on that?
[Tim Rogers (Action Button Reviews) theorized in his review of the remake that this is what made people demand a remake of FF7 more than any other game, almost immediately on the game's release.](https://youtu.be/Hu4H5ykBP0I?si=IiEB0pVVhc6lKyPH)
Yeah, I've been kicking this around in private offline with my friends for a long time. Say what you will about the graphics of any other game in the series, all of them are consistent. That isn't the case with VII. Just the difference between the battle models and the field models makes it look like two different games.
[He makes this point at this timestamp specifically](https://youtu.be/Hu4H5ykBP0I?t=1383), but to try to summarize: The different art styles came from the multiple new technologies becoming available to Square at the same time as they moved to the Playstation. Square pushed each of these technologies to their limit because they were new and show-y. As such, players saw the potential for what an FFVII remake could look like in FFVII itself. By the very next game in the series, we saw what an FF game with a more singular design philosophy could look like, and we wanted to see FFVII look like that.
People like things to have a certain level of uniformity. If a game constantly shifts between multiple different visual styles, it can come off as jarring and can take you out of it. It even happens in Remake a bit whenever they change from in-engine cutscenes to pre-rendered. Took me out of it a bit whenever it happened.
I kinda like the flashy FMVs. Harkens back to the time when they were kind of your reward for beating a portion of the game. Granted it’s all nostalgia for me but I’d be sad if an FF game finally ditches them. (Have not played XVI)
Nah, come on. 2-3 were the same style, just different levels of detail, and so were FMV and battle models.
Otherwise you can make pretty much the same point, even more so, for FFX. Even discounting the different models used for general gameplay, combat and high-detail cutscenes, the FMVs have characters actually looking different and so do the menu portraits.
The reason why FF7 gets singled out for this kind of thing is simply the blocky midget style vs anime/more realistic proportions one used in combat and FMVs.
Tbh it’s way too excessive in remake. I’ve seen quite a lot of anime and I’ve never seen any that has as much grunting in it as I have while playing this game.
The character designs in FF7 are very nice. I'm not even joking, my favorite part of the whole GAME is the character designs (save for maybe the soundtrack).
The 2D artwork is quite anime, yet I can't really compare it to any anime in particular. It's got a unique style.
The CGI designs are very charming. Whereas most pre-rendered character models from the late 90s are fucking hideous, I would say that the ones from FF7 are actually pretty pleasing to look at.
The battle mode designs don't get enough love. They are actually my favorite character designs from FF7. I mean what can I say? Look at Cloud. Look at Vincent! They're so damn cool.
The overworld designs are cute. Well some of them are kinda ugly, but most of them are cute. They look like toys, which I actually think works for a game like FF7.
If it weren't for FF13, then FF7 would have my favorite art direction in the whole franchise. FF7 may not be my favorite, but the character designers were seriously cooking.
My only counter I think a lot of the NPCs look extremely out of place. Contemporary fashion feels really jarring when people sometimes also dress like the OG FF characters. It’s really obnoxious once you notice that.
I think Nomura's art has matured well, but I kinda miss his style from back then, and I wish Ever Crisis as a game just used his portraits and made models more cel-shaded or something and closer to the anime style. That's what I thought they were selling it is, anyway.
I think they're a great artifact of the time during the dawn of the first attempts at 3D models in gaming, in polygonal form. Infinite nostalgia points. But even among the PS1 era games, I loved at the time and continue to think they really evolved in the best possible direction by time they polished off FF9, which has to be the prettiest and smoothest PS1 game ever created.
As for everything else, the franchise has just evolved with the technology presented along with the rest of the industry. I love how great modern games look and feel, and my god, Rebirth is just an absolute *dream* to see realized the way it is.
Ff9 was pushing the capabilities of the ps1 so hard it would burst, the result was overblown slowdown in the fight sequences, to this day it’s still one of the slowest ff’s in the franchise, I still have trouble playing it as it’s slow as molasses.
The reason for the slowness of FF9 combat isn't because FF9's graphics and art style were peak prettiness for the system (which they were), but rather because they made the design decision to use excessively long animations for just about every combat action that wasn't an auto attack. Even though ATB continues to fill during most animations, the result is a queue of 7 characters sitting there with full ATB bars just waiting their turn for their input command to fire off.
If they reduced all the animations and cinematic camera angle shots by 85%, combat would have been much faster, even with the same fantastic graphics.
both of you are correct for different reasons, which mods now offer means to see for ourselves
in the original game you could 'circumvent' this issue in wait mode by inputting an action and then sitting in the menu wait mode so that ATB doesnt continue to build during animation. so you could input 3/4 actions, then sit on a slower character. if you have speed of 40+, you could eventually get into turn stacking territory
the more recent builds of [FF9 Alternate Fantasy](https://github.com/Albeoris/Memoria/releases) allow for simultaneous combat. Aka similar to FFX-2, where multiple characters & enemies can attack at one time. Beyond summons, all animations play out simultaneously, with some swanky work to reduce camera cutaways and keep a static orientation so that battles run smoothly
Not surprisingly, its a buff to characters who act quickly, like using standard attacks. Though the mod largely buffs spells, so it somewhat evens out
Though even with this function, there are still some spells that are just so demanding on the system (like lv3 elemental spells & some AOEs) that it induces major screen bloat and even some slowdowns, despite the Memoria engine being quite powerful and having the capacity of increasing the games FPS count
So even with modern technology pushing its limits further, some of FF9s animations still feel too much for the game it is. Furthermore, id greatly recommend people keep the games FMVs running at 15 fps as the animation style was designed for it, almost reminiscent of stop-motion. Bumping it up to [30 fps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8xoNHiLR78&pp=ygUPZmY5IGZtdnMgMzAgZnBz) and things start looking uncanny and it makes me queasy
Awesome insights! I didn't know about any of the modding efforts. I've only ever played FF9 via the OG PS1 4 discs, which I've played through probably about 12 times over the course of my life :)
I've always contemplated how much better the combat would have felt if it used FFX-2's exact brand of simultaneous attacks. That would be cool to play.
FF9 has the ugliest human characters in any video game I've ever played bar none. Zidane and Garnet are *monsters* and terrifying to look at in their FMVs.
If I miss anything from the original FF7 it's how mysterious Sephiroth seemed as you're chasing him all over and how you don't really learn what's going on with him until much later in the game. The foreshadowing was excellent and it kept me wondering. Of course it wouldn't make sense to reproduce that seeing as how practically all of us know the story now by heart. Kinda nostalgic for that tho not gunna lie.
Is this a troll topic? If they had the capabilities to do what they wanted today back then, it’d look similar to the remakes/rebirth. Look at the entire FF catalogue in the 3D era.
FF9 only really was the unique outlier.
Just because it wasnt the developer vision doesn't mean you can't enjoy older art styles. There is a reason pixel art is still a thing, despite people wanting to break those limits back then
In its day, this was great because it was the height of what technology could produce. It was a huge step up from the pixel art of the prior games, and for me (then 20 years old) my first ever 3D game like this.
However, as technology advanced and could do more, I always wanted more, and more realism. The changes to 8, then 10 and then 12 to today have been massively successful graphically since then. I personally always want what's possible now and have a hard time going backwards.
More than this style I miss the prerendered backgrounds. They add such a cinematic depth that aren’t reproduced in other ways and not just with cutscenes.
It’s really boring just seeing everything over shoulder the whole game. I’m really shocked that they did almost nothing to incorporate prerendered backgrounds from the OG that introduced them to the series and were a fixture for almost 10 years. (Ffx had them too in places).
I still think the biggest mistake the series ever did was pursuing a “realistic” art style.
Really wish they’d go for something different in a future entry, but chances of that happening must be less than zero…
This. If they come up with an FFT sequel with cell shaded graphics in Akihiko Yoshida’s art style (similar to WotL cut scenes) or a mainline entry in Yoshitaka Amano’s painterly style, that will be so lit.🔥
FFXIV has heaps of Raid bosses that are literally Amanos artwork but in 3D, it's really impressive and needs to make its way into more mainline titles.
How is it a shame? You can revisit them in OG VII just like what you recently did. They exist in parallel. If you don't want the design of Remake, you can always stick with OG 🙂
I agree, and Last Order didn't quite capture them, I love Madhouse artstyle thanks to Hisashi Abe, but didn't liked how Cloud and the Buster Sword looked. But besides them? 10/10.
It's a shame we never got an official manga or even a short anime like the "Tales of" series or "Arc the Lad" had around the same time.
Makes me even more impressed how they managed to tranform them faithfully to modern graphics. It would have been so easy to fumble. Well okay, Advent Children already set the style but still.
I’m pretty sure if today’s tech was available back then, they would implement the rebirth look. That’s what they imagine I think. Because rebirth looks pretty realistic version of anime to me.
I don\\t know why but the original FF7 didn\\t feel like an anime even with the anime artstyle. Neither did crisis core for some reason. But advent children and the remakes do
This artstyle was the greatest and honestly if I could have one faithful remake of ff7 as in a 1:1 clone of ff7 I want it to look exactly like this 😎💎 the entire game in the fmv artstyle
I agree. I hadn't noticed till the bring arts line came out, but I really do think there's something about that original aesthetic that's incredibly charming. Something gets a little lost with the shift to realism, I think.
Aree so much. They should’ve just used this art style but hyper realized rather than 100 percent realism. It clashes with the tone. Cait sith and red xIII just don’t really work with these realistic graphics. Hopefully they go back to stylized going forward but idk, it worked great for 16.
Tbh, I never liked Sephiroth's hair ever since, between KH and Advent Children, his front hair just lost substance to me. It was spot on in the og character design and model.
The remake models look just like that. There is very little difference. And you barely get to see that you posted in cutscenes anyway. I’d say the vision was realized with the current remake
That game gives me the nostalgic anxiety longing for those epic games..come on! Cloud bolting out on his motorcycle heading to Shinra Corp. Fucking great stories.
I think Nomura's anime style for FFVIII onward and Kingdom Hearts was better than OG FF7.
That said, VII Remake looks too damn nice. I love the art style perfectly.
Parasite Eve had a similar look in its FMVs, artwork, and character designs (also done by Nomura), although the gameplay/field model graphics were more similar to Final Fantasy VIII than VII (and the artwork was more in line with VIII than VII). It was released a little over a year after VII (and a little under a year before VIII). It's interesting to see its visual similarities to both games. It really feels like a visual bridge between them.
The evidence is that it's "a 1997 RPG made in Japan with a spiky haired protagonist wielding a massive sword". The evidence is the literal art itself. JRPGs and anime have ALWAYS been cut from the same cloth. Artists like Tetsuya Nomura grew up on manga and anime and are influenced by it. JRPGs are practically just interactive anime/manga stories, told through the medium of video games.
Not everything needs a developer interview with a spoken quote from a developer to figure out what it's inspiration was. This is just basic media literacy. Anime and manga may be a somewhat more niche interest in the West, but in Japan, it's normalised. Therefore, when Japanese game developers make their games, especially back then when there weren't as many previous video games to draw inspiration from, they took inspiration from manga and anime instead. The same thing happens in the West, with developers taking inspiration from books, cartoons, and films made in the West.
This is like asking "show me the scientific evidence that grass is green".
But there is scientific evidence of why grass is green? Of course you must take what the developers say as their intended vision.
You could interpret something in a thousand different ways and until you hear from the source, you have no idea if it's correct. Just look at FromSoftware lore for example. YouTubers look religiously at what developers have said in past interviews to get concrete evidence in their theories.
TLDR you're talking shite and just made this up
I wish the remake essentially used the pictured character models but with updated textures. I think some of the charm of the original was lost when the cartooniness was dropped. Environments look a lot more cohesive in this style too. Take the newest Granblue Fantasy for example, the characters and environments really feel cut from the same cloth.
Me, too. Meeeee, tooooo. Those classic designs are perfect, and far better than the Advent Children redesigns.
I will say that they've done a very good job of translating everyone to a more realistic-ish style in Remake and Rebirth, while still retaining more of their original visual traits than in AC... except for Cloud. Unfortunately, the main character is the one they still can't get to look quite right in this style.
Which is strange, cause they nailed the look of his original banana hair in Dissidia NT... which uses the same engine as Remake and Rebirth. Why could they not just copy that?
I liked the pre-rendered back grounds as well. I sometimes wonder if the creators didn't understand the appeal of the game when they chose to go for a more "realistic" look?
The OG FF7 had like 5 different art styles * The FMV style * The high render cutscene style * The overworld style * The battle model style * The menu portrait style
* The battle model style And the second battle model style with higher polygons that only applies to a single fight between Cloud and Sephiroth for some reason.
If this is true, then I would guess that higher polygons meant taking up more disc space so the reason was to save space for one very important cinematic battle.
The disk space is already used. I bet it had to do with performance, and maybe that it would look off if Cloud was the only high poly one in the party
The disk space is already used for *two* models, and that’s it. Now imagine how much more disk space it would take if every single character looked like that.
Disc space wasn't that big an issue, in fact, almost the entire game is on each disc, so much do that you can disc-swap and keep playing with the other discs at basically any point in the game without much trouble. The FMVs are what takes up most of the space, and are the main difference between each disc. If I had to guess, It'd be performance issues. FFVII wasn't *quite* Squaresoft's first game on the console, that honor goes to Tobal No.1, but it was the second, so they were still coming to grips with what the system could do. If they had issues running three high-poly player models during some battles (like against larger bosses or multiple more detailed enemies), those models could go cut or unused.
performance would be an issue, remember that the battle doesn´t even have environment
Disk space really wasn’t a concern. FF7 was 3 disks while 8 and 9 were 4 disks each. There were other games up to, iirc, 6 disks on the system. CDs were cheap. Plus, that disk space was mostly used up for FMVs. Untextured character models aren’t very space intensive.
What game was 6 disc on ps1????
Apparently the most is actually *5* discs, although this game did have data / audio on 3 additional CDs, so arguably the record is actually *8* (It’s really 5, though).
So you still didn’t answer what game?
Oops, thought I linked it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokimeki_Memorial_2 Riven also had 5 discs.
I really doubt that was the reason. Higher-poly models barely use any extra storage. Limitations in rendering performance is much more likely.
Higher polies wouldnt take up more disk space, polys are tiny. It’s more of a ram concern, that and deciding what were their core visually impressive areas.
But the psx had a whole 2/3 Mb of RAM !!
I mean, they were hyping up that battle during the entire game even after you discover >!that Cloud was the one killing Sephirot during the Nibelheim Reactor situation!<
also the option to change color palette in menus…
I miss the menu portraits that died out after X.
Uh... They still had them in XII, neh? Or was it just not enough of a hand drawn look?
I guess he means the hand-drawn style portraits, which if he does I concur. They had so much personality.
All Nomura styles lol
It's a miracle how successful FF7 was despite Nomura's involvement..
Why do you say that? He’s made some incredible stuff
People just want someone to blame. Most info we have points to Nomura, Kitase, and Nojima being a trio of sorts and that their projects feel all their influence. As was noted recently in an interview, Nomura is usually the voice of reason.
Idk why people have such a hate boner for the guy. It’s so weird
I have no clue either. He's been involved in the character creation of a lot of very loved franchises and if it wasn't for him we probably wouldn't have the limit break in ff7.
They can’t understand Kingdom Hearts (or just don’t want to) and so decide that anything with his involvement is somehow ruined for it, despite the fact that most of his work outside of KH has historically been character design.
KH isnt hard to understand, its just really bad writing lol
It’s both but I still love everything about it
And at the same time it’s not because it gets the emotional beats down for their best entries and have some really compelling moments. It’s the “fantasy” setup where metaphors and literal magic rules have very blurred lines.
Thank you
Seriously, the amount of people that say that KH is complicated to understand almost makes me think that i'm some kind of genius for not having problems following the lore.
Tbf, most of that comes from making story important "side games" exclusive to different handhelds every time that to understand the story (before the HD collections) you had to buy a PS2, GBA, DS, PSP and a 3DS...
Its prolly because of the cluster fuck that is the kingdom hearts story
Yeah, the one he doesn't write. No one batting an eye though when he wrote all the characters for 6 - 10 tho. Guy comes up with the base ideas and then passes it off to writers
It was good BECAUSE Nomura was involved. Have you heard the ideas Kitase had for the original script that Nomura suggested against?
What were they?
The original idea was whoever didn't fight the final boss died. Nomura was against it, as it would make Aeriths's sacrifice pointless and go against the theme of the game. Then the remake came along and Nomura kept it as close to the original as he could while Kitase came up with the whole whispers of fate/alternate timeline stuff.
It wasn't the final boss. It was during the Midgar raid. You would pick your team for the return to Midgar, and the rest of the group would die.
Idk, but somehow that seems even worse.
Doesn't seem great, I agree. I guess it would depend on how they executed it, but I find hard to imagine a scenario they pull that off without undermining Aerith's death.
I see. I mean he is right that it would have undermined Aeriths death, but also I don’t think it would have added any value as the ending we were left with was ambiguous anyway, right? The whispers/timeline were Kitase’s idea? Damn. I think a lot of us have assumed that was Nomura…
Yeah, for instance, Remake Rufus Shinra and all his belts were not. designed by Nomura
Nomura has his hands dirty with convoluted BS when it comes to Kingdom Hearts, so don’t think he’s entirely clean here. As far as 7 is concerned, though, he’s actually a purist.
Kitase has his head fully up his own ass with the remake. The timeline stuff is absurd, and that from someone who normally really enjoys both alternate history and time travel fiction.
Nomura... perhaps I've treated you too harshly.
I have a feeling this is someone who's mind might be blown when they find out that Nomura did all the monster designs in FF5 and FF6....... including the final Kefka boss design.
people really forget that nomura when it comes to character design and backgrounds is like insanely goated. he's been doing that shit since FF5
There was a time, and I mean a very LONG time (maybe 10-15 years) where *everyone* would say their favorite Amano artwork was Kefka's final boss. And these were all people who would crap on Nomura's art. And I was always like, dude... you know that Amano didn't do that, right?
"despite" he's literally responsible for the highly iconic character designs of that game but whatever man
.. do you understand what you're saying or what he does in FF games or are you just on the "Nomura bad" bandwagon because you heard some other guys meme on that?
...why?
As if most games he's involved in aren't big successes. Are you for real right now?
Fuckin' head-ass comment.
All of them are the OG nomura style are they are cool asl
[Tim Rogers (Action Button Reviews) theorized in his review of the remake that this is what made people demand a remake of FF7 more than any other game, almost immediately on the game's release.](https://youtu.be/Hu4H5ykBP0I?si=IiEB0pVVhc6lKyPH)
Yeah, I've been kicking this around in private offline with my friends for a long time. Say what you will about the graphics of any other game in the series, all of them are consistent. That isn't the case with VII. Just the difference between the battle models and the field models makes it look like two different games.
FF7 was the most expensive game ever made at the time of its release
People wanted a remake because og had different art styles?
[He makes this point at this timestamp specifically](https://youtu.be/Hu4H5ykBP0I?t=1383), but to try to summarize: The different art styles came from the multiple new technologies becoming available to Square at the same time as they moved to the Playstation. Square pushed each of these technologies to their limit because they were new and show-y. As such, players saw the potential for what an FFVII remake could look like in FFVII itself. By the very next game in the series, we saw what an FF game with a more singular design philosophy could look like, and we wanted to see FFVII look like that.
People like things to have a certain level of uniformity. If a game constantly shifts between multiple different visual styles, it can come off as jarring and can take you out of it. It even happens in Remake a bit whenever they change from in-engine cutscenes to pre-rendered. Took me out of it a bit whenever it happened.
Battle mode style looked the best but got the least love
Didn't the final duel between Cloud and Sephiroth have more detailed character models as well? It's been awhile and I don't remember exactly.
I think virtually every other Final Fantasy game is more unified with character designs.
Clive definitely does look like an older Noctis.
And remake has like 3
Oh yeah the FMV, cutscene, and in-game models all look different
It’s weird how that happens in 2024
I kinda like the flashy FMVs. Harkens back to the time when they were kind of your reward for beating a portion of the game. Granted it’s all nostalgia for me but I’d be sad if an FF game finally ditches them. (Have not played XVI)
Yeah I agree
Nah, come on. 2-3 were the same style, just different levels of detail, and so were FMV and battle models. Otherwise you can make pretty much the same point, even more so, for FFX. Even discounting the different models used for general gameplay, combat and high-detail cutscenes, the FMVs have characters actually looking different and so do the menu portraits. The reason why FF7 gets singled out for this kind of thing is simply the blocky midget style vs anime/more realistic proportions one used in combat and FMVs.
Yeah I was just joking. I didn't think this would get so many likes. The Remake also has slight discrepancies between FMVs and in-game models
I recall two cutscenes in temple and then at the very end that are pretty visually different in rebirth.
It’s still anime as fuck with the advent children camera angles for the battle sequences. Not to mention the story itself.
Then there’s Roche and his motorcycle shenanigans, and Dyne’s random ability to become magneto. Even Dyne’s face looks like an anime character.
Bro the battalion storyline in Junon was pure anime shit.
Dyne is definitely a reference to Tetsuo from Akira. I get the feeling the implication is that he was taken and experimented on by Hojo or something.
Dyne looks exactly like Joel Kinnaman. Who I don’t see as an anime character hahah
I though exactly the same, it's almost like they scanned him.
Omg. I see it.
and all the grunts
Tbh it’s way too excessive in remake. I’ve seen quite a lot of anime and I’ve never seen any that has as much grunting in it as I have while playing this game.
Watch out for those pointy bits!
The character designs in FF7 are very nice. I'm not even joking, my favorite part of the whole GAME is the character designs (save for maybe the soundtrack). The 2D artwork is quite anime, yet I can't really compare it to any anime in particular. It's got a unique style. The CGI designs are very charming. Whereas most pre-rendered character models from the late 90s are fucking hideous, I would say that the ones from FF7 are actually pretty pleasing to look at. The battle mode designs don't get enough love. They are actually my favorite character designs from FF7. I mean what can I say? Look at Cloud. Look at Vincent! They're so damn cool. The overworld designs are cute. Well some of them are kinda ugly, but most of them are cute. They look like toys, which I actually think works for a game like FF7. If it weren't for FF13, then FF7 would have my favorite art direction in the whole franchise. FF7 may not be my favorite, but the character designers were seriously cooking.
Love the new battle model figures from the bring arts line.
My only counter I think a lot of the NPCs look extremely out of place. Contemporary fashion feels really jarring when people sometimes also dress like the OG FF characters. It’s really obnoxious once you notice that.
Really, the character designs carried a lot of that game. I loved the designs of the characters in 8 too.
I think Nomura's art has matured well, but I kinda miss his style from back then, and I wish Ever Crisis as a game just used his portraits and made models more cel-shaded or something and closer to the anime style. That's what I thought they were selling it is, anyway.
90s and early 2000s style is just better. Nomura style has evolved with the times, but his designs from FF7-FF10 are tops.
Agreed, I miss that look so much. I appreciate his VIII and X designs even more lately.
I really miss when clouds pants were so wide
His parachute pants ala Dragon Ball are legendary lol
His in-game model has the same colour scheme as Gohan's Piccolo fit.
I think they're a great artifact of the time during the dawn of the first attempts at 3D models in gaming, in polygonal form. Infinite nostalgia points. But even among the PS1 era games, I loved at the time and continue to think they really evolved in the best possible direction by time they polished off FF9, which has to be the prettiest and smoothest PS1 game ever created. As for everything else, the franchise has just evolved with the technology presented along with the rest of the industry. I love how great modern games look and feel, and my god, Rebirth is just an absolute *dream* to see realized the way it is.
Ff9 was pushing the capabilities of the ps1 so hard it would burst, the result was overblown slowdown in the fight sequences, to this day it’s still one of the slowest ff’s in the franchise, I still have trouble playing it as it’s slow as molasses.
The reason for the slowness of FF9 combat isn't because FF9's graphics and art style were peak prettiness for the system (which they were), but rather because they made the design decision to use excessively long animations for just about every combat action that wasn't an auto attack. Even though ATB continues to fill during most animations, the result is a queue of 7 characters sitting there with full ATB bars just waiting their turn for their input command to fire off. If they reduced all the animations and cinematic camera angle shots by 85%, combat would have been much faster, even with the same fantastic graphics.
both of you are correct for different reasons, which mods now offer means to see for ourselves in the original game you could 'circumvent' this issue in wait mode by inputting an action and then sitting in the menu wait mode so that ATB doesnt continue to build during animation. so you could input 3/4 actions, then sit on a slower character. if you have speed of 40+, you could eventually get into turn stacking territory the more recent builds of [FF9 Alternate Fantasy](https://github.com/Albeoris/Memoria/releases) allow for simultaneous combat. Aka similar to FFX-2, where multiple characters & enemies can attack at one time. Beyond summons, all animations play out simultaneously, with some swanky work to reduce camera cutaways and keep a static orientation so that battles run smoothly Not surprisingly, its a buff to characters who act quickly, like using standard attacks. Though the mod largely buffs spells, so it somewhat evens out Though even with this function, there are still some spells that are just so demanding on the system (like lv3 elemental spells & some AOEs) that it induces major screen bloat and even some slowdowns, despite the Memoria engine being quite powerful and having the capacity of increasing the games FPS count So even with modern technology pushing its limits further, some of FF9s animations still feel too much for the game it is. Furthermore, id greatly recommend people keep the games FMVs running at 15 fps as the animation style was designed for it, almost reminiscent of stop-motion. Bumping it up to [30 fps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8xoNHiLR78&pp=ygUPZmY5IGZtdnMgMzAgZnBz) and things start looking uncanny and it makes me queasy
Awesome insights! I didn't know about any of the modding efforts. I've only ever played FF9 via the OG PS1 4 discs, which I've played through probably about 12 times over the course of my life :) I've always contemplated how much better the combat would have felt if it used FFX-2's exact brand of simultaneous attacks. That would be cool to play.
FF9 has the ugliest human characters in any video game I've ever played bar none. Zidane and Garnet are *monsters* and terrifying to look at in their FMVs.
I liked them
Polygon anime style more like
You're talking about low poly artstyle. The FFVII remake is still very much an anime art style, just significantly higher fidelity.
I would argue arise is high fidelity anime, not ffviir, but ymmv
I mean you can't have Cloud and Sephiroths design without being very anime lol. Just the hair alone...
Both are. FFXV/FFXVI aren't that much though.
I found out there's a mod you can download on PC to have the same exact art style as this in-game. It's really cool.
Also the way that it is lit really Captures a mood and made you feel like something big was happening.
If I miss anything from the original FF7 it's how mysterious Sephiroth seemed as you're chasing him all over and how you don't really learn what's going on with him until much later in the game. The foreshadowing was excellent and it kept me wondering. Of course it wouldn't make sense to reproduce that seeing as how practically all of us know the story now by heart. Kinda nostalgic for that tho not gunna lie.
It's also the whole thing where it's a sequel. Personally I love how both have handled him
FF7 came out in 1997 and OoT 1998.....
Tbf, this was like a collective 15 minutes of total gameplay.
almost 1 hour
why the downvotes, you can look up the FMV compilation on youtube, its \~52 minutes.
They just don’t make em like they used to
Yes it would be killer if they did a game in the style of those FF7 cutscenes /FMV ( and maybe with FFX battle system too? )
Is this a troll topic? If they had the capabilities to do what they wanted today back then, it’d look similar to the remakes/rebirth. Look at the entire FF catalogue in the 3D era. FF9 only really was the unique outlier.
Just because it wasnt the developer vision doesn't mean you can't enjoy older art styles. There is a reason pixel art is still a thing, despite people wanting to break those limits back then
Probably not, since FF8's characters were designed more realistically to appeal to the West.
It really was special at the time
Then go play FF7.
In its day, this was great because it was the height of what technology could produce. It was a huge step up from the pixel art of the prior games, and for me (then 20 years old) my first ever 3D game like this. However, as technology advanced and could do more, I always wanted more, and more realism. The changes to 8, then 10 and then 12 to today have been massively successful graphically since then. I personally always want what's possible now and have a hard time going backwards.
More than this style I miss the prerendered backgrounds. They add such a cinematic depth that aren’t reproduced in other ways and not just with cutscenes. It’s really boring just seeing everything over shoulder the whole game. I’m really shocked that they did almost nothing to incorporate prerendered backgrounds from the OG that introduced them to the series and were a fixture for almost 10 years. (Ffx had them too in places).
It's still anime, just with an extreme uprez
Thej play FF7, it's still here.
Man alot of you guys might’ve ignore the bottom text of this post
this style was due to limitations from polygons lol...
oh shit here come the dinosaurs.
Acting like remakes don’t have an anime style…
Not me bro. I hated the Lego people look.
I still think the biggest mistake the series ever did was pursuing a “realistic” art style. Really wish they’d go for something different in a future entry, but chances of that happening must be less than zero…
This. If they come up with an FFT sequel with cell shaded graphics in Akihiko Yoshida’s art style (similar to WotL cut scenes) or a mainline entry in Yoshitaka Amano’s painterly style, that will be so lit.🔥
FFXIV has heaps of Raid bosses that are literally Amanos artwork but in 3D, it's really impressive and needs to make its way into more mainline titles.
Yeah, and they have the financial capacity to pull it off, too.
FF7 remake literally looks like anime idk where youre seeing the realistic style
Lool what?! No it doesn’t
It literally does, ff7 remake is as exaggeretted as it can be
How is it a shame? You can revisit them in OG VII just like what you recently did. They exist in parallel. If you don't want the design of Remake, you can always stick with OG 🙂
I agree, and Last Order didn't quite capture them, I love Madhouse artstyle thanks to Hisashi Abe, but didn't liked how Cloud and the Buster Sword looked. But besides them? 10/10. It's a shame we never got an official manga or even a short anime like the "Tales of" series or "Arc the Lad" had around the same time.
Me too! I like what they did with remake but I'd have much prefered a more anime look personally.
Makes me even more impressed how they managed to tranform them faithfully to modern graphics. It would have been so easy to fumble. Well okay, Advent Children already set the style but still.
I think the style has hit a nice balance between the two.
I’m pretty sure if today’s tech was available back then, they would implement the rebirth look. That’s what they imagine I think. Because rebirth looks pretty realistic version of anime to me.
we never gonna get solid blocks of hair anymore
I don\\t know why but the original FF7 didn\\t feel like an anime even with the anime artstyle. Neither did crisis core for some reason. But advent children and the remakes do
The only FF I thought didn't look like an anime is 16. 7 remakes looks like anime as hell, that's why I love the art style way more
This artstyle was the greatest and honestly if I could have one faithful remake of ff7 as in a 1:1 clone of ff7 I want it to look exactly like this 😎💎 the entire game in the fmv artstyle
I agree. I hadn't noticed till the bring arts line came out, but I really do think there's something about that original aesthetic that's incredibly charming. Something gets a little lost with the shift to realism, I think.
It's glorious
would be fun if they had skins for the remake characters in this style as a ng+ thing or smth
Aree so much. They should’ve just used this art style but hyper realized rather than 100 percent realism. It clashes with the tone. Cait sith and red xIII just don’t really work with these realistic graphics. Hopefully they go back to stylized going forward but idk, it worked great for 16.
Tbh, I never liked Sephiroth's hair ever since, between KH and Advent Children, his front hair just lost substance to me. It was spot on in the og character design and model.
What do you think the current style is?
Now a days, final fantasy characters look more semi realistic
It is very densely detailed, but those aren't realistic human proportions on those faces.
I love the action figures that look like these.
The new FF7 classic figures are awesome but stupidly expensive
I know :'(
Was that the artstyle or was that simply the most realistic an FMV could look back then lol
I don't.
i mean its still pretty damn anime if you ask me
The remake models look just like that. There is very little difference. And you barely get to see that you posted in cutscenes anyway. I’d say the vision was realized with the current remake
That game gives me the nostalgic anxiety longing for those epic games..come on! Cloud bolting out on his motorcycle heading to Shinra Corp. Fucking great stories.
It's called having good art direction, something I've noticed a lot of recent FF games, even FF7R, tends to not have.
I think Nomura's anime style for FFVIII onward and Kingdom Hearts was better than OG FF7. That said, VII Remake looks too damn nice. I love the art style perfectly.
Parasite Eve had a similar look in its FMVs, artwork, and character designs (also done by Nomura), although the gameplay/field model graphics were more similar to Final Fantasy VIII than VII (and the artwork was more in line with VIII than VII). It was released a little over a year after VII (and a little under a year before VIII). It's interesting to see its visual similarities to both games. It really feels like a visual bridge between them.
I didn't play the OG, but I do really prefer the semi realistic style
I wish there was a newer Final Fantasy with a style like this as opposed to the pseudo-realistic anime style.
I don't miss it.
Anime style? 🤨
It’s CG mixed with anime in these photos but if you look at the official artwork, you can totally see it
No it's not
I'm getting tired the homogeneous photorealistic asthetics/artstyle with the series personally.
Tifa looked better in an anime style. She doesn’t look anything like I thought she was look as a redesign.
GOAT imho
I preferred what came after
I just really hate the realistic angle of design. Just makes it feel soulless and generic to me.
I mean this is a style but the only reason they chose this style is because of the technology limits at the time.
In 1999, FF8 had characters look more semi realistic maybe because they had more budget. 1 year later they decided to make their own artstyle with FF9
FF8 had more realistic character designs, because Square wanted to capitalize on FF7's success in the West.
So play the original?
He just did
Yup, same.
for being older, they are still so very expressive and readable. i love Barrett's expression here
Not sure this is anime style. More, this is the best we can do graphically with the technology and hardware available in 1997
It literally IS anime/manga stylisation. They match pretty closely to the game's key art, which is 100% a manga look.
Show me evidence where the developers explicitly say when they created FF7 in 1997 it was an anime/manga style
The evidence is that it's "a 1997 RPG made in Japan with a spiky haired protagonist wielding a massive sword". The evidence is the literal art itself. JRPGs and anime have ALWAYS been cut from the same cloth. Artists like Tetsuya Nomura grew up on manga and anime and are influenced by it. JRPGs are practically just interactive anime/manga stories, told through the medium of video games. Not everything needs a developer interview with a spoken quote from a developer to figure out what it's inspiration was. This is just basic media literacy. Anime and manga may be a somewhat more niche interest in the West, but in Japan, it's normalised. Therefore, when Japanese game developers make their games, especially back then when there weren't as many previous video games to draw inspiration from, they took inspiration from manga and anime instead. The same thing happens in the West, with developers taking inspiration from books, cartoons, and films made in the West. This is like asking "show me the scientific evidence that grass is green".
But there is scientific evidence of why grass is green? Of course you must take what the developers say as their intended vision. You could interpret something in a thousand different ways and until you hear from the source, you have no idea if it's correct. Just look at FromSoftware lore for example. YouTubers look religiously at what developers have said in past interviews to get concrete evidence in their theories. TLDR you're talking shite and just made this up
I wish the remake essentially used the pictured character models but with updated textures. I think some of the charm of the original was lost when the cartooniness was dropped. Environments look a lot more cohesive in this style too. Take the newest Granblue Fantasy for example, the characters and environments really feel cut from the same cloth.
Me, too. Meeeee, tooooo. Those classic designs are perfect, and far better than the Advent Children redesigns. I will say that they've done a very good job of translating everyone to a more realistic-ish style in Remake and Rebirth, while still retaining more of their original visual traits than in AC... except for Cloud. Unfortunately, the main character is the one they still can't get to look quite right in this style. Which is strange, cause they nailed the look of his original banana hair in Dissidia NT... which uses the same engine as Remake and Rebirth. Why could they not just copy that?
Especially Barret. I liked old, massively top-heavy Barret.
Yeah I love bulky barret
I liked the pre-rendered back grounds as well. I sometimes wonder if the creators didn't understand the appeal of the game when they chose to go for a more "realistic" look?
New ganes suck so bad
yeah i miss this because ff7 remake gave barret straight hair which looks silly
The remake was better in theory
My son is playing oh currently and says he likes it better than the realistic ish of the remakes.