That's why Resident Evil Remake for me is a timeless piece of art. That pre rendered background mixed with gothic horror atmosphere and lighting is still gorgeous to this day.
This makes me thing about the conversation in FFX's where the camera followed Tidus when he crossed the bridge. It looks amazing, and makes you see the grandiose temple as the director intended.
Disco Elysium, Fantasian, Pillars of Eternity and *_Tides of Numenera_* all prove that pre-rendered backgrounds in modern games can function and look beautiful at the same time. 😎👍
@@qrowthebird7496you're definitely right, Fantasian's dioramas truly are unique, but I would say it definitely still falls under the pre-rendered background umbrella. In game they are basically photographs/still images of the real life diorama.
I wish square enix will make these type of backgrounds again, especially the power of consoles now they can make beautiful bigger towns and dungeons with pre rendering style and also the combat make it turn base or atb but with interactivity. I wish the next ff will be like this
@@randomdude1656YES !!! They could just evolve what they already had !!! A 3d environnent will never be as special as a pré rendered one. I feel truly sad about this style
FYI: The Pillars of Eternity CRPGs released in 2015 and 2018 used pre-rendered backgrounds, so it's not entirely a lost art. Of course, those games were deliberate throwbacks to late 90s / early 00s CRPGs that also used pre-rendered assets, and the target audience was very much onboard with that.
What about the “hd-2d” games like octopath traveler? I’d also consider the diorama styling of Fantasian to be a modern take on the pre-rendered background
Problem with the Fantasian approach is how it has to change angles on the same map. It's a bit clunky. It would be better if done with digital dioramas.
DQ3 remake is the only time I've really liked the HD-2D look, every other game that does it goes way too hard with filters and visuals, where as I'd be kind of happy to have something visually more plain and visually readable, something games don't really like to be anymore.
They do cover Fantasian near the end of the video. The HD-2D style, while not what Mike is advocating for, is probably my favourite modern style of approaching graphics. Fell in love with it in Triangle Strategy, felt that Octopath 2 perfected it, absolutely stunning game
@ yeah, I clearly hadn’t gotten there when I wrote out my comment, lol. I guess they specifically want a mat painting as the background, full stop, nothing else. I think the hd-2d stuff is a great evolution from the 16-bit rpgs, and it’s getting better with every iteration. I think the Fantasian approach is an excellent evolution of the mat paintings, and I hope it has a chance to be refined as well.
Not just pre-rendered backgrounds, but set camera locations. Metaphor Refantazio often had great locations highlighted by an auteur-ish camera framing that followed the character rather than be controlled by the player. FF12 has some of the best visuals and aesthetics in final fantasy but its ruined by a very bland third person centered camera. Clearly we need the first Kojima Strand like JRPG to bring cinematography back to the genre.
The variable camera angles are a problem. I think that there's a big difference in morale for the art team when you're talking about details that every player will see, versus, things that you have to fill in because the camera will sweep in that direction and if there's anything missing it will be noticeable, but maybe 20-60% of the viewing audience will ever actually look. Especially if you want to say, as a project, "We aspire to the highest quality in everything we do." Making work that needs to be perfect but nobody will care about, is a good way to burn out your visual design staff and your visual QA staff, not to mention causing friction between the two. "Hey we just noticed this thing 1% of the audience may find, fix it or the game isn't perfect, and we aspire to perfection." How many man-hours go into models and textures that have to be there and therefore have to be perfect, that nobody will ever care about? How does that influence the overall cost of the games? How does it influence how much people want to remain in game dev after working on a project like that?
I was thinking about this yesterday. As much as I love the art direction of FF12, I remember very little of actually navigating the environment due to the camera and the fact that you were just running around these massive environments on flat ground all the time. By contrast, FF7 and 9 had unforgettable pre-rendered environments that really made you feel a sense of scale.
I actually really enjoyed you guys getting into the weeds on the whole CGI single frame rendering topic, fascinating stuff. Never shy away from the tangents that come about, that's where the kernels of greatness lie!
Both Parasite Eve II and Legend of Dragoon nailed the pre-rendered backgrounds, especially LoDs depiction of water in cities and moving in and around Akropolis Tower in PE2.
I also love the transitions to prerendered animated sequences with those backgrounds. I was recently playing Star Ocean Second Story on PS1 and then R on PS5 back to back. There’s a scene where Rena opens a hidden door in a mansion that moves a bookshelf out of the way. The pre-rendered version of that to this day looks better than the 3D modeled environment. There is just some magic in that which I couldn’t explain, but I think you guys are doing a great job explaining that here.
Sadly (and maybe ironically) a lot of these pre-rendered backgrounds from the era weren't preserved properly and as such most games with these backgrounds that looked really nice in their time are trapped at a low resolution where the spell is basically broken when viewed on modern displays. It makes me wonder if these companies kept their assets from back then and were able to re-render their backgrounds would more people playing these games for the first time today not think of the practice as "outdated."
What a coincidence that I started playing FFX for the first time in 20 years two days ago and my first thought running through the confined areas was “this would have made much more sense with pre-rendered backgrounds.”
I hope you are using the Moguri Mod ! I have only watched the beginning of the video and they haven't mentionned it while showing videos where it was used.
Similar to the beauty of 80s and 90s anime aesthetic, there was a certain appeal brought forth by technical limitations of the time that lead to very interesting and unique direction and style of entertainment from that era. Modern stuff has its own appeal, but most everything has been ironed out to look very clean, neat and presentable.
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Gran Turismo 7 Scapes is an example of a modern pre-rendered background implementation. To me this is a good example of how this technique would work in a modern game.
Leaving a comment for the algorithm and express my gratitude for all the discussions you guys shared with us. I'm going through a tough time right now and your discussions make life more bearable. Thank you.
In the time of balooning budgets and years of development time that often go to waste, pre-rendered backgrounds would provide a nice cost-saving measure to make games beautiful without having to take YEARS and HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS to be made.
One of my favorite "modern" uses of this sort of technique is in Bravely Default/Second. Absolutely beautiful cities and backgrounds in that game...That being said, the reason this went away is because most of the time if a director wants to show something specific and be in control of the view they just do a cut scene. there are open world games still these days, but cutscenes are not at all uncommon.
I've come to terms with my millennial brain being damaged beyond repair, where PS1 graphics just look drop dead gorgeous to my eyes. Call me blinded by nostalgia if you want but maybe I wouldn't be blinded if they didn't shine so brilliantly. The last three games Squaresoft put out on PS1 after mastering the architecture were FFIX, Chrono Cross, and Vagrant Story, three of the most visually beautiful games to release for the console. Going back to FF7 for a sec, the pre-rendered backgrounds are probably a big reason why the marketing for the game was so strong and set up to succeed. Almost any screenshot you post from the game looks like a work of art because these backgrounds ARE works of art. That's something you can't do with the newer games just by virtue of being able to control the camera freely, you could point it directly up at the skybox, straight down at the ground, or on a close-up of certain bad textures and you've got bad screenshots that don't indicate anything about the game's visual quality. I think the last moderately sized JRPG I played that did the old-school genre conventions really brilliantly was Tales of Vesperia, Of the 3 Tales games I've played Berseria has a better story and characters and Arise probably has the most in common with Xenogears but Vesperia to me has a better overall presentation and execution. I mean I love the Persona games but they have their own type of design philosophy that's not entirely indicative of the classics of the genre. Same could be said for Xenoblade which I also love. It seems like unless it's indie RPGs specifically designed to be throwbacks no one has the confidence to make these types of games with these classic conventions and high production values.
I do appreciate low-poly art and truly exceptional examples like Vagrant Story are incredible. And it's a little unfair in comparison that the Moguri upscales were used to showcase FF9 against a Xenogears that wasn't benefiting from crisper resolution and PSX render corrections from Duckstation, and I would say that there are towns in this style of game like Xenogears and Grandia that are very beautiful and packed with detail of their own kind. That said, as someone who has studied concept art design and is a huge enthusiast of the history of that craft, from Syd Mead's Blade Runner art to Feng Zhu's incredible designs for the Star Wars Prequels, a lot of the work in FF7-9 sits among the highest greats of the artform, most particularly the incomparable environment design language of FF8. Throwing that entire artform away because the PS2 could render slightly more polygons was a huge mistake and a shame
"What are the benefits of pre-rendered backgrounds?" You know how Resident Evil 1 Remake looked like it came out in 2012 instead of 2002? Well, there ya go.
I see a lot of comments like this and it's kind of a Mandela effect - the reason REmake looks so good is because it was remastered with HD backgrounds in 2015. The Gamecube original from 2002 looked good for its time, but not that good.
One of the best games on the PS1 for pre-rendered backgrounds is Legend of Dragoon. Despite how its over shadowed by giants like Final Fantasy and Persona, this was probably one of the best examples of just massive scale and detail being put into the backgrounds.
This might be an unpopular view, especially considering the platform, but I think mobile games could really benefit from high quality pre-rendered backgrounds. I still don't understand why mobile games don't take advantage of pre-rendered backgrounds. It would be the perfect platform.
That would require garbage mobile game companies to hire artists to draw beautiful images, which would impact their gatcha-game making soulless bottom line.
I think about pre-rendered backgrounds a lot for two reasons. One is what you guys pointed out, about how a scene can be directed better and allow more artistic intention and more beautiful images to be put into games. But then there's the other thing that I think about which is to run the same renders that they used 30 years ago to make the pre-rendered backgrounds but run them in real time with free moving camera since modern devices can do that. Most of those assets are lost to time but it would be amazing to be able to access the render of Balamb Garden, for example, and walk around it.
I just played through every numbered MGS game. When my brother and I are playing games, our dad will often pop in, watch a little bit, ask some questions, etc. While I was playing the climax of MGS4, he said something to the effect of "Wow, the graphics look a lot better than the first game," and I went, "You think so?" 😂 Even though MGS1 doesn't have pre-rendered backgrounds, he would say the same about MGS4 in comparison to FFIX or any game pre-PS3 era. I much prefer the way PSOne games look. Especially games with pre-rendered backgrounds. My favorite consoles in terms of graphics are honestly the SNES, PSOne, and PS2. I feel like the art style and world are more strongly displayed in pre-rendered areas; you can pack a lot more character into them.
I'm currently replaying FF9 and still to this day can't get over how stunningly beautiful those backgrounds are. I love the point you brought up about pre-rendered backgrounds giving the artist more control over how the story is told. I never thought about that before (and in a nutshell, that's part of what makes this channel so great).
Final Fantasy VII Remake seems to use a pre-rendered background for the Midgar plate above the slums and it looks amazing. The only modern game I can think of that used pre-rendering in any capacity.
Yeah. Rebirth is open world so you cannot do that anymore. But they use mesh shaders (similar to UE5's nanite but instead of a software solution it is a hardware solution which is why old graphics card cannot run Rebirth) which is a really good piece of new tech and the distant terrain looks incredibly detailed because of it. Currently playing it on PC and it is some of the best distant terrain I have ever seen in a game. The rocky formations, mountains and buildings look incredibly detailed. Junon was a highlight for me, seeing it from a distance and then being able to go there and see it up close is truly something. Mesh Shaders is a piece of tech which excites me more than ray tracing tbh. It is demanding however, and the PS5 version had to hold it back and hence causing a lot of pop-in. But on PC with ultra background geometry detail it looks very very good. Pre-rendered backgrounds are a thing of the past now. It's really not necessary with current tech. Though if a game is a linear game like Remake, I don't see a reason not to use it.
Those aren't really the pre-rendered backgrounds that they are discussing here. Those are more commonly referred to as "Sky box" background images. Essentially, whenever the player is in an open environment and they can see beyond the explorable terrain, there will be a high quality image of a sky or horizon that is used for the background. This is most commonly done to simulate the sky, so it was nicknamed a "skybox". What's essentially happening is that the player's explorable terrain actually inside a 3D cube and the sky box image is painted on all sides of the cube to give the feeling that the playable space extends far beyond what it actually is, making the world feel bigger than it is. But really that skybox image of the horizon or skyline is just a high quality image that the player can't reach. Basically every modern 3D game uses it unless the player is in an enclosed space like a castle or a cave. Like FFX through FFXVI all use skyboxes in the outside environment in the same way as games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spiderman, FF7R, etc. FF7 Remake's skyboxes just needed to be a bit more artistic because it had to show Midgar's upper plate or the Shinra tower as part of the "sky" that the player can look towards from the ground sometimes. What the Resonant Arc guys are talking about in this episode with Pre-rendered backgrounds is where the background image itself serves as the actual environment the player navigates the character on. A 2D image that simulates a fixed camera angle of a 3D environment for the player to move through.
thats a skybox. other modern video games uses them too but its more commonly used for well, skies. ff7remake used the midgar plates as skybox because it is the sky of the sectors. they used the same technique when the gang was on the plates and you could see the sectors below. but you are kind of right, its a sort of pre-rendered background. it is, but its not, if you get what i mean.. problem with sky boxes though are, because they are just meant to be just skies or looked from afar, they tend to not be hd enough. even 7remake had the issue before where the said skyboxes are too pixelated, they fixed it through updates but it was there
I have been saying this for years, and so glad you're tackling this topic. I miss prerendered backgrounds. Not only the detail they could capture, but the way they could frame certain shots. Low angles to capture mood, high angles for easier exploration etc. In the right type of game they are just ideal.
This reminds me of how I would look at a game trailer and think how beautiful the game looks vs me actually playing the game and it's only a fraction of that beauty, mostly because I'm searching for an objective and not looking at the beauty of the game in itself
There should be more fixed-camera games. But making it pre-rendered has a lot of drawbacks in modern game dev: 1. Game engines are designed to have 3D Space in mind. It takes extra effort to "walk" on 2D backgrounds. This is likely why Fantasian did projection mapping instead of FF7-9 style. 2. You're limited to only be able to PAN the camera unless you bake the transitions into FMVs 3. Interacting with pre-rendered objects is a lot more work and games these days are MUCH more interactive than PS1 games. 4. The time to make the pre-rendered assets look good enough to be worth it would be a lot (and I don't think most indie devs are skilled at the level where they could really take advantage of it) 5. It doesn't age as well when better hardware is available (we can see it now in remastered PS1 games). Resolution, lighting, textures, new tech will be easier if you don't have to reexport every pre-rendered image. Fixed camera in real time can give you most of the advantages without any of those drawbacks. And they can have much higher fidelity than movable camera games (because you don't have to worry about the player choosing a camera angle that has a lot of different objects in it). There are a lot of fixed camera games across several genres: A Short Hike, Songs of Glimmerwick, Mario 3D World (although that IS over a decade old), Baldur's Gate 3, Diablo, etc, but there should be way more. And the Towns in FF7 Rebirth are incredibly detailed, I couldn't believe it. Not a fan of some of the narrative choices (as you'd expect), but it does feel like a living breathing world.
My God, thank you for mentioning that Cinematography and Photography require different sets of skills. I relate, because I was a video editor throughout my career, yet I was continuously asked by my superiors to create print ads. No matter how much I would tell them that I wasn't a graphic designer and I didn't have those skills, they would persist. It always came out looking like garbage. Sometimes, it would actually go to print, much to my embarrassment. Other times, they would come to their senses and have the actual graphic-designer create it. I'm stellar at what I do. Let the people who are stellar at what they do handle what they know.
Want to some see great pre rendered background in a modern game? Check out the indie game "Legrand legacy". You guys fogot to list one major advantage. It could cut down game development time. You won't have to wait 5-10 years between installments of games in your favorite series. I believe the switch from pre rendered backgrounds to fully rendered is one of the major causes of blown up development times. moving forward from PS1/PS2 era to PS3 era. The correlation is there.
I really loved you getting into the juicy details to justify your recommendation. A lot of these things I knew about in the abstract but you providing some solid examples and comparisons that gave much better context for how this tech works and how it's changed.
Dude, yes! I've been thinking this for a while now. Pre-rendered backgrounds can look so gorgeous without needing to be able to turn the camera. It's a bit similar to the Open-World vs. Linear-World discussion. You give up the freedom of control to show just a single scene. But by doing that, the player gets to see everything that he NEEDS to see. A single scene is also easier to read because there is just less to look at than a full 3D environment. And the game director can set the scene in a way that conveys the emotions they intended the player to feel. Not that this is impossible in 3D environments, just look at the FromSoft games for example, but it would be a lot tougher to fully model Lindblum from FF9 without sacrificing some of that wonder that you get from the Backgrounds. Can't wait for you to analyze FF9 btw. Really looking forward to that
I'm one of the game developers who are following you and I freaking love pre-rendered backgrounds. I think that making pre-rendered background is incredible expansive and that's the main reason developers won't do it. The Studios who have the money, do something else that is more promising. If we would ever have the budget, we would make a pre-rendered background RPG. So buy our game when it comes out this year that we can make pre-rendered backrounds 😅
This, I was wondering if someone would point this out, and I guess what they were referring to is AAA games, cause indies would probably go with painted backgrounds instead, which is something you still get on Hidden Object games like the ones by Artifex Mundi.
@@Windraesa to make them look really good you need many 3d models. all of them need to be modeled and if you do it like in final fantay 9 you need maaaaany backgrounds and all of them are unique (I don't know how many backgrounds the game has but my guess would be about 500-600?). yeah sure here and there you can reuse a prop of a barell or something like it but in general every screen needs a lot of 3d modeling. you also need artist just for the lighting, for the background animations, concept arts, special fx and so. final fantasy 7-9 also had the benefit of not having to be 1080p (which needs even more details). For every game type that isn't made anymore was a time frame where it made financially sense. During the PS1 era, prerendered backgrounds worked because it was the best we could have, so most players bought it. Development costs where smaller, there was less competition in the market, less people would buy games only in sales etc.. now we have a market that is filled with games and the quality bar is so high that even smaller games get super expansive. if you would deliver "only" something that is exaclty like final fantasy 9 I doubt it would attrackt enough people to pay the production.
@ During the PS1 era, the backgrounds also made sense since they used the same assets for the CG cutscenes. Today, they would be making stuff that could probably be rendered in real time anyway. I guess the best way to go about it would be to make it a painterly style, like Arcane, which we kinda have on Vanillaware games.
I used to fully share that sentiment back when rendered 3D was still really weak and imperfect, but I do think technology is getting to the point where you can basically achieve the same effect without LITERALLY doing pre-rendered (and not doing it gives you more flexibility), but while I understand how much smoother things feel when you go with 1st/3rd person camera all the time, I think I value the cinematic angles of static fixed camera (or even something like Shadow of the Colossus's impractical but cool-looking angle camera) shots a lot more and feel that it's worth the control jank that tends to come with it. Basically, I want them to constrain themselves with the spirit of those games, not actually go back to using the same technical techniques. Fixed camera PAINTED or sprite-art backgrounds, on the other hand, now that would be worthwhile. Videogames visually look their best in terms of art direction when scenes are set up like an Ozu film, IMO, and we've completely lost that.
it's pretty incredible to watch the dude direct the camera on this podcast at the same time as he's participating in the conversation about directing the camera in video games XD watch him pressing a button to the left of the scene every time the camera angle changes :P
kindred spirits - Fixed camera, Pre-rendered survival horror was my training grounds but i remember clear as day seeing those first screen shots of Final Fantasy 7 in Game Fan magazine. The pre-rendered environments were jaw dropping. It is pure ART.
Yea those first FF7 screens were crazy. Nobody knew they were pre-rendered and fixed at the time though, since I think it might have been the first AAA to do it. Added to the magic though!
That would be interesting, but I think it may be difficult to play action or stealth games with pre-rendered backgrounds. Also, with stealth mechanics, a lot of the gameplay requires you to adjust the camera.
Great episode. You guys totally gave me 'old man' vibes but I'm also an elder Millennial and you made excellent points! I too would love to see more pre-rendered backgrounds, and it just hit me that part of the reason I loved Final Fantasy 6's original (3) version was the immaculate pre-rendered images that the battles and cityscapes possess. FF9, though not my favorite had amazing scenes, as did Donkey Kong Country, and I poignantly remember the disappointment I felt playing Donkey Kong 64 because it lacked the pre-rendered backgrounds aside from the arcade area which was a nostalgia hit for me even back then. Curious what the end credit song is, it sounds like an amazing remix of a Final Fantasy tune.
It really drives me nuts when a game gets extreme praise for its aesthetic, and they end up simply going for the generic approach in later instalments. Donkey Kong Country, Mortal Kombat, Final Fantasy… even the Super Mario RPG Remake. I bet it would have looked MILES better if they used the same pre-rendered background approach. I feel like the Yoshi games do a decent job (they’ve been mostly pre-rendered-like since Yoshi’s Story).
37:00 3d artist/dev here thats also a photgrapher. ironically enough, my own personal photography style seems to root from pre-rendered background of the ps1 era. when i first started photography i was so confused why the words of the seniors i used to work with doesnt connect with me. ofcourse i follow some of those words even now, but theres just something about conventional photography that doesnt resonate with me for my personal work. i like capturing an environment. not even landscapes. landscapes are just showing what a location looks. i want an environment where the viewer can "hop into" the environment and explore it with their imagination as if they are inside the photo itself. then it hit me. pre-rendered backgrounds... im still not there yet, most of the time when im out shooting i even forget about it. but when i sit on the pc and start culling and post-prod, i find that the favorite shots i take are those that can be used as pre-rendered backgrounds. watching this makes me want to put a sticker on my camera or lens that says "pre-rendered background" just so i can be reminded of it each and everytime till it becomes brain/muscle memory what i learned so far doing it (treat this as just notes for myself) - keep the composition in mind, but keep the pathing in mind a higher priority. - dont focus on the "wideness", its easy to think about just shooting wide, but if you shoot with just that, then it would just become a regular wide photo - i recommend a 24mm lens(16mm in aps-c). anything wider would feel just a regular wide shot, anything tighter would look like a regular photograph. a 24mm is just enough to have that "wide" feel without being too wide nor being to close and the right amount of distortion that it wouldnt feel like a regular photo but also not feel like a regular wide shot - a 35mm would feel too 'regular' looking. theres a reason why 35s and 50s are famous for streets, streets are not the goal - contrast the wideness of 24mm with tight shots from something like an 85mm or longer. if the 24mm takes the environment and pathing, take the longer lenses for details and such for props or hero shots. - a hero shot is also different from what you are aiming to get. hero shots focuses on a single object, the shots you want to take for a pre-rendered background feel focuses on pathing - play with tilts and angles. if you take the shots on regular eye level, it would just look like regular photos on 1st person perspective. - if you are just starting out and cant grasp the idea yet on field, one of the better ways to start with are cctv like angles. ofcourse thats an entirely different thing and not the end point, but its a start - if you are going on a location or a trip, try to see the location on google maps or something so you could have a pre-researched goal you could have(yah, should do this now myself haha)
if someone here in the comments is smart enough to use that idea and explore it further, go for it.. if someone has pointers for me to try on id be thankful even. 22:40 this is the crux of whats happening with unreal engine at some point in the past, ue4 was already the peak of video game graphics. but as you said, theres no ceiling to what degree of realism people would want from their video games. of course there are people who doesnt care about graphics at all, but people who cares about realistic graphics, do really care about realistic graphics. adding to that, improving the realistic visual fidelity of unreal engine is now its biggest selling point to their investors, regardless if the creators want it or not, they have no choice but to continue along that path. main problem now is that hardware can not, or would not, catch up. software demands too much that current gen hardware have a hard time catching up. even if, for the sake of arguement, that the hardware manufacturers are synthetically just slowing their release but they have the capability to release more powerful hardware now in secret, they still cant or their sales in the future would get the hit.
You can get a camera to track even into the z direction. You can't have full camera control but there's 1-2 examples from the Ps1 era of games that apply prerendered images over very simple geometry and track the camera with a character. You have to set up the shot correctly. On conversely you can use an animated video to simulate a moving camera on the z axis. The main limitations today aren't level geometry. It's rasterization and quad shading. Modern GPUs really struggle with polygons and texels smaller than a 2x2 pixel resolution. Prerenders would solve that problem. Alone in the Dark: New Nightmare also showed how you get real time lighting in prerenders from a moving light source like a flashlight. As for controls, Fatal Frame in 2001 invented a nice way of combining modern controls with fixed camera angles. In 1-3 you hold down a button to make your character move forward into the next scene without getting turned around by the sudden camera change. I know RE Remake and 0 have that control system that kinda mixes modern and tank controls but I think FF has the best solution
One game like this that I dont hear people talking about nearly enough is the Baten Kaitos duology. If you miss this style of game, PLEASE check this series out. Not only are the backgrounds absolutely gorgeous, but they do what REmake did and incorporate tons of 3D elements in order to create moving environmental details, like flowing water, leaves rustling in the wind, and clouds or smoke, among other things. The world is one of the most imaginative and unique RPG worlds I've seen, and the pre-rendered backgrounds really help bring it to life. There's five floating continents, each with their own unique settings and themes. Just as an example, there's a cloud kingdom, where clouds move along the world, grazing every building, covering parts of the landscape, and creating this really atmospheric vibe. The game also makes good use of fixed camera angles, there's a region that incorporates optical illusions. Even to the point of incorporating fixed camera angles in puzzles For example, you might be solving puzzles while walking upside down, or there's one part where the screen is cracked, and each segment is scrambled, showing you the world from many different angles and you have to try and find where you're going despite all this. Very weird puzzle, but memorable. In short, it does things that simply wouldn't be possible without a fixed camera perspective. But the main thing I love about this game is just how gorgeous the art is. The battle system is fantastic too, it's sort of a bizarre mix of a turnbased jrpg battle system, and a TCG with poker elements. If you miss games with pre-rendered backgrounds, and you appreciate what they can do and how pretty they can look, you owe it to yourself to check out Baten Kaitos. Really can't recommend it enough.
I was there live when they recorded this episode. I suggested the video title of "BRING BACK Pre-Rendered Backgrounds you COWARDS!" They went with a more neutral, diplomatic title 😅.
I have the same sort of attachment to the "gridder" or "blobber" design for RPGs. In short the idea that multiple people in an rpg are being represented by a single first person camera and movement controls. I love it in that it always felt like an elegant solution toward showing a group of people engaging in an adventure. Feels like modern AAA games are convinced that those mechanics only existed because of a limitation of the technology. People really wanted either a full tactical experience of moving people around on a map or they wanted all the party members beyond the player character to be automated in some way. I think a modern game like Grimrock shows there is an audience there for those sorts of games still and it kept costs down while still maintaining a certain scope to the narrative experience.
A modern use of having a detailed artistic pre-rendered background is in titanfall 2, a RUclips channel called AnyAustin did a really neat video on his channel regarding it.
This boggles my mind too. You're so right. Imagine the details in a 4k background - 8.3 million pixels. The PS1 era games had a resolution of 240p. 4k is over 50 times that resolution...
1997's Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (probably my second all-time favorite game, only behind ICO) is a 2D cinematic platformer with gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds. I will never understand Oddworld Inhabitants's decision to change the series to 3D with Munch's Oddysee, a move that most likely killed what could have been a great Quintology. Also, the 2014 "modern" remake of the original game, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!, made by a new developer, was another mistake that simply couldn't capture the Odd feeling.
Exoddus is also a great game. It improved on the GameSpeak and possession abilities, and has more creatures with the introduction of Flying Sligs, Sloggies, Fleeches and Greeters. On the other hand, despite the change in visuals, due to the time constraints during development, some of the levels are just different interpretations of the original ones: SoulStorm Brewery is basically RuptureFarms, Necrum serves the same purpose as Monsaic Lines, and Mudanchee and Mudomo Vaults are versions of Scrabania and Paramonia, respectively. Ultimately, I think it's a matter of personal taste, and I prefer the setting of Oddysee. Anyway, regardless of which of the two is superior, Exoddus is way better than the retake Oddworld: Soulstorm.
@gatobue i just assumed they were iterating on the original (if it ain't broke don't fix it). like how emerald hill zone is obviously just green hill zone mk. 2. I didn't know about time constraints etc
Lorne Lanning has talked about that in the past: in December 2008, he said "Abe's Oddysee did so well that we were pressured by our publisher [GT Interactive] to get a second game done for Christmas [1998]". He repeated the same idea when he was interviewed at EGX 2017 (5:42 timestamp) ruclips.net/video/GdDpdJxcZvQ/видео.html. Exoddus was not the game they wanted to do if they had more time, but it was a great sequel. And I doubt the initial vision for a second game would use Soulstorm's mechanics of looting and crafting.
Final Fantasy VIII and IX have the greatest pre-rendered backgrounds and by extension were far and away the best looking games of the PS1 era. The artistry on display was unreal.
I think Crow Country is a good recent example of a game that uses pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles to great effect. I think it was decently popular as well. I really enjoyed this episode! It was thought provoking and well argued.
There is more environmental story telling in these pre-rendered backgrounds then the best of the modern open world games. The psx resident evil games are particularly good at this. The psx rpgs that use them have aged beautifully as well.
This is something I've been wanting for a long time also. Because it was born from limitations, now that the limitations are gone we just don't see this beautiful way of doing things anymore.
150% agree here, ff7,8,9 art was rough and atmospheric in a good way. Modern games are far too crisp, clean and oversaturated, lacking depth of field. There's amazing concept artists out there ( if anyone's seen vaatividias art competitions for souls games). Literally turn these style pieces into ff9 style of games, would be amazing 👍
can you imagine modern day super high def pre-rendered backgrounds combined with some analogue of like a triple layer parralax scrolling technique? makes my mouth water.
Two recent games reminded me of how good pre-rendered or fixed angled backgrounds could be, Trials of Mana (remake) and Metaphor. Both of theme were mostly free-camera, but I really loved the few parts that were locked angle. It gives the devs so much more room for atmosphere building and controlling what the player should see. It also takes a load off the player as well as they don't have to continually adjust the camera.
There are many great examples from the period, but my absolute favorite examples are Legend of Dragoon and Parasite Eve 2. Both of them are absolutely beautiful, detailed, and have animations that bring them to life. Often I'll get lost just admiring them, even to this day
I haven't watched yet, but F yes!!! I always loved pre rendered backgrounds. In games like FFVII, Blade Runner 97's game, Ogs Resident Evil, etc, it was the soul of the worlds that were presenting. With the whole pixel art first, and then poligonal 90s style revival I really hoped for indie and AA studios to bring back this kind of backgrounds.
Players are not masters of cinematography. Giving them the control of the camera is not gonna produce art. I want the game developers to show me the framing as cinematic they imagined it. Not necessarily prerendered or fixed, but at least like FFX or DMC1.
Didn't know you guys were so well versed in After Effects and 3d. 🙂As someone in the field, I can hear by the way you talk about that you truly went through the pain of the process. 😅
The new HD 2D games that SE and others have been making have been great. But I do miss the old renders from games like FF9 (all of them in the psx era, really), Resident Evil, etc. This could also open up new opportunities for artists and things as well which is always great.
This makes me think about how Arcane utilizes almost-entirely painted backgrounds and hand-drawn effects, and it's one of the best looking shows out there. In a significantly smaller budget than most big-budget films (animated or live-action), they created something more visually appealing than most.
Good talk. Some thoughts and ideas: 1- The main reason to use PRB would be money. In a time when creating games is so expensive this would be a good thing to explore. 2- When i think PRB i am thinking about jprgs. And that would the best place to use PRB today . Using them in a action game would take even more courage to do. 3- i get the feeling that thanks to the internet high quality PRB would find an audiance with the "artist community". And of couse old timers like me would like them as well. 4- The Souls series is one that is praised for it´s use of background art. 5- On the fee camera thing: no exactely related but vagrant story allowed you to use the first person camera to look at the amazing environments and the enemies. That was also in a time whe games were less frenetic tha today.
Yeah, I feel like games that had pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed cameras had a sense of... meaning and intentionality behind every screen that somehow reminds me of cinema. It's like designing a space for open-world play makes things too big for you to notice what the designer wants or what the intention was, whereas those shots gave you a clear understanting about the aesthetic and feeling this particular scene and place are supposed to have.
The artistic angle of the camera is also a point of contention. Just because you can use your iPhone to take pictures doesn't mean you know HOW to take beautiful compelling photos. With pre rendered backgrounds, the developers have control of what they want you to see so as a player we are being presented a gallery of beautiful interactive images. I'm also a fan of baked in lighting for games in the 7th generation of consoles. We don't need everything to be ray traced.
Pre-rendered backgrounds are not being used often not only because of the fixed camera but for the limitation that generates in the gameplay, if you made a game with pre-rendered backgrounds the few options of gameplay would be a turn-based rpg or a survival horror, you can't make a platformer or a action game that way. And the controls that is aceptable in this type of game is the tank-control that majority of people hate.
As an aspiring indie dev, one of my main ideas/projects is to emulate the style of PS1 Final Fantasy games, as well as games like Legend of Dragoon and Jade Cocoon. The idea of prerendered backgrounds with 3D models and fixed camera angles for exploration and scenes feels much more appealing and approacheable as a newbie indie dev than trying to create sprawling worlds with tons of choices. Besides, I feel like that style of JRPG wasn't properly expanded on. The only big iteration we ever really got for an ATB system was I Am Setsuna and FFX-2, both of which are great but I feel like they could've done more to make all facets of the combat more interesting, maybe by implementing SMT style statuses or increase difficulty, but still.
Pre-rendered backgrounds allowed games to have graphics far beyond the capabilities of the hardware. Imagine what we could have today with that. I replayed FF9 a few weeks ago with the Moguri mod and I was stunned by how amazing it looked.
Dude. If somehow, someway, we could get a FF8, ,9 ,10 remake, but with the pre-rendered backgrounds . . Man. That would be something to behold. Maybe I’m old now, but I really enjoy the feel of games with pre rendered backgrounds.
one problem that really stood out in Legacy of Kain Defiance. mixing real time combat with things like careful platforming and cameras changing mid action dropping you off a cliff... mixing the two has to compensate for spontaneous actions.
That yakuza games at least the first several were good examples of a mix of free cameras, set cameras, pre rendered and live poly environments. Absolutely love those games, especially the vibe/feel. Might be worth checking out.
Final Fantasy 9 with the Moguri mod and Lossless scaling on PC is insane. Run it at 4k, and the background looks perfect. Lossless scaling will frame gen 4x so 120fps when on pre-rendered backgrounds or 60fps during g battles. Battles look weird, I'll say that but the way the pre-rendered backgrounds scroll at 4k 120fps has no downside. It is like looking through a window. Hard to believe it isn't a full remake.
The keyword that needs to be emphasized regarding pre rendered backgrounds is “Composition”. Composition is what we really are seeking with pre rendered backgrounds. Also CRPGS have recently employed pre rendered backgrounds.
You guys should check out Crow Country, it's an indie horror game in the style of Resident Evil. It doesn't have pre-rendered backgrounds, but it LOOKS like it does, except you can spin the camera around, it's kind of trippy. I definitely agree with you guys that pre-rendered backgrounds are a lost art and still have their place. I think people underestimate the artistry that goes into these backgrounds, the film-like cinematography that goes into how they're presented to the player, I miss em.
Halfway through the game you're describing might be something like "To the Moon", a four hour RPG that is a sort of playable cinematic experience. Check it out people if you haven't, it's a priceless game.
Man I'M ABSOLUTELY LOVING these new random, long format, contents. Keep it up guys! Bite-sized academia-grade analysis.
Same
Hear, hear. This is great.
Imagine if both these gentlemen started working on the podcast/RUclips show full-time.
It would be magical.
Agree. I sit at work listening to these videos. Help me get through the day.
Agree completely. Been listening when I go to the gym
exactly
Pre-rendered backgrounds + Overworld map = 10/10
Im hoping for an indie RPG Renaissance that brings back this style.
@@GracelessTarnished I'm game developer, I would love to do it but it's just money wise not possible.
@@nuclearbeebermanwell that is a bs statement...
If the overworld doesn’t have random encounters I’m fine with it
>Overworld map
Executives HATE this!
That's why Resident Evil Remake for me is a timeless piece of art. That pre rendered background mixed with gothic horror atmosphere and lighting is still gorgeous to this day.
Hahaha yes and I still can't finish it game scares the shit out of me 😂
Lol 2 and 3 for me man. Fucking nemesis chasing you is so scary lol@tazmanceltic
This makes me thing about the conversation in FFX's where the camera followed Tidus when he crossed the bridge. It looks amazing, and makes you see the grandiose temple as the director intended.
I love that following camera, it's a great technique.
Disco Elysium, Fantasian, Pillars of Eternity and *_Tides of Numenera_* all prove that pre-rendered backgrounds in modern games can function and look beautiful at the same time. 😎👍
Fantasian is a bit different though some of the backgrounds where actually built by hand and scanned into the game.
@@qrowthebird7496you're definitely right, Fantasian's dioramas truly are unique, but I would say it definitely still falls under the pre-rendered background umbrella. In game they are basically photographs/still images of the real life diorama.
FF9 is the prettiest looking game on the PS1. I would love nothing more than to see pre-rendered backgrounds again.
I wish square enix will make these type of backgrounds again, especially the power of consoles now they can make beautiful bigger towns and dungeons with pre rendering style and also the combat make it turn base or atb but with interactivity. I wish the next ff will be like this
Yes, me too. I’d also love to see more like Fantasian as well but without the awkward control system every time the camera shifts to a new section.
Crono cross also uses beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds.
This is all I want from the rumoured “remake” - upscaled pre-rendered backgrounds and a more upscaled world map.
@@randomdude1656YES !!! They could just evolve what they already had !!! A 3d environnent will never be as special as a pré rendered one. I feel truly sad about this style
Pre rendered backgrounds sparks the imagination like nothing else for me
FYI: The Pillars of Eternity CRPGs released in 2015 and 2018 used pre-rendered backgrounds, so it's not entirely a lost art. Of course, those games were deliberate throwbacks to late 90s / early 00s CRPGs that also used pre-rendered assets, and the target audience was very much onboard with that.
Yeah but they did them much better.
Deadfire is so gorgeous, they also implemented semi-dynamic lighting by having a light mesh that could be cast on.
Disco Elysium as well.
What about the “hd-2d” games like octopath traveler?
I’d also consider the diorama styling of Fantasian to be a modern take on the pre-rendered background
I second. 3D scanning of a physical diorama is a perfect evolution of the "pre rendering" technique, on a modern-day tech stack I feel!
Problem with the Fantasian approach is how it has to change angles on the same map. It's a bit clunky. It would be better if done with digital dioramas.
DQ3 remake is the only time I've really liked the HD-2D look, every other game that does it goes way too hard with filters and visuals, where as I'd be kind of happy to have something visually more plain and visually readable, something games don't really like to be anymore.
They do cover Fantasian near the end of the video. The HD-2D style, while not what Mike is advocating for, is probably my favourite modern style of approaching graphics. Fell in love with it in Triangle Strategy, felt that Octopath 2 perfected it, absolutely stunning game
@ yeah, I clearly hadn’t gotten there when I wrote out my comment, lol. I guess they specifically want a mat painting as the background, full stop, nothing else.
I think the hd-2d stuff is a great evolution from the 16-bit rpgs, and it’s getting better with every iteration.
I think the Fantasian approach is an excellent evolution of the mat paintings, and I hope it has a chance to be refined as well.
Limitations often inspire the best in artists.
Not just pre-rendered backgrounds, but set camera locations. Metaphor Refantazio often had great locations highlighted by an auteur-ish camera framing that followed the character rather than be controlled by the player.
FF12 has some of the best visuals and aesthetics in final fantasy but its ruined by a very bland third person centered camera.
Clearly we need the first Kojima Strand like JRPG to bring cinematography back to the genre.
The variable camera angles are a problem. I think that there's a big difference in morale for the art team when you're talking about details that every player will see, versus, things that you have to fill in because the camera will sweep in that direction and if there's anything missing it will be noticeable, but maybe 20-60% of the viewing audience will ever actually look. Especially if you want to say, as a project, "We aspire to the highest quality in everything we do." Making work that needs to be perfect but nobody will care about, is a good way to burn out your visual design staff and your visual QA staff, not to mention causing friction between the two. "Hey we just noticed this thing 1% of the audience may find, fix it or the game isn't perfect, and we aspire to perfection."
How many man-hours go into models and textures that have to be there and therefore have to be perfect, that nobody will ever care about? How does that influence the overall cost of the games? How does it influence how much people want to remain in game dev after working on a project like that?
I was thinking about this yesterday. As much as I love the art direction of FF12, I remember very little of actually navigating the environment due to the camera and the fact that you were just running around these massive environments on flat ground all the time. By contrast, FF7 and 9 had unforgettable pre-rendered environments that really made you feel a sense of scale.
Vagrant Story comes to mind when you talk about cinematography in JRPGs.
Yes. I loved the set camera parts of the game.
@@eggsngamingTHANK YOU !!!!! You explained it very well.
I actually really enjoyed you guys getting into the weeds on the whole CGI single frame rendering topic, fascinating stuff. Never shy away from the tangents that come about, that's where the kernels of greatness lie!
Both Parasite Eve II and Legend of Dragoon nailed the pre-rendered backgrounds, especially LoDs depiction of water in cities and moving in and around Akropolis Tower in PE2.
I also love the transitions to prerendered animated sequences with those backgrounds. I was recently playing Star Ocean Second Story on PS1 and then R on PS5 back to back. There’s a scene where Rena opens a hidden door in a mansion that moves a bookshelf out of the way. The pre-rendered version of that to this day looks better than the 3D modeled environment. There is just some magic in that which I couldn’t explain, but I think you guys are doing a great job explaining that here.
Maaan, I can just close my eyes and see it clearly... What memories.
Sadly (and maybe ironically) a lot of these pre-rendered backgrounds from the era weren't preserved properly and as such most games with these backgrounds that looked really nice in their time are trapped at a low resolution where the spell is basically broken when viewed on modern displays. It makes me wonder if these companies kept their assets from back then and were able to re-render their backgrounds would more people playing these games for the first time today not think of the practice as "outdated."
AI upscaling has worked miracles for the PS1 FF's and RE's
What a coincidence that I started playing FFX for the first time in 20 years two days ago and my first thought running through the confined areas was “this would have made much more sense with pre-rendered backgrounds.”
I hope you are using the Moguri Mod ! I have only watched the beginning of the video and they haven't mentionned it while showing videos where it was used.
@@acouelfoly thats FF9, they are talking about FF10
FFX has some prerendered backgrounds
@@casterforlife4995 could use way more
@@casterforlife4995 And they're the most visually interesting areas in the game.
Similar to the beauty of 80s and 90s anime aesthetic, there was a certain appeal brought forth by technical limitations of the time that lead to very interesting and unique direction and style of entertainment from that era. Modern stuff has its own appeal, but most everything has been ironed out to look very clean, neat and presentable.
Gran Turismo 7 Scapes is an example of a modern pre-rendered background implementation. To me this is a good example of how this technique would work in a modern game.
Leaving a comment for the algorithm and express my gratitude for all the discussions you guys shared with us. I'm going through a tough time right now and your discussions make life more bearable. Thank you.
In the time of balooning budgets and years of development time that often go to waste, pre-rendered backgrounds would provide a nice cost-saving measure to make games beautiful without having to take YEARS and HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS to be made.
One of my favorite "modern" uses of this sort of technique is in Bravely Default/Second. Absolutely beautiful cities and backgrounds in that game...That being said, the reason this went away is because most of the time if a director wants to show something specific and be in control of the view they just do a cut scene. there are open world games still these days, but cutscenes are not at all uncommon.
I've come to terms with my millennial brain being damaged beyond repair, where PS1 graphics just look drop dead gorgeous to my eyes. Call me blinded by nostalgia if you want but maybe I wouldn't be blinded if they didn't shine so brilliantly. The last three games Squaresoft put out on PS1 after mastering the architecture were FFIX, Chrono Cross, and Vagrant Story, three of the most visually beautiful games to release for the console.
Going back to FF7 for a sec, the pre-rendered backgrounds are probably a big reason why the marketing for the game was so strong and set up to succeed. Almost any screenshot you post from the game looks like a work of art because these backgrounds ARE works of art. That's something you can't do with the newer games just by virtue of being able to control the camera freely, you could point it directly up at the skybox, straight down at the ground, or on a close-up of certain bad textures and you've got bad screenshots that don't indicate anything about the game's visual quality.
I think the last moderately sized JRPG I played that did the old-school genre conventions really brilliantly was Tales of Vesperia, Of the 3 Tales games I've played Berseria has a better story and characters and Arise probably has the most in common with Xenogears but Vesperia to me has a better overall presentation and execution. I mean I love the Persona games but they have their own type of design philosophy that's not entirely indicative of the classics of the genre. Same could be said for Xenoblade which I also love. It seems like unless it's indie RPGs specifically designed to be throwbacks no one has the confidence to make these types of games with these classic conventions and high production values.
I do appreciate low-poly art and truly exceptional examples like Vagrant Story are incredible. And it's a little unfair in comparison that the Moguri upscales were used to showcase FF9 against a Xenogears that wasn't benefiting from crisper resolution and PSX render corrections from Duckstation, and I would say that there are towns in this style of game like Xenogears and Grandia that are very beautiful and packed with detail of their own kind.
That said, as someone who has studied concept art design and is a huge enthusiast of the history of that craft, from Syd Mead's Blade Runner art to Feng Zhu's incredible designs for the Star Wars Prequels, a lot of the work in FF7-9 sits among the highest greats of the artform, most particularly the incomparable environment design language of FF8. Throwing that entire artform away because the PS2 could render slightly more polygons was a huge mistake and a shame
"What are the benefits of pre-rendered backgrounds?"
You know how Resident Evil 1 Remake looked like it came out in 2012 instead of 2002? Well, there ya go.
I see a lot of comments like this and it's kind of a Mandela effect - the reason REmake looks so good is because it was remastered with HD backgrounds in 2015. The Gamecube original from 2002 looked good for its time, but not that good.
Naruto Shippuden Ninja Stomr 2 has beautiful pre rendered backgrounds
One of the best games on the PS1 for pre-rendered backgrounds is Legend of Dragoon. Despite how its over shadowed by giants like Final Fantasy and Persona, this was probably one of the best examples of just massive scale and detail being put into the backgrounds.
Absolutely. The cities were especially gorgeous.
This might be an unpopular view, especially considering the platform, but I think mobile games could really benefit from high quality pre-rendered backgrounds. I still don't understand why mobile games don't take advantage of pre-rendered backgrounds. It would be the perfect platform.
That would require garbage mobile game companies to hire artists to draw beautiful images, which would impact their gatcha-game making soulless bottom line.
I think about pre-rendered backgrounds a lot for two reasons.
One is what you guys pointed out, about how a scene can be directed better and allow more artistic intention and more beautiful images to be put into games.
But then there's the other thing that I think about which is to run the same renders that they used 30 years ago to make the pre-rendered backgrounds but run them in real time with free moving camera since modern devices can do that.
Most of those assets are lost to time but it would be amazing to be able to access the render of Balamb Garden, for example, and walk around it.
I just played through every numbered MGS game. When my brother and I are playing games, our dad will often pop in, watch a little bit, ask some questions, etc.
While I was playing the climax of MGS4, he said something to the effect of "Wow, the graphics look a lot better than the first game," and I went, "You think so?" 😂
Even though MGS1 doesn't have pre-rendered backgrounds, he would say the same about MGS4 in comparison to FFIX or any game pre-PS3 era.
I much prefer the way PSOne games look. Especially games with pre-rendered backgrounds. My favorite consoles in terms of graphics are honestly the SNES, PSOne, and PS2. I feel like the art style and world are more strongly displayed in pre-rendered areas; you can pack a lot more character into them.
I'm currently replaying FF9 and still to this day can't get over how stunningly beautiful those backgrounds are. I love the point you brought up about pre-rendered backgrounds giving the artist more control over how the story is told. I never thought about that before (and in a nutshell, that's part of what makes this channel so great).
Final Fantasy VII Remake seems to use a pre-rendered background for the Midgar plate above the slums and it looks amazing. The only modern game I can think of that used pre-rendering in any capacity.
Yeah. Rebirth is open world so you cannot do that anymore. But they use mesh shaders (similar to UE5's nanite but instead of a software solution it is a hardware solution which is why old graphics card cannot run Rebirth) which is a really good piece of new tech and the distant terrain looks incredibly detailed because of it. Currently playing it on PC and it is some of the best distant terrain I have ever seen in a game. The rocky formations, mountains and buildings look incredibly detailed. Junon was a highlight for me, seeing it from a distance and then being able to go there and see it up close is truly something. Mesh Shaders is a piece of tech which excites me more than ray tracing tbh. It is demanding however, and the PS5 version had to hold it back and hence causing a lot of pop-in. But on PC with ultra background geometry detail it looks very very good.
Pre-rendered backgrounds are a thing of the past now. It's really not necessary with current tech. Though if a game is a linear game like Remake, I don't see a reason not to use it.
Those aren't really the pre-rendered backgrounds that they are discussing here. Those are more commonly referred to as "Sky box" background images.
Essentially, whenever the player is in an open environment and they can see beyond the explorable terrain, there will be a high quality image of a sky or horizon that is used for the background.
This is most commonly done to simulate the sky, so it was nicknamed a "skybox".
What's essentially happening is that the player's explorable terrain actually inside a 3D cube and the sky box image is painted on all sides of the cube to give the feeling that the playable space extends far beyond what it actually is, making the world feel bigger than it is. But really that skybox image of the horizon or skyline is just a high quality image that the player can't reach.
Basically every modern 3D game uses it unless the player is in an enclosed space like a castle or a cave. Like FFX through FFXVI all use skyboxes in the outside environment in the same way as games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spiderman, FF7R, etc.
FF7 Remake's skyboxes just needed to be a bit more artistic because it had to show Midgar's upper plate or the Shinra tower as part of the "sky" that the player can look towards from the ground sometimes.
What the Resonant Arc guys are talking about in this episode with Pre-rendered backgrounds is where the background image itself serves as the actual environment the player navigates the character on. A 2D image that simulates a fixed camera angle of a 3D environment for the player to move through.
thats a skybox. other modern video games uses them too but its more commonly used for well, skies. ff7remake used the midgar plates as skybox because it is the sky of the sectors. they used the same technique when the gang was on the plates and you could see the sectors below.
but you are kind of right, its a sort of pre-rendered background. it is, but its not, if you get what i mean..
problem with sky boxes though are, because they are just meant to be just skies or looked from afar, they tend to not be hd enough.
even 7remake had the issue before where the said skyboxes are too pixelated, they fixed it through updates but it was there
I have been saying this for years, and so glad you're tackling this topic. I miss prerendered backgrounds. Not only the detail they could capture, but the way they could frame certain shots. Low angles to capture mood, high angles for easier exploration etc. In the right type of game they are just ideal.
This reminds me of how I would look at a game trailer and think how beautiful the game looks vs me actually playing the game and it's only a fraction of that beauty, mostly because I'm searching for an objective and not looking at the beauty of the game in itself
There should be more fixed-camera games. But making it pre-rendered has a lot of drawbacks in modern game dev:
1. Game engines are designed to have 3D Space in mind. It takes extra effort to "walk" on 2D backgrounds. This is likely why Fantasian did projection mapping instead of FF7-9 style.
2. You're limited to only be able to PAN the camera unless you bake the transitions into FMVs
3. Interacting with pre-rendered objects is a lot more work and games these days are MUCH more interactive than PS1 games.
4. The time to make the pre-rendered assets look good enough to be worth it would be a lot (and I don't think most indie devs are skilled at the level where they could really take advantage of it)
5. It doesn't age as well when better hardware is available (we can see it now in remastered PS1 games). Resolution, lighting, textures, new tech will be easier if you don't have to reexport every pre-rendered image.
Fixed camera in real time can give you most of the advantages without any of those drawbacks. And they can have much higher fidelity than movable camera games (because you don't have to worry about the player choosing a camera angle that has a lot of different objects in it). There are a lot of fixed camera games across several genres: A Short Hike, Songs of Glimmerwick, Mario 3D World (although that IS over a decade old), Baldur's Gate 3, Diablo, etc, but there should be way more.
And the Towns in FF7 Rebirth are incredibly detailed, I couldn't believe it. Not a fan of some of the narrative choices (as you'd expect), but it does feel like a living breathing world.
Try playing the new, Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era.
My God, thank you for mentioning that Cinematography and Photography require different sets of skills.
I relate, because I was a video editor throughout my career, yet I was continuously asked by my superiors to create print ads. No matter how much I would tell them that I wasn't a graphic designer and I didn't have those skills, they would persist.
It always came out looking like garbage. Sometimes, it would actually go to print, much to my embarrassment. Other times, they would come to their senses and have the actual graphic-designer create it.
I'm stellar at what I do. Let the people who are stellar at what they do handle what they know.
Want to some see great pre rendered background in a modern game? Check out the indie game "Legrand legacy".
You guys fogot to list one major advantage. It could cut down game development time. You won't have to wait 5-10 years between installments of games in your favorite series. I believe the switch from pre rendered backgrounds to fully rendered is one of the major causes of blown up development times. moving forward from PS1/PS2 era to PS3 era. The correlation is there.
I really loved you getting into the juicy details to justify your recommendation. A lot of these things I knew about in the abstract but you providing some solid examples and comparisons that gave much better context for how this tech works and how it's changed.
Dude, yes! I've been thinking this for a while now. Pre-rendered backgrounds can look so gorgeous without needing to be able to turn the camera.
It's a bit similar to the Open-World vs. Linear-World discussion. You give up the freedom of control to show just a single scene. But by doing that, the player gets to see everything that he NEEDS to see. A single scene is also easier to read because there is just less to look at than a full 3D environment. And the game director can set the scene in a way that conveys the emotions they intended the player to feel. Not that this is impossible in 3D environments, just look at the FromSoft games for example, but it would be a lot tougher to fully model Lindblum from FF9 without sacrificing some of that wonder that you get from the Backgrounds.
Can't wait for you to analyze FF9 btw. Really looking forward to that
I love the idea of fixed camera angles, it can make for really interesting reveals of landscape and events as you walk through an area
I'm one of the game developers who are following you and I freaking love pre-rendered backgrounds.
I think that making pre-rendered background is incredible expansive and that's the main reason developers won't do it.
The Studios who have the money, do something else that is more promising.
If we would ever have the budget, we would make a pre-rendered background RPG.
So buy our game when it comes out this year that we can make pre-rendered backrounds 😅
This, I was wondering if someone would point this out, and I guess what they were referring to is AAA games, cause indies would probably go with painted backgrounds instead, which is something you still get on Hidden Object games like the ones by Artifex Mundi.
why is it so expensive exactly? I can't quite put my finger on it
@@Windraesa to make them look really good you need many 3d models. all of them need to be modeled and if you do it like in final fantay 9 you need maaaaany backgrounds and all of them are unique (I don't know how many backgrounds the game has but my guess would be about 500-600?). yeah sure here and there you can reuse a prop of a barell or something like it but in general every screen needs a lot of 3d modeling.
you also need artist just for the lighting, for the background animations, concept arts, special fx and so.
final fantasy 7-9 also had the benefit of not having to be 1080p (which needs even more details).
For every game type that isn't made anymore was a time frame where it made financially sense.
During the PS1 era, prerendered backgrounds worked because it was the best we could have, so most players bought it. Development costs where smaller, there was less competition in the market, less people would buy games only in sales etc..
now we have a market that is filled with games and the quality bar is so high that even smaller games get super expansive.
if you would deliver "only" something that is exaclty like final fantasy 9 I doubt it would attrackt enough people to pay the production.
@@nuclearbeeberman cheers 👍🏼
@ During the PS1 era, the backgrounds also made sense since they used the same assets for the CG cutscenes. Today, they would be making stuff that could probably be rendered in real time anyway.
I guess the best way to go about it would be to make it a painterly style, like Arcane, which we kinda have on Vanillaware games.
I used to fully share that sentiment back when rendered 3D was still really weak and imperfect, but I do think technology is getting to the point where you can basically achieve the same effect without LITERALLY doing pre-rendered (and not doing it gives you more flexibility), but while I understand how much smoother things feel when you go with 1st/3rd person camera all the time, I think I value the cinematic angles of static fixed camera (or even something like Shadow of the Colossus's impractical but cool-looking angle camera) shots a lot more and feel that it's worth the control jank that tends to come with it. Basically, I want them to constrain themselves with the spirit of those games, not actually go back to using the same technical techniques.
Fixed camera PAINTED or sprite-art backgrounds, on the other hand, now that would be worthwhile.
Videogames visually look their best in terms of art direction when scenes are set up like an Ozu film, IMO, and we've completely lost that.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake did pre-rendered backgrounds a lot. I'm surprised nobody talks about it.
Day 13 of asking for skies of Arcadia.
I miss them glory days of eg FF7/8/9 - Resident evil backgrounds.
Imma try Skies of arcadia
@@DibsEquipped let me know how it goes mate. The best RPG game you'll ever play.
You might be lucky, Sega wants to revive old IPs and Skies of Arcadia got a new trademark filing.
Beat legends a while back. Pretty awesome jrpg.
@@Lamasis2 whaaaat! Is this brand new news? Haven't seen anything!
it's pretty incredible to watch the dude direct the camera on this podcast at the same time as he's participating in the conversation about directing the camera in video games XD
watch him pressing a button to the left of the scene every time the camera angle changes :P
How do I LOVE FFIX BACKGROUNDS!! Geez
kindred spirits - Fixed camera, Pre-rendered survival horror was my training grounds but i remember clear as day seeing those first screen shots of Final Fantasy 7 in Game Fan magazine. The pre-rendered environments were jaw dropping. It is pure ART.
Yea those first FF7 screens were crazy. Nobody knew they were pre-rendered and fixed at the time though, since I think it might have been the first AAA to do it. Added to the magic though!
Imagine a Metal Gear game with Pre-Rendered Backgrounds 😮
That would be interesting, but I think it may be difficult to play action or stealth games with pre-rendered backgrounds. Also, with stealth mechanics, a lot of the gameplay requires you to adjust the camera.
@Maximusbyronus it would work but yeah it would be difficult but not impossible.
Great episode. You guys totally gave me 'old man' vibes but I'm also an elder Millennial and you made excellent points! I too would love to see more pre-rendered backgrounds, and it just hit me that part of the reason I loved Final Fantasy 6's original (3) version was the immaculate pre-rendered images that the battles and cityscapes possess. FF9, though not my favorite had amazing scenes, as did Donkey Kong Country, and I poignantly remember the disappointment I felt playing Donkey Kong 64 because it lacked the pre-rendered backgrounds aside from the arcade area which was a nostalgia hit for me even back then.
Curious what the end credit song is, it sounds like an amazing remix of a Final Fantasy tune.
It really drives me nuts when a game gets extreme praise for its aesthetic, and they end up simply going for the generic approach in later instalments. Donkey Kong Country, Mortal Kombat, Final Fantasy… even the Super Mario RPG Remake. I bet it would have looked MILES better if they used the same pre-rendered background approach.
I feel like the Yoshi games do a decent job (they’ve been mostly pre-rendered-like since Yoshi’s Story).
Mike's point at @36:00 is the crux of the issue and applies to SO many things.
I wish my life was pre-rendered.
real
37:00 3d artist/dev here thats also a photgrapher. ironically enough, my own personal photography style seems to root from pre-rendered background of the ps1 era.
when i first started photography i was so confused why the words of the seniors i used to work with doesnt connect with me. ofcourse i follow some of those words even now, but theres just something about conventional photography that doesnt resonate with me for my personal work.
i like capturing an environment. not even landscapes. landscapes are just showing what a location looks. i want an environment where the viewer can "hop into" the environment and explore it with their imagination as if they are inside the photo itself.
then it hit me. pre-rendered backgrounds... im still not there yet, most of the time when im out shooting i even forget about it. but when i sit on the pc and start culling and post-prod, i find that the favorite shots i take are those that can be used as pre-rendered backgrounds.
watching this makes me want to put a sticker on my camera or lens that says "pre-rendered background" just so i can be reminded of it each and everytime till it becomes brain/muscle memory
what i learned so far doing it (treat this as just notes for myself)
- keep the composition in mind, but keep the pathing in mind a higher priority.
- dont focus on the "wideness", its easy to think about just shooting wide, but if you shoot with just that, then it would just become a regular wide photo
- i recommend a 24mm lens(16mm in aps-c). anything wider would feel just a regular wide shot, anything tighter would look like a regular photograph. a 24mm is just enough to have that "wide" feel without being too wide nor being to close and the right amount of distortion that it wouldnt feel like a regular photo but also not feel like a regular wide shot
- a 35mm would feel too 'regular' looking. theres a reason why 35s and 50s are famous for streets, streets are not the goal
- contrast the wideness of 24mm with tight shots from something like an 85mm or longer. if the 24mm takes the environment and pathing, take the longer lenses for details and such for props or hero shots.
- a hero shot is also different from what you are aiming to get. hero shots focuses on a single object, the shots you want to take for a pre-rendered background feel focuses on pathing
- play with tilts and angles. if you take the shots on regular eye level, it would just look like regular photos on 1st person perspective.
- if you are just starting out and cant grasp the idea yet on field, one of the better ways to start with are cctv like angles. ofcourse thats an entirely different thing and not the end point, but its a start
- if you are going on a location or a trip, try to see the location on google maps or something so you could have a pre-researched goal you could have(yah, should do this now myself haha)
if someone here in the comments is smart enough to use that idea and explore it further, go for it.. if someone has pointers for me to try on id be thankful even.
22:40 this is the crux of whats happening with unreal engine
at some point in the past, ue4 was already the peak of video game graphics. but as you said, theres no ceiling to what degree of realism people would want from their video games. of course there are people who doesnt care about graphics at all, but people who cares about realistic graphics, do really care about realistic graphics. adding to that, improving the realistic visual fidelity of unreal engine is now its biggest selling point to their investors, regardless if the creators want it or not, they have no choice but to continue along that path.
main problem now is that hardware can not, or would not, catch up. software demands too much that current gen hardware have a hard time catching up. even if, for the sake of arguement, that the hardware manufacturers are synthetically just slowing their release but they have the capability to release more powerful hardware now in secret, they still cant or their sales in the future would get the hit.
You can get a camera to track even into the z direction. You can't have full camera control but there's 1-2 examples from the Ps1 era of games that apply prerendered images over very simple geometry and track the camera with a character. You have to set up the shot correctly. On conversely you can use an animated video to simulate a moving camera on the z axis. The main limitations today aren't level geometry. It's rasterization and quad shading. Modern GPUs really struggle with polygons and texels smaller than a 2x2 pixel resolution. Prerenders would solve that problem.
Alone in the Dark: New Nightmare also showed how you get real time lighting in prerenders from a moving light source like a flashlight.
As for controls, Fatal Frame in 2001 invented a nice way of combining modern controls with fixed camera angles. In 1-3 you hold down a button to make your character move forward into the next scene without getting turned around by the sudden camera change. I know RE Remake and 0 have that control system that kinda mixes modern and tank controls but I think FF has the best solution
One game like this that I dont hear people talking about nearly enough is the Baten Kaitos duology. If you miss this style of game, PLEASE check this series out.
Not only are the backgrounds absolutely gorgeous, but they do what REmake did and incorporate tons of 3D elements in order to create moving environmental details, like flowing water, leaves rustling in the wind, and clouds or smoke, among other things.
The world is one of the most imaginative and unique RPG worlds I've seen, and the pre-rendered backgrounds really help bring it to life. There's five floating continents, each with their own unique settings and themes. Just as an example, there's a cloud kingdom, where clouds move along the world, grazing every building, covering parts of the landscape, and creating this really atmospheric vibe.
The game also makes good use of fixed camera angles, there's a region that incorporates optical illusions.
Even to the point of incorporating fixed camera angles in puzzles
For example, you might be solving puzzles while walking upside down, or there's one part where the screen is cracked, and each segment is scrambled, showing you the world from many different angles and you have to try and find where you're going despite all this. Very weird puzzle, but memorable. In short, it does things that simply wouldn't be possible without a fixed camera perspective.
But the main thing I love about this game is just how gorgeous the art is. The battle system is fantastic too, it's sort of a bizarre mix of a turnbased jrpg battle system, and a TCG with poker elements.
If you miss games with pre-rendered backgrounds, and you appreciate what they can do and how pretty they can look, you owe it to yourself to check out Baten Kaitos. Really can't recommend it enough.
I was there live when they recorded this episode. I suggested the video title of "BRING BACK Pre-Rendered Backgrounds you COWARDS!"
They went with a more neutral, diplomatic title 😅.
I have the same sort of attachment to the "gridder" or "blobber" design for RPGs. In short the idea that multiple people in an rpg are being represented by a single first person camera and movement controls. I love it in that it always felt like an elegant solution toward showing a group of people engaging in an adventure. Feels like modern AAA games are convinced that those mechanics only existed because of a limitation of the technology. People really wanted either a full tactical experience of moving people around on a map or they wanted all the party members beyond the player character to be automated in some way. I think a modern game like Grimrock shows there is an audience there for those sorts of games still and it kept costs down while still maintaining a certain scope to the narrative experience.
A modern use of having a detailed artistic pre-rendered background is in titanfall 2, a RUclips channel called AnyAustin did a really neat video on his channel regarding it.
YES! Retro indie games are already emulating the ps1 graphical style, but we need more of them to implement pre rendered backgrounds.
man, you guys are gonna love that new sukeban games game, parabellum bloodhound
This boggles my mind too. You're so right. Imagine the details in a 4k background - 8.3 million pixels. The PS1 era games had a resolution of 240p. 4k is over 50 times that resolution...
1997's Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (probably my second all-time favorite game, only behind ICO) is a 2D cinematic platformer with gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds. I will never understand Oddworld Inhabitants's decision to change the series to 3D with Munch's Oddysee, a move that most likely killed what could have been a great Quintology. Also, the 2014 "modern" remake of the original game, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!, made by a new developer, was another mistake that simply couldn't capture the Odd feeling.
i always thought that exodus was the superior game. (it's in my goat list)
Exoddus is also a great game. It improved on the GameSpeak and possession abilities, and has more creatures with the introduction of Flying Sligs, Sloggies, Fleeches and Greeters. On the other hand, despite the change in visuals, due to the time constraints during development, some of the levels are just different interpretations of the original ones: SoulStorm Brewery is basically RuptureFarms, Necrum serves the same purpose as Monsaic Lines, and Mudanchee and Mudomo Vaults are versions of Scrabania and Paramonia, respectively. Ultimately, I think it's a matter of personal taste, and I prefer the setting of Oddysee. Anyway, regardless of which of the two is superior, Exoddus is way better than the retake Oddworld: Soulstorm.
@gatobue i just assumed they were iterating on the original (if it ain't broke don't fix it). like how emerald hill zone is obviously just green hill zone mk. 2. I didn't know about time constraints etc
Lorne Lanning has talked about that in the past: in December 2008, he said "Abe's Oddysee did so well that we were pressured by our publisher [GT Interactive] to get a second game done for Christmas [1998]". He repeated the same idea when he was interviewed at EGX 2017 (5:42 timestamp) ruclips.net/video/GdDpdJxcZvQ/видео.html. Exoddus was not the game they wanted to do if they had more time, but it was a great sequel. And I doubt the initial vision for a second game would use Soulstorm's mechanics of looting and crafting.
Final Fantasy VIII and IX have the greatest pre-rendered backgrounds and by extension were far and away the best looking games of the PS1 era. The artistry on display was unreal.
And those few times the background suddenly starts moving... Just magic. FFVII opening train scene f*cking blows my mind every time since 1997
@@LeonardoGarcia-qt6lf oh yeah. FFVIII had so many sequences that did that. I think almost every CGI blended in and out of the gameplay. Incredible.
Scale FFXVI down to 480p and VIII and IX look better (if you factor out the characters).
I think Crow Country is a good recent example of a game that uses pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles to great effect. I think it was decently popular as well.
I really enjoyed this episode! It was thought provoking and well argued.
There is more environmental story telling in these pre-rendered backgrounds then the best of the modern open world games. The psx resident evil games are particularly good at this. The psx rpgs that use them have aged beautifully as well.
Exactly our thoughts, feelings and wishes in one awesome video,with two awesome dudes... Thank you
This is something I've been wanting for a long time also. Because it was born from limitations, now that the limitations are gone we just don't see this beautiful way of doing things anymore.
Ff 7 remake does this in some parts of it, Fantasian does this too in a way....
150% agree here, ff7,8,9 art was rough and atmospheric in a good way. Modern games are far too crisp, clean and oversaturated, lacking depth of field. There's amazing concept artists out there ( if anyone's seen vaatividias art competitions for souls games). Literally turn these style pieces into ff9 style of games, would be amazing 👍
can you imagine modern day super high def pre-rendered backgrounds combined with some analogue of like a triple layer parralax scrolling technique? makes my mouth water.
Two recent games reminded me of how good pre-rendered or fixed angled backgrounds could be, Trials of Mana (remake) and Metaphor. Both of theme were mostly free-camera, but I really loved the few parts that were locked angle. It gives the devs so much more room for atmosphere building and controlling what the player should see. It also takes a load off the player as well as they don't have to continually adjust the camera.
There are many great examples from the period, but my absolute favorite examples are Legend of Dragoon and Parasite Eve 2. Both of them are absolutely beautiful, detailed, and have animations that bring them to life. Often I'll get lost just admiring them, even to this day
💯
I haven't watched yet, but F yes!!! I always loved pre rendered backgrounds. In games like FFVII, Blade Runner 97's game, Ogs Resident Evil, etc, it was the soul of the worlds that were presenting. With the whole pixel art first, and then poligonal 90s style revival I really hoped for indie and AA studios to bring back this kind of backgrounds.
Been playin fantasian. Pre rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles need to come back
Players are not masters of cinematography. Giving them the control of the camera is not gonna produce art. I want the game developers to show me the framing as cinematic they imagined it. Not necessarily prerendered or fixed, but at least like FFX or DMC1.
Didn't know you guys were so well versed in After Effects and 3d. 🙂As someone in the field, I can hear by the way you talk about that you truly went through the pain of the process. 😅
You guys also need to talk about the Syberia games, since you are talking about the beauty of Pre-rendered backgrounds in videogames.
The new HD 2D games that SE and others have been making have been great. But I do miss the old renders from games like FF9 (all of them in the psx era, really), Resident Evil, etc. This could also open up new opportunities for artists and things as well which is always great.
This makes me think about how Arcane utilizes almost-entirely painted backgrounds and hand-drawn effects, and it's one of the best looking shows out there. In a significantly smaller budget than most big-budget films (animated or live-action), they created something more visually appealing than most.
I remember Legend of Dragoon and its majesty, men each map looks so crisps and amazing.
Good talk. Some thoughts and ideas:
1- The main reason to use PRB would be money. In a time when creating games is so expensive this would be a good thing to explore.
2- When i think PRB i am thinking about jprgs. And that would the best place to use PRB today . Using them in a action game would take even more courage to do.
3- i get the feeling that thanks to the internet high quality PRB would find an audiance with the "artist community". And of couse old timers like me would like them as well.
4- The Souls series is one that is praised for it´s use of background art.
5- On the fee camera thing: no exactely related but vagrant story allowed you to use the first person camera to look at the amazing environments and the enemies. That was also in a time whe games were less frenetic tha today.
Did Unicorn Overlord use them?
Yeah, I feel like games that had pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed cameras had a sense of... meaning and intentionality behind every screen that somehow reminds me of cinema. It's like designing a space for open-world play makes things too big for you to notice what the designer wants or what the intention was, whereas those shots gave you a clear understanting about the aesthetic and feeling this particular scene and place are supposed to have.
The artistic angle of the camera is also a point of contention. Just because you can use your iPhone to take pictures doesn't mean you know HOW to take beautiful compelling photos. With pre rendered backgrounds, the developers have control of what they want you to see so as a player we are being presented a gallery of beautiful interactive images.
I'm also a fan of baked in lighting for games in the 7th generation of consoles. We don't need everything to be ray traced.
I loved pre-rendered backgrounds. They were often a bit of a contrast but when done right it actually made the worlds feel more fantastical.
Pre-rendered backgrounds are not being used often not only because of the fixed camera but for the limitation that generates in the gameplay, if you made a game with pre-rendered backgrounds the few options of gameplay would be a turn-based rpg or a survival horror, you can't make a platformer or a action game that way. And the controls that is aceptable in this type of game is the tank-control that majority of people hate.
As an aspiring indie dev, one of my main ideas/projects is to emulate the style of PS1 Final Fantasy games, as well as games like Legend of Dragoon and Jade Cocoon. The idea of prerendered backgrounds with 3D models and fixed camera angles for exploration and scenes feels much more appealing and approacheable as a newbie indie dev than trying to create sprawling worlds with tons of choices. Besides, I feel like that style of JRPG wasn't properly expanded on. The only big iteration we ever really got for an ATB system was I Am Setsuna and FFX-2, both of which are great but I feel like they could've done more to make all facets of the combat more interesting, maybe by implementing SMT style statuses or increase difficulty, but still.
Pre-rendered backgrounds allowed games to have graphics far beyond the capabilities of the hardware. Imagine what we could have today with that. I replayed FF9 a few weeks ago with the Moguri mod and I was stunned by how amazing it looked.
Dude. If somehow, someway, we could get a FF8, ,9 ,10 remake, but with the pre-rendered backgrounds . . Man. That would be something to behold. Maybe I’m old now, but I really enjoy the feel of games with pre rendered backgrounds.
one problem that really stood out in Legacy of Kain Defiance. mixing real time combat with things like careful platforming and cameras changing mid action dropping you off a cliff... mixing the two has to compensate for spontaneous actions.
That yakuza games at least the first several were good examples of a mix of free cameras, set cameras, pre rendered and live poly environments. Absolutely love those games, especially the vibe/feel. Might be worth checking out.
Fantasian came in clutch!
Resident Evil was great at using fixed camara angles to scare you.
The more I grow up the more I love Pre-rendered backgrounds in videogames.
Final Fantasy 9 with the Moguri mod and Lossless scaling on PC is insane. Run it at 4k, and the background looks perfect. Lossless scaling will frame gen 4x so 120fps when on pre-rendered backgrounds or 60fps during g battles. Battles look weird, I'll say that but the way the pre-rendered backgrounds scroll at 4k 120fps has no downside. It is like looking through a window. Hard to believe it isn't a full remake.
The keyword that needs to be emphasized regarding pre rendered backgrounds is “Composition”. Composition is what we really are seeking with pre rendered backgrounds. Also CRPGS have recently employed pre rendered backgrounds.
You guys should check out Crow Country, it's an indie horror game in the style of Resident Evil. It doesn't have pre-rendered backgrounds, but it LOOKS like it does, except you can spin the camera around, it's kind of trippy. I definitely agree with you guys that pre-rendered backgrounds are a lost art and still have their place. I think people underestimate the artistry that goes into these backgrounds, the film-like cinematography that goes into how they're presented to the player, I miss em.
Halfway through the game you're describing might be something like "To the Moon", a four hour RPG that is a sort of playable cinematic experience. Check it out people if you haven't, it's a priceless game.
CRPGs uses pre-rendered backgrounds in the late 90s as well and there's even some modern titles that still use the style like Pillars of Eternity.
Kouldelka would really benefit from a modern remake using pre-rendered backgrounds. The people of Wales would rejoice once more!