Please explain to a Zoomer

[Anonymous No.5729494]

Was FMV in video games really THAT big of a deal? Were people too stupid to understand that they're PRErendered, and that the console isn't actually doing any rendering of its own?

[Anonymous No.5729502]

It's like half and half. Most people were aware of that, but still wanted to trick themselves into thinking FMVs were actually part of the game graphics, even though in-game graphics looked drastically different in a noticeable way.
Just being able to see digital video that wasn't VHS was a huge novelty in the 90s. Zoomers won't understand this.

[Anonymous No.5729519]

As someone who grew up with this stuff, I can tell you it was indeed a big deal to hardware manufacturers, but not such a big deal to gamers. Most of us were only excited about CDs because it meant bigger games with redbook audio, FMVs were just a bonus novelty, hence why games based around them sold like shit. You'd have to be an actual retard to think FMVs were real time, like Hulk Hogan is actually hiding in my CD-i telling me to make some thunder in paradise, Woooooow.

[Anonymous No.5729527]

>>5729494
it wasn't about thinking they're prerendered, it was cool to see a cutscene happen in better-than-gameplay graphics

[Anonymous No.5729537]

>>5729494
There is always more than one demographic that potentially buy a game. The first are the people that have played games before and knew that things like cut-scenes and box-art were always a lie, and the second group were new players that trusted what they were shown with blind enthusiasm. That second group was often referenced by the name "children", and they tend to have a highly protective informal lobbying group known as "parents".

[Anonymous No.5729538]

>>5729502
Pretty much this, though there was also always backlash as well since one of the things that never changes is gamers love to complain. I'll say this though, semi shamed as I am to admit it. Sewer Shark was a real turd of a game but I basically played it to the end just to see the clips of Robert Costanzo haming it up.

[Anonymous No.5729542]

>>5729494
For jrpgs, it was a revolution. Important scenes could now have the dramatic flair and weight they were meant to.

It was great for games based around story telling, Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid are good examples.

[Anonymous No.5729584]

>>5729542
mgs doesnt have any fmv. all cutscenes used ingame graphics

[Anonymous No.5729589]

I just remember thinking it was cool to see high-definition videos of the characters and settings I was used to seeing in relatively low resolution, I don't think there really was any attempt at trickery about their rendering given how different the FMVs were from the engine graphics. There weren't many games beyond the FFs that seamlessly tried to transition gameplay to FMVs and back.

>>5729542
Metal Gear Solid had FMVs? Weren't all the cut scenes rendered by the game engine?

[Anonymous No.5729595]

>>5729589
>There weren't many games beyond the FFs that seamlessly tried to transition gameplay to FMVs and back
Why do you think FF7 kept switching between high res and low res character models in the cutscenes?

[Anonymous No.5729604]

>>5729595
As I said, the FFs were pretty unique in that regard. I recall it happening a bit in the Abe games also, at least in the intro to both Odyssey and Exoddus.

[Anonymous No.5729614]

Buddy, people still get fooled by pre-rendered footage at E3. There's not "were" about it, they still are.

[Anonymous No.5729620]

>>5729584
I was actually thinking of cut scenes, my bad, thanks.

[Anonymous No.5729621]

>>5729614
Well the footage is not quite pre-rendered as it is just highly scripted and carefully choreographed, in addition to running on a developer PC build locked to 30FPS and with controller prompts. Predictably, the final PC builds don't look anywhere near that because of a variety of reasons, from the platform making less money than consoles to most PCs being weaker than consoles to MS/Sony paying them for console parity (as was the case with Watch_Dogs).

[Anonymous No.5729626]

>>5729604
I mean specifically why do you think they did that in 7 where some cutscenes had high res models and some had the chibi shit? It feels really jarring. The way they did it in the oddworld games was great since it all closely matched the art.

[Anonymous No.5729638]

>>5729502
>>5729538
Nonsense, they all knew it was pre-rendered. Even if most didn't know what the word "pre-rendered" is it's pretty obvious it's not in the game hurr durr.

Game ads very often had the disclaimer "not in-game footage", in the EU anyway, and well into the 2000s, I think they even have it still sometimes.

[Anonymous No.5729686]

>>5729638
reading comprehension? I didn't say people weren't aware, I said they were aware but still wanted to trick themselves that these amazing FMVs graphics was thanks to their powerful CD-based machine. Coupled with the fact digital video was a novelty.

[Anonymous No.5729701]

>>5729584
And those are a different feat of all their own.

With FMV, once you've created your animation, you render a video and all you have to do is make it play. With in-game cutscenes, the devs had code those animations and camera angles into the game.

[Anonymous No.5729723]

>>5729494
>Were people too stupid to understand that they're PRErendered, and that the console isn't actually doing any rendering of its own?

No, absolutely not. Everyone knew exactly what it was doing.

But 3D like that was only just starting to be a thing - consider that Toy Story was the world's first fully 3D rendered feature length movie, and that it didn't release until the end of 1995.

It had a huge novelty factor.

[Anonymous No.5729730]

>>5729494
>Was FMV in video games really THAT big of a deal?

It was a pretty big fucking deal. Coming off the SNES days, seeing the FMVs of FF7 were taking things to a whole new level, it was really incredible to see. IIRC even the TV ad for the game was mostly just the cutscenes.

>Were people too stupid to understand that they're PRErendered, and that the console isn't actually doing any rendering of its own?

I don't think anyone really gave a shit about what the hardware was doing or how the FMV was made. We all knew it was totally different graphics from the playable games. I remember thinking when I first got FF7 "someday the entire game will look as good as these FMVs". There was an obvious distinction between the two modes, but it didn't make the FMVs any less amazing. That they were fairly rare and interspersed throughout the game made them cooler because it kept you looking forward to what the next one would be like. I had separate saves on my memory card for each one so I could go back and watch them at any time, that's how cool and novel they were.

[Anonymous No.5730018]

>>5729494
Absolutely, I remember slogging through games I didn't like, primarily FFVIII, just so I could get to the next FMV. I would even set a save to a place that I knew a FMV would play, and after the FMV ended I would reset my console and replay through whatever I had to in order to see the FMV again. Remember, this was back when the only place to see these FMVs was on the games themselves.

[Anonymous No.5730053]

>>5729701
>With in-game cutscenes, the devs had code those animations and camera angles into the game.
FMV is just a movie inside of a game, whereas in-game cutscenes are nearly a new art medium. Machinima is now just some corporate trademark but it used to be an exciting new development in storytelling. Imagine a 13 episode Netflix drama, but rendered in real-time on your PC.

[Anonymous No.5730102]

>>5729494
Personally, I fucking hated FMV back in the day. It always felt like a gimmick, and I'd rather a game just give me more gameplay. Not trying to be contrarian here, sometimes it was impressive, but I could never shake the feeling that it was a waste, since I felt that video games were made for playing, not watching.

[Funcoland Clown No.5730120]

Yes, it was. I guess maybe you had to be there. You couldn't just watch anything anytime on YouTube.

[Anonymous No.5730151]

you went from 8 bit games with barely 16 colour graphics to being able to display a photo
> wow it looks real
then in nba jam you had that little slide show in the middle of the match
> wow its like a movie
then you had mist which could fool people into thinking it was real time for a short time but by the time ps1 was released fmv was not impressive at all. A lot of it was just to make pictures on the back of the box look good, I had a shooting game that you clicked with the mouse that was fmv but you could technically say the graphics were photorealistic but when playing it was only impressive for a short time which was enough to get people to buy it. Just by looking at the box you think the graphics were amazing. By 1996 no one was impressed with cutscenes at all. FF was a bit of an exception.
Next evolution was metal gear solid with in game cutscenes.

FMV was a very short fad mostly caused by myst.

pic related I used to think looked photorealistic

[Anonymous No.5730168]

Yes they were a huge deal. If you never saw anything like that before on a console and then suddenly you see it it's a big deal. Pre rendering in general was a big deal.

[Anonymous No.5730171]

>>5730018
That brings me back I used to have entire memory cards devoted to saves before cool fmvs.

[Anonymous No.5730541]

>>5729494
>were people so retarded and autistic this bothered them
Not until you came along

[Anonymous No.5730623]

>>5729494
Go play FFVI and then play FFVIII and notice the train scene or the battle scene in the garden. Those games really didn't come out that far from each other, just five years. The problem is you zoomers grew up with a stagnant gaming scene, so you just can't understand it. Think about graphically speaking, FFXV isn't really that big of a jump in graphics from FFXIII, but there was a 7 year gap between the releases.