Graphic Curiosity

[Midgar Mist]

Further to a thread in General FF, I am interested to know more about your opinions on this.

Are you for or against the graphics in the original FF7?

Do you think, thanks to this arguably being the first mainstream FF it takes more heat for its graphics than the earlier stuff?

Discuss.

[gau]

FF7 graphics are progress. I like progress. Thus, I'm all for it.

[Slothy]

I actually don't mind the graphics in the game. It was their first pseudo-3D effort on the PSX and the character graphics followed a similar style to what we'd seen before. They were less expressive than VI of course, but it didn't kill it. The backgrounds were great though 95% of the time.

[Jinx]

I don't mind the graphics at all, but then, I played FFVII as a kid. I wouldn't say I'm nostalgic about how the game looks (except for those pre-rendered backgrounds, RIP ;-;) but it doesn't bother me because when I first played it, the graphics were cutting edge.

[Pheesh]

I don't know of any (good) game from that era that has graphics as bad as the original FFVII. I didn't play it when it first came out and when I did go to play it the graphics were so terrible and immersion-breaking that they made me stop on two seperate occasions. I had to force myself to not care about them in order to have a proper play through of the game.

I think there's things you can say about them without being negative; they're certainly unique (probably not a good thing but it's something), and some of the expressive movements of characters are made more charming by the big hands. But to say the overall quality of the graphics is anything other than bad has to be nostalgia goggles.

[Slothy]

It's really not. The only thing that's not great about those graphics is the characters when they're roaming around and that's really just down to them not being very detailed. Less so than their 2D predecessor ironically. But I don't think they're so bad that they ruin the game. They don't really get in the way of anything in terms of script or story. It just comes down to either liking or being able to look past the super deformed style or not. Not being overly bothered by it doesn't mean people are blinded by find childhood memories. Hell, i don't think anyone would ever accuse me of being blinded by nostalgia when it comes to VII. While i do like the game overall, I've never had an issue dealing it some harsh criticism.

[Pheesh]

They're bad graphics. Some of the worst in any 3D game I've ever played. Sure you can be not bothered by them, and it helps if you know what to expect before you start, but you can't in seriousness tell me that there is only one part of the game's graphics that 'aren't great' (implying everything else graphically related is great, are you kidding me!?).

Also, I never said they affect the story directly, I said they were so bad that I never even made it up to the meat of the story on two seperate occasions because the graphics made me want to stop playing.

Look, you have to see it from my perspective. The first time I ever played the game was in 2009, I had never watched a let's play of it and had no idea what to expect. I went to play it and the graphics were what they were. I can happily go back and play Crash Bandicoot, MGS, Super Mario 64, Tekken 2, and a slew of other games that were released at that time. I'm not some graphics elitist, but bad graphics are bad graphics, and FF7 has, objectively, some of the worst I've ever seen in a game.

[Saber]

The game is 20 years old. When it came out I loved it and held it up as the best game of all time. Before VIII came along I started to play the older classic Final Fantasy games that were 2d. People said "oh look the graphics are horrible" I didn't care and played anyways. Thing is new is always better. In 20 years Final Fantasy 15 will have horrible graphics. It's either you like the games or you don't. I play for gameplay and it doesn't matter how the graphics are.

I can argue that Final Fantasy X had the worst graphics of its time. Really when it came out I looked at the opening cutscene and almost turned it off. It was too much "look at this" then I could handle. There is less importance to those special cutscenes you work had to get when they look like the rest of the game. Final Fantasy had good CGI although it isn't "the realist thing you could see" but it had much more art behind it then other games in that era.

Basically you have to understand that the gaming industry is always updating rapidly. Each new installment out does the last. The people that played Final Fantasy VII back when it first came out are the only ones that know how big of a leap it was. Sure now and days they aren't the best. Neither were the 2d graphics at VII's era. People said 2d were horrible when 3d games were there.

[Pheesh]

I'm comparing FFVII to games from its time, not Uncharted 4. When put side by side with Metal Gear Solid or even something cartoony like Crash Bandicoot, VII has pretty atrocious graphics.

[Fynn]

I don't mind them personally, and I can forgive SE for them because it pretty much was their first 3D game, but they are certainly one of the worst-aged graphics I've ever seen. Sure, the backgrounds are nice, but when you try to introduce a newcomer to the series through VII, you're gonna have a bad time.

[sinuosity]

Backgrounds are great. The lego people field models are what I assume most people complain about? (Battle models are excellent).

The lego people definitely aren't fantastic, but they're simple and clean and surprisingly expressive. They animate well, which gives them a lot more expressive capability than the sprites in VI, for example.

That being said, FFVII definitely looks the worst of the PSX era FFs. But they're all gorgeous, so that's hardly a terrible thing.

[Wolf Kanno]

The character models have aged pretty bad, especially considering the games that came after, but I wouldn't say they are not charming in their own way. The game is just still in that early part of 3D before people jumped on, so it hasn't aged as well as people would like. Even the backgrounds are darker and muddier than a lot of games that came only a year after it. I still feel it works for the charm of the game though.

[Slothy]

They're bad graphics. Some of the worst in any 3D game I've ever played. Sure you can be not bothered by them, and it helps if you know what to expect before you start, but you can't in seriousness tell me that there is only one part of the game's graphics that 'aren't great' (implying everything else graphically related is great, are you kidding me!?).

I actually can say that the character graphics on the field are the worst part and the only truly awful part. The backgrounds were great, especially for the time, the battle graphics are literally no worse than any of the games you mention, and the art direction is actually pretty great despite Toriyama's later bullshit. There are very few parts of the game where you can't tell what's going on, and this is a game basically from the dawn of 3D graphics. They may be the worst of any game you've played, but they're far from the worst of the era, or even the years after it's release. And I can easily forgive any poor comparisons you want to make to things like MGS that came out a year later, Mario 64 which had the advantage of a significantly more powerful system and a vastly different style of game and graphical needs, or even Crash Bandicoot which I can guarantee never had to worry about hardware limitations in the PSX (and frankly, despite being slightly better looking in respects technically thanks to a simpler graphic style and fewer system requirements to pull off, actually looks awful in some places because the art direction is a god awful mess at times. Yes, I will go on record as saying there are parts of Crash Bandicoot that look worse than FFVII).


Also, I never said they affect the story directly, I said they were so bad that I never even made it up to the meat of the story on two seperate occasions because the graphics made me want to stop playing.

Look, you have to see it from my perspective. The first time I ever played the game was in 2009, I had never watched a let's play of it and had no idea what to expect. I went to play it and the graphics were what they were. I can happily go back and play Crash Bandicoot, MGS, Super Mario 64, Tekken 2, and a slew of other games that were released at that time. I'm not some graphics elitist, but bad graphics are bad graphics, and FF7 has, objectively, some of the worst I've ever seen in a game.

Honestly, this sounds less to me that the graphics are objectively bad as you're saying they're bad compared to 2009 and your expectations of games from the era. The graphics did the job, which was tell the story and be readable onscreen. Which they were. Even the character models which are by far the worst part of the game. If you really want to compare it to something more contemporary you should go with Resident Evil. Same pre-rendered backgrounds. Same use of 3D sprites on top of said backgrounds. I'd still say RE probably looks worse because those backgrounds are terrible but it's not so great all around. I could probably sit here all day listing more games of the day that look as bad, or worse, than FFVII but I won't because I'd be here forever.

I'll just name Tobal No. 1 instead and walk away.


The lego people definitely aren't fantastic, but they're simple and clean and surprisingly expressive. They animate well, which gives them a lot more expressive capability than the sprites in VI, for example.

I kind of disagree with this but only because so much of human expression comes from the face and the eyes in particular and despite those tiny sprites I thought FFVI did facial expressions better than FFVII. VII didn't really do a lot with them but the expressions in FFVI were gold. I'm still impressed they managed to cram as much expression as they did in there, but I guess that's what happens when you make the head take up half the sprite and the eyes most of that space all on their own.

[Nice]

Final Fantasy VII has amazing hand drawn backgrounds and FMVs. It's only problem are the blocky character sprites. The game does not have atrocious graphics by any standard - it has atrocious character sprites. But those sprites, to me, are endearing. I love them.
I'm not a FF VII fanboy by any means, but I can appreciate that this game was Square's first foray into 3D animation. It's obvious that the team was learning and it is evident in FF VIII and FFIX that the sprites only got better. I think it's a bit much to bash a 20 year old game over graphics.
Most games on the PS2 look terrible by today's standards.

[Ayen]

I never took them all that seriously even as a kid. I pretty much saw them as polygons without mouths. My brother and I would make fun of that fact the same way we made fun of the MGS1 characters having no eyes. It was normally the cut-scene graphics that I'd see people be wowed by and normally agree the in-game graphics don't compare. That's still a problem in some games now.