Do you ever wish pre-rendered background games would return?

They were the bread and butter of many games (especially JRPGs) during the 90's and early 2000's. Many of my favourite games had them: RE 1-3, Dino Crisis 2, Chrono Cross, FF 7-9, The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, Parasite eve 1-2, Alone in the Dark TNN, etc.

I read somewhere that it isn't really cost efficient to make games like that anymore, but man, I would take one of those over many modern games.

What are some of your favourite games like these?

Chrono Cross personally has the best pre rendered background art in all of JRPG. The game did it beautifully, probably due to them learning from experience working with FF games. I really got immersed by the world of Chrono Cross. Not to mention the changes caused by time travel shenanigans.

FF7 - 9, and Bravely Default/second did the whole pre render thing really well too. Especially Bravely Default as the game was a spin off of FF so the dev tries to capture the feel of FF.

For western RPG, Grim Fandango, Siberia and Pillars of Eternity had some great designs.

Resident Evil Remake (aside from some dated looking mods) is still one of the best looking games to this day imo, it will never age.

@uninspiredcup: Yeah, Zero too. I remember the first time I saw RE0. Gorgeous.

No, real-time graphics and lighting are so advanced these days that it wouldn't make sense to create all the assets and not have them interacting in real-time.

The pre-rendered backgrounds were only used back then because you couldn't achieve that level of fidelity in real-time.

Honestly, these days i miss nothing thanks to indies. They have been reviving every single dead genre i have been missing.

That would not make any sense whatsoever. Yall have some busted nostalgia.

No. You can do those kinds of camera angles now with more motion and freedom, using 3D environments. Look at Until Dawn. The only thing I would have changed with the camera system in that game was making the character go forward only when pushing the stick forward, so that they don't turn around when walking into a new scene.

For isometric games, sure. I personally think PSX era pre rendered games look better than modern isometric games such as Xcom and Divinity: Original Sin. FF9 is still one of the best looking games ever, and some of the FMV sequences in Parasite Eve 2 still blow me away

That defies logic and objectivity. I think some of you all forgot what these games look like especially the CG.

Definitely, they add so much character and sense of place to a scene, and can be very memorable.

Wouldn't want them back at the expense of gameplay, but for some non-action genres, particularly RPGs, yes plz.

They wouldn't even have to be pre-rendered to have the same effect these days. Could pack all kinds of detail into a controlled frame (both technically and artistically) while still having all the real time flexibility for lighting, effects, and animation.

I've always had appreciation for the more well composed backdrops of that era, but playing the FFVII demo recently really drove that point home for me.

This

looks better than this imo

I know it's down to art, but I just prefer the softness of pre rendered. I've never really liked real time isometric graphics.

Yeah for sure. They would look absolutely gorgeous with today’s hardware.

@pinkribbonscars: The good news is that you can literally achieve what you want with modern graphics. You simply prefer the art direction of FF9.

EDIT: Just remember that the image you are using for FF9 is uprez and is not what the original resolution or quality.

Yeah, think the more apt question here is would you want to see directed camera angles make a return. Could do a whole lot with a fixed frame in real time now.

Still, would be interesting to see what a AAA dev could do with actual pre-rendered backdrops these days. Especially if they utilized film grade renderers like Arnold or Vray, and compositing tools like Nuke. Which in turn would free up tons of resources to put into character models and other interactive/realtime assets.

Could make a sick looking game.

@BassMan: As if every dev could afford to make games look like FFVII remake.

I guess 2D pixel art games wouldn't make any sense either, right? And that's even older than pre rendered backgrounds. Wrong as always.

This.

Wouldn't really make sense in this day and age. If a developer wants to capture the style, would it not be more efficient to have an isometric renderer? Level designers would then be able to only need to sculpt geometry that's actually visible to the player, allowing more detail to be rendered while simultaneously reducing VRAM usage.

That's some warped logic. Why waste time creating a 3D environment to render one image when it can be simply rendered in real-time. That makes no sense.

2D isn't 3D.

Why would anyone prefer pre-rendered scenes to those done in realtime? There's absolutely no benefit, only limitations. Which is the entire reason they existed in the first place, they were a work around for technical inadequacy, that has since been overcome. Nothing acheivable by pre-rendered can't be done in realtime, and better.

I definitely miss rpg’s in that style.

The most recent JRPG that used this method is Legrand Legacy, its 2D based pre rendered background and it looks really good. Its an Indie game though so its really rough on the polish.

Yes. You can make it look beautiful.

@pinkribbonscars said:

@Pedro said:

@pinkribbonscars said:

For isometric games, sure. I personally think PSX era pre rendered games look better than modern isometric games such as Xcom and Divinity: Original Sin. FF9 is still one of the best looking games ever, and some of the FMV sequences in Parasite Eve 2 still blow me away

That defies logic and objectivity. I think some of you all forgot what these games look like especially the CG.

This

looks better than this imo

I know it's down to art, but I just prefer the softness of pre rendered. I've never really liked real time isometric graphics.

To be fair, still images don't do justice to games like Divine Divinity and XCOM which are dynamic and full of life when seen in motion as opposed to the literally static backdrops used in older games.

@MirkoS77: Maybe because indie devs often don't have the resources to make detailed 3D enviroments? Just a thought. Many people here love the idea.

@Pedro: Aesthetics, resources, time, different skills, how demanding you want your game to be, performance... look up "the last night", a pixel art indie game announced in 2017, and tell me they should have gone full 3D.

Games like bravely default have pre rendered backgrounds and people love it. It's not even indie.

@Arkhalipso:

The technique did give off a nice, artsy vibe to it. But for some games like Resident Evil, it became quite a pain in the ass. Zombies lurking at the edge of the frame were impossible to see. And it made backtracking feel very repetitive. Like how Capcom reused the same still shots for the locations you revisit in RE 2 and 3.

Stop being silly. This has nothing to do with pixel art. Pre-renders are 3D scenes rendered into one image. The mere fact that you are making the comparison shows that you have no point and aimlessly grasping at straws. Its almost like you don't even understand how the technology works.

Seems there is a disconnect here.

Sure, pre-rendered backgrounds were born from extreme limitations that are long gone at this point. But the fact remains that offline rendering is only limited to time and artistic talent, whereas real time rendering still has its technical limitations. Should be a no brainer really, as VFX and animation are still way ahead of games visually.

Also should be noted that pre-rendered assets don't have to be completely static. Rendering and compositing tools and workflows have come a long way since the PSX days.

Need an example, look no further than the Ori games. Most of the assets are externally created in 3d, rendered to image sequences, and layered in-engine. It's not just the backgrounds either, even the characters are created this way. Poly count, texture resolution, rig complexity, etc. don't matter because in the end they're just dealing with images, layers, and compositing trickery. And that game is anything but static lol.

I think that ship has sailed. They would have been great with early HD graphics but we are now approaching graphical standards that pretty much render them unnecessary. When the next gen hits, there just wont be any point for anything other than some crazy artistic indie game.

@ConanTheStoner: Ori? You mean Ori and the Blind Forest? That game is a hybrid of 3D and 2D assets. There are no pre-rendered elements in the game.

@Arkhalipso: Firstly all of the images you have shown were made in 3D and rendered as a 2D image. Secondly all of these images can be done in real-time because of the advancement in technology. Take a look at FInal Fantasy VII. The game looks better than the CG of the original. Its a waste of time and resources to create 3D environments for pre-rendered backgrounds when the background can just be in real-time.

I don't know about bringing it back, but the backgrounds of Parasite Eve are a thing of beauty.

@Pedro: I'm absolutely certain that, whatever the process, the images as you see them were not rendered in 3D. Maybe in some cases they took images of very basic, textureless 3D enviroments which were later added a shit ton of detail to make the final 2D background. In any case, it cannot be compared to making a whole 3D enviroment where you can move the camera around. In fact, making complete 3D models that looked like that would have been impossible at the time. There's definitely a lot of effort put on those backgrounds.

Yeah, I'm sure every dev out there could pull off something like FFVII Remake. LOL.

Nearly everything is pre-rendered, characters included. If you want to call that 2d, then sure, since in the end that's all a render is. But that 2d art is generated from 3d assets externally.

But yeah, they basically took an approach similar to the old DKC games on SNES. Created the assets in 3d, animated them in 3d, then rendered to image sequences.

If they don't have time to make a detailed 3D environment, then what are we talking about? This topic isn't about 2D sprite based art, it's about prefering 3D pre-rendered backdrops over those done in realtime.

If a dev doesn't have the resources, they can't make it realtime or pre-rendered.

@MirkoS77: That's not really what I meant to discuss. I definitely prefer detailed 3D games when done right, but I would like to see more old-style games with pre-rendered backgrounds, which I would pick over many 3D games. I think small studios could make some really good games like these, and they could compete against bigger games despite not being 3D (which are usually lacking).

Only if every screen provides me with the most optimal camera angle. I'd prefer they didn't come back at all though. I can't stand when games lock my camera in a fixed position and won't let me look around.

@JustPlainLucas:

Yeah, I only find them appealing for some RPG types and traditional Adventure games. Even if they generally worked well enough for stuff like Resident Evil, don't really want a locked camera in most action based games. Of course it's fine for side scrollers, but that's about it.

A pre-rendered background isn't less costly to make than a realtime one. The developer still has to put in the time, effort and resources to create the 3D models, textures, lighting, etc, on a workstation. The only difference being, when everything is finalized, one developer hits 'render' and has the assets processed by the workstation into an pre-rendered image for hardware that is incapable of handling all assets at once in memory, and the other loads all of them into memory which the hardware processes and recreates in realtime as is capable.

It's done to lessen the load on the hardware, it has nothing to do with the workload, and doesn't negate cost.

You are correct about the character. They are sprites and not real time models. So, I was wrong about that. The backgrounds however, are not pre-rendered. They are hand drawn elements assembled to create the seen.

@Pedro:

Interesting. Haven't seen that scene construction one before, thanks for sharing.

I have seen the GDC vid pertaining to the character workflow, but I also remember checking one of their environment artists Artstation accounts a while back. Looked like he had created modular trim sheet pieces based on ortho rendered 3d art. I could be mistaken of course. Or it could be that they use a mixture of both pure 2d painting and ortho rendered assets. Would be interesting to see a full breakdown.

Not to bend the "argument" here, more for the sake of discussion. A final render is almost never what the render engine spits out. Rendered stills always undergo 2d editing in Photoshop, just as rendered sequences always go through After Effects or Nuke. I'm sure you know this, just feel it should be mentioned.

What I'm driving at here is that the lines are blurred between 2d and 3d when talking about offline rendered art. I'd bet that these pre-rendered backdrops in older RPGs and RE games had their share of 2d adjustments and paintovers as well.

No, there was a reason why these were common practice back then. That reason is no longer valid today.

Today's gaming is advanced enough that real-time background feels more immersive to me than pre-rendered ever could.