Final Fantasy has been a part of my RPG experience since 1997. I've always has an interest in RPG without realizing that RPG was the genre. If you look a games like The Legend of Zelda and Golvellius, those were my roots. I hate talking about FF7 because it's such a touchy topics with most gamers. You have the fans of the series pre-FF7, then you have the fans of the series post-FF7. Even though I started the series at 7. I did take the time to play the prequels with my SNES and some emulation help. The most notable change is the graphical changes and the gameplay changed over the years. Back then the gameplay had to be good because pixel graphics were limited and started to become complacent. Once the gaming systems started to evolve the graphics naturally evolved parallel but the gameplay was not growing. It's the argument of graphics versus gameplay. People get all excited about the graphics and the gameplay would be awful and vice versa. I hate hearing the arguement if the graphics are not good, I'm not playing it. Then why do we play emulators from time to time and most games still have staying power like The Revenge of Shinobi, Mario Kart or ill take it back even further Super Mario Bros. 3. The graphics were decent but it was the gameplay that sold us.
Getting back to my point Final Fantasy's graphics especially with the cut scenes that advance the story have really came a long way. FF7 started to show CG animation and tried to "blend" the cut scene to the actual gameplay screen. It was ingenious to pull off and you could notice the transition point. By the time FF10 came out the opening scene was very smooth and attempted to do something very similar with transitioning cut scene to gameplay screen. The preview for FF13 looks amazing so far. In game cut scenes have been the big thing with current gen console technology and will be even bigger for next gen. The goal to have seamless transitions between gameplay and cut scenes seems all the more viable. I'm really looking forward to see how the game progress.
