If FF7 had been ported to the N64, how would it have changed aesthetically? How much would've changed?

Disc vs cartridge

Environments would look like ass and there would be little or no FMVs, so half of the game's appeal would go right through the window. Square knew what they're doing.

FMVs removed
Beautiful prerendered backgrounds changed to low fidelity 3D world on par with the overworld map

In short, it would have been awful. The storage limitations would have killed what made it great for its time

>true story

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So that’s the N64 could do 3D environments better like Mario 64, but the PSX had better pre rendered backgrounds like FF7?

because power and capacity are two completely separate things.

the consoles are comparable in power, the problem is ff7 takes up 3 discs because its long and has a lot of FMVs. ff7 is not a demanding game in terms of console power.

but cartridges have their advantages. there's reason the n64 is remembered for its platformer games. the ps1 couldn't process big 3d environments as quickly as the n64 could. that and on the ps1 polygons would wiggle around and textures would warp.

another interesting difference is that the n64 had smoother textures, although they were blurrier.

Imagine Squaresoft designing FF7 story to be told through Super Mario 64's castle and painting worlds.

it would look like blurry shit, probably

The N64 was vastly more powerful, burdened with cartridges. Discs are inherently better for storing large data.

You're confused because processing power and storage capacity are not at all related.

i thought that prerendered backgrounds took up less space than 3d ones?

No sound and no FMVs.
Backgrounds would look a bit more compressed. That's about it I would have thought.

FFVII is a really tiny game. The entire game is actually copy-pasted between each disk. Only the FMVs are different across each. I think it could have worked with proper compression, and FMVs that were condensed into stills or turned into real time cutscenes with the chibis. It wouldn't need to be a multi cart game, but the sacrifices to the pretenders backgrounds would probably be intense. It would be interesting to compare the sheer number of backgrounds in FFVII to RE2. RE2 will have multiple backgrounds per environment to simulate a changing camera perspective, while FFVII has mostly still backgrounds that just pan as you run. Maybe it could work. The midi tracks would also be pretty tiny.

the character models have almost no textures so i think they'd look fine. but how about the backgrounds?

Sound would be fine. They'd just use the N64's midi system. FMVs would need to be still images with maybe dialog at the bottom.

If they really wanted to make an FF on the same scale as their previous titles, I'm gonna assume they'd have to go back to 2D.

most interesting answer in this thread

the reason Square-Enix went to Sony for FF7 is because they negotiated with Nintendo to have two cart slots on the N64, and they refused

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All depends on texture quality, it's comparing apples and oranges. At any rate, the 3D environments wouldn't have even looked close to as good as the 2D ones since the technology to render those environments in real time wasn't available until the PS3

If I remember correctly, the environments alone take up about 350MB in total. Videos are an additional 800MB or so

>FFVII is a really tiny game. The entire game is actually copy-pasted between each disk.
That shared amount is still MASSIVE by N64 cartridge size standards. It's in the hundreds of megabytes. The largest N64 cart is 64MB. It would have been impossible.

did you made that shit up, or is that true?

>I think it could have worked with proper compression
That's the problem. It was the sort of situation of if it would have been worth the effort.

Of course if FF7 had been originally developed exclusively for the N64 it would have also taken a different form even with the same concept.

Those disks were only 64mb. 1 ps1 disc was 700mb.

see

They'd probably have went for 3D environments rather than pre-rendered backdrops and cutscenes with in-game graphics like OoT.

You could easily up the disc size if needed.
Most PS1 games are only 200 megabytes tops.
It wasn't before late 90s that 700mb discs became the norm.

had much would that extra slot have added to the N64's price tag?

But that's what they said about RE2, and it was possible. It would have been hard as fuck to do, but I think it could have been accomplished but of course with diminished quality.

Either way, I hope some insane fuck tries to port the game on their own one day.

The FMVs would be slideshows overlayed with text that explain what's happening.

It probably wouldn't have had any FMV cutscenes at all.

I can't imagine it would have added TOO much. The hardware would have remained the same. It's more the idea of making an entirely new revision just for one (1) game.

someone tell that dude who made the pc port of mario 64 to get on it

>PS1
>N64
>Component cables
Nigger what the fuck are you smoking?

>Can't imagine much would change

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Imagine, what would have happened in Nintendo and Sony actually worked together back then?

I am assuming all those 3rd party devs that jumped ship after the SNES would have stuck with Nintendo and the N64 to this day would have been the greatest console ever instead of the 1st party machine it was. Good games but missing out on all those RPGs, fighting games and other classics like SotN and MGS probably hurt Yamauchi more than he would ever admit.

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Imagine if Yamauchi wasn't a retard back then and chose the cd's for the N64 instead

>But that's what they said about RE2
Apples and oranges. RE2 had loads of high framerate video which had to be scaled back dramatically. Its 3D environments, by comparison, took a small fraction of space that FF7's prerendered world took up.

I don't think you understand that it's the 2D renderings that are the problem. Yeah, you could compress the shit out of them, cut the video out, and you might be able to squeeze it down to 64MB, but it would look like total garbage. RE2 had the advantage of being mostly 3D and not pre-rendered and that's why it was possible. You can compress textures much easily than you can hi quality backgrounds, it makes a comparatively smaller impact

RE2 is the single most complex and most expensive N64 carts ever produced. Have a look inside one day, it's not the standard.