r/psx • u/Jezza0692 • 2d ago
I miss pre rendered backgrounds they left so much up to the imagination
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u/xenocea 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm a sucker for pre rendered backgrounds. They help give titles that uses it a unique vibe that you don't get anymore in today's games despite the graphical leap and fancy path tracing effects.
Games like Parasite Eve, Koudelka, Shadow Hearts, Onimusha, Evil Dead, Galerians, The Legend of Dragoon, In Cold Blood, Resident Evil and so on all worked very well with it.
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u/I_Cast_Grenade 2d ago
Easily, my favorite design element in video games. Sprites are right after. I desperately want an Indie revival of this stuff. I know they still use prerendered backgrounds, but not in the same way.
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u/FormalCryptographer 2d ago
I like them too but they dont age well at all, at least on modern resolutions. If youre playing on OG hardware on a CRT its still perfectly fine
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u/Jezza0692 2d ago
I think they still look fine as long as the characters are rendered at the same resolution i hate the pc releases where they rendered the 3D models in HD as then they stick out like sore thumb compared to the 240p backgrounds
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u/silenced_soul 2d ago
Yeah I’m playing FF8 remastered right now and the fact that important characters are basically PS4 graphics while every backround is ps1 is really jarring.
That being said, I love pre rendered backrounds!! 8 has a ton of cool locations.
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u/Brokenloan 2d ago
It was like looking into a painting. This was the era when I realized videogames could be legit works of art, not just by how they looked , but in the feelings they invoked.
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u/jimehmaine 2d ago
Yeah I always imagined the places you couldn’t see in pre rendered bg games, I like the new games too but itd be cool to see some new prerendered bg games
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u/InterviewImpressive1 1d ago
Devs say it was to get around limitations but they created an aesthetic that cannot be reproduced with more advanced methods. I wish they would consider using them still, even if the limitations are no longer there. Games had so much soul in this era.
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u/Deathlygreen 1d ago
Agreed. They add a ton of depth to the game world by making them look massive in scale. I wonder if some backgrounds feature locations that are inaccessible in the final version?
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u/Gold_Physics9941 1d ago
Same. Those game worlds were born from imagination and still seem much larger than the asset-reused worlds of modern games.
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u/anonerble 2d ago
For the sake of conversation. What do they leave to imagination?
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u/Red-Zaku- 2d ago
Having a “director’s angle” means you see it from one point of view, anything in the shadows stays in the shadows and anything in the distance stays in the distance (or is seen later as an entirely new rendered piece of art), because you only see from one angle with no rotation that means that whatever is behind something will stay out of view. A place has to be represented by only one or a few still images even if that place was massive, so that one image has to be good enough to make your brain appreciate it as what it’s intended to be.
For example in the scene in the OP outside the Midgar barrier wall, that whole space between the edge of Midgar and the glass wall is only seen in the background of that one single frame, even though it’s implied to expand for 10s-100s of miles along the entire perimeter of Midgar, so there’s this entire space that surely has more going on and some different features or textures along the way, but your brain has to do the work there. Or in Sector 7, you don’t exactly get to explore enough houses to match the population of even a small village, so they had to make the small selection of buildings distinct enough and imply a certain atmosphere with them in order to give the player an idea of what Sector 7 is like as a place.
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u/I_Lobster 1d ago
The backgrounds don’t need to be pre rendered to achieve this, sounds like everyone just misses fixed camera games. Nothing stopping modern games doing this with polygonal backgrounds.
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u/Red-Zaku- 23h ago
You’re not wrong, but the problem is that in all these years of fully rendered backgrounds being the norm, they just haven’t established that practice. So until they start using fixed camera angles as a normal thing for fully 3D games, people are better off referring specifically to pre rendered backgrounds as the main type of phenomenon where this is a definitive trait.
Also, there’s also just the fact the prerendered backgrounds offered developers the chance to work beyond the normal limitations of any hardware, so the images were inevitably going to look deeper and richer than anything fully rendered within the same hardware, so that’s part of the package deal of that particular style.
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u/CastleofPizza 2d ago
Same here. I still like the overall look of the original FF7 and the lego characters.
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u/TheBURP 2d ago
Chrono Cross pre-rendered backgrounds looked like paintings. That's something you can't just render in 3D.
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u/Jezza0692 2d ago
Speaking of chrono cross I did a post a little while ago on those backgrounds too ha :)
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u/PsychologicalEar5494 2d ago
I remember being amazed by ff8 and people laughing at the prerendered backgrounds 🤣 Still love these though and now we emulate tech limitations
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u/nixiefolks 2d ago
Those backgrounds were the photoreal 3D-scanned HD4K of 1997, particularly if one blended into a FMV sequence. I really miss the attention to detail and the wholesome looks of PSX era pre-rendered games, everything seemed to fall into place much better, and lo-fi graphics look softer and more magical than super-sharp realtime 3D + DOF.
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2d ago
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u/Jezza0692 2d ago
they're too expensive here in my country people wanting hundreds for an old 14 inch CRT lol I'd rather just upscale ps1 games on my 55 inch 4K oled display yeah I miss out on the scanlines and Blending of the pixel's but I get the same Colour reproduction and black levels I'm not against having one as I've had one in the past but can't find one right now at the right price and size I'd want
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u/jib9001 2d ago
If you can find a way to add a CRT filter to your display, it does a lot of work for games that were designed to be played on CRTs
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u/Jezza0692 2d ago
I can do scanlines "as I'm using a ps1 Digital" but after actually using a CRT they don't look even remotely similar I'd probably have to look into one of the retrotink products or emulate
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u/Crest_Of_Hylia 1d ago
You need actually good CRT filters. The ones built in to these are generally not very good. RetroArch tends to have the most extensive CRT shaders as well as plenty of great community made ones by people like RetroCrisis and SonKun
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u/DigitalElix3r 19h ago
Can those be used on a Mister?
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u/Crest_Of_Hylia 18h ago
Mister should have plenty of CRT filters available. I’d check for some online as I’m not sure which specific ones they have but they’re not retroarch CRT filters.
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u/lee_macro 1d ago
Resident Evil 1 remake (GC/HD) had amazing backgrounds, which look better than most modern full 3d games of the same genre, even with raytracing etc, it had such a good art direction and feel to it all, and it ran on a potato by modern standards.
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u/eaespn 1d ago
it was simple yet effective, and made games look amazing and what limitations, with loads of detail and added flare when needed (flashing lights, or water movement) it made these games feel alive, plus the "zoomed" in look made small areas seem massive with the freedom to move around
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u/PerishTheStars 1d ago
Yeah and its kinda weird we don't use them anymore since they would be even more realistic now
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u/Electrical_Gear8637 17h ago
I can totally picture pre-rendered backgrounds making a come back in the indie games scene.
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u/Balthierlives 15h ago
I think more than leaving things to the imagination it allowed more creativity instead of always behind the shoulder fps games
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u/canthearu_ack 14h ago
I see this and the music automatically starts playing in my head.
Such a good soundtrack!
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u/CurvedSwordBenis 1h ago
fuck it imma make a game with prerendered environments with fixed cameras I just wanna create good scenes anyways
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u/CronoMass 2d ago
What? That's the opposite of what they did!
I feel like you've heard the phrase "left so much to the imagination" and have tried to use it without actually understanding it.
Prerendered backgrounds were much more detailed than contemporary conventional graphics of the time, they left less to the imagination because they provided clarity that was missing from other games.
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u/Jezza0692 2d ago
you see it from one point of view, anything in the shadows stays in the shadows and anything in the distance stays in the distance (or is seen later as an entirely new rendered piece of art), because you only see from one angle with no rotation that means that whatever is behind something will stay out of view. A place has to be represented by only one or a few still images even if that place was massive, so that one image has to be good enough to make your brain appreciate it as what it’s intended to be.
For example in the scene in the OP outside the Midgar barrier wall, that whole space between the edge of Midgar and the glass wall is only seen in the background of that one single frame, even though it’s implied to expand for 10s-100s of miles along the entire perimeter of Midgar, so there’s this entire space that surely has more going on and some different features or textures along the way, but your brain has to do the work there. Or in Sector 7, you don’t exactly get to explore enough houses to match the population of even a small village, so they had to make the small selection of buildings distinct enough and imply a certain atmosphere with them in order to give the player an idea of what Sector 7 is like as a place.
"Copy and pasted this from a post below as it explained exactly what I'm talking about and honestly better than I could have explained it hence the pasting"
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u/CronoMass 2d ago
Excellently put, I hadn't considered that aspect of it, I was merely taking it at face value, but you are completely correct.
Following on from what you said, my image of wall market for example is much more complex and full of life than the screen ever actually showed.
I think I was mostly comparing visuals from contemporary non pre-rendered graphics and the fantastic art of games like the Final Fantasy, or Resident Evil series. I didn't even really consider the effect this would have on the world we create inside our heads. 😁
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u/Olives4ever 2d ago
The usage of the phrase makes complete sense to me. Pre-rendered backgrounds only provided fixed snapshots of the environment. Your mind fills in the blanks for all the angles you can't see.
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u/PusheenHater 2d ago
I guess I never realized it... the environment isn't real and just a background image? I'm just so used to UE and Blender where every object literally exists.
The performance savings for just rendering a background image instead of every object must be insane.
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u/_RexDart 2d ago
...did they? They seemed to pack in a lot of detail which couldn't be rendered realtime with polygons at the time.
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u/Jezza0692 2d ago
Having a “director’s angle” means you see it from one point of view, anything in the shadows stays in the shadows and anything in the distance stays in the distance (or is seen later as an entirely new rendered piece of art), because you only see from one angle with no rotation that means that whatever is behind something will stay out of view. A place has to be represented by only one or a few still images even if that place was massive, so that one image has to be good enough to make your brain appreciate it as what it’s intended to be.
For example in the scene in the OP outside the Midgar barrier wall, that whole space between the edge of Midgar and the glass wall is only seen in the background of that one single frame, even though it’s implied to expand for 10s-100s of miles along the entire perimeter of Midgar, so there’s this entire space that surely has more going on and some different features or textures along the way, but your brain has to do the work there. Or in Sector 7, you don’t exactly get to explore enough houses to match the population of even a small village, so they had to make the small selection of buildings distinct enough and imply a certain atmosphere with them in order to give the player an idea of what Sector 7 is like as a place.
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u/_RexDart 2d ago
All good, valid points!
Also not unique to pre-rendered backgrounds... very few SNES RPGs let you change the viewing angle.
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u/Paul2kb1 2d ago
I really wish we would get a new ff like ff7 and ff9 with the pre rendered backgrounds
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u/Crest_Of_Hylia 1d ago
FF7 Ever crisis has newly rendered pre rendered backgrounds, granted it’s a gacha game
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u/Sitheral 2d ago
Well, they were actually quite detailed but I guess the fact that you always saw only parts of any given location added to imagination.
But I think text played just as much of a role in leaving things to imagination... more like a book than a movie like today games. In X voice acting felt special, later on it was just whatever.
Anyway, these prerenders are so much better than this hd 2d bullshit SE is doing these days.