One of the reasons games like FFVIII and CC still actually look pretty great (despite people's claims to the contrary) - pre-rendered backgrounds. You gave me the opportunity to beat on this drum again and I'm going to take it. The pre-rendered backgrounds of the PSX era look better than anything that came at least in the next console generation. Square simply should not have abandoned them for PS2 because they simply couldn't actually make stuff that looked as good rendering in real time during that era. Even today, while the graphical quality has surpassed them, the pre-rendered backgrounds still look a lot better than frequently uninspired looking environments in the current console generation. Bottom line, with the pre-rendered bg's it seemed like the creators put a lot of thought and attention into all the environments and it shows. Sure the character models in FFVIII look a little worse for wear these days, but those backgrounds are always going to shine!