Why does Cloud have a higher quality character model in the final battle?

[Odysseus]

I don't think this is worth its own thread but I didn't really see one to jump into so here we are. Most of you probably know this by now, but in the iconic scene where Cloud unleashes Omnislash on Sephiroth, he has a noticably higher quality character model:

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Final Battle

I'm just wondering if they ever said anything about this. If they were capable of making better looking models like that, why didn't they look like that all the time? I assume it might have caused slowdown or otherwise impacted performance due to the higher poly count, but I was wondering if we knew for sure.

 

[Suzaku]

Well, the camera does a bunch of closeups. The final battle might as well be a cinematic. Since the final battle is just two characters on a plane with a skybox I'm sure they could push the hardware a bit more.

 

[Kain424]

It may also be an intentional design choice, reflecting the game at large. Cloud, at this point, is in his most fully realized form. So the reflect that with a more detailed character model. It's a meta reading, but maybe not an incorrect one.

 

[Odysseus]

Well, the camera does a bunch of closeups. The final battle might as well be a cinematic. Since the final battle is just two characters on a plane with a skybox I'm sure they could push the hardware a bit more.

This is probably correct. I want to say that VIII and IX were more capable of having higher detail models, but that's more down to texture work than poly count, plus square definitely got better at optimizing their games after VII. Looking at his final battle model, it actually looks really good for 97, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the highest poly character model in the ps1 trilogy.

 

[Shademp]

It'd be neat to test on PS1 hardware how the game reacts if you not only imported Cloud's hi-res battle model into normal battles, but did the same for the other playable characters. Hi-res battle models for Barret/Tifa/Red/Yuffie/Cait/Vincent/Cid would of course need to be fan-made, but I wonder if the game would noticeably slow down if the polygon count was increased this way for all battles.

I know people have done a shitton of this stuff for the PC version but I don't know how much model-importing people have done for the PS1 version.

 

[Lex]

It'd be neat to test on PS1 hardware how the game reacts if you not only imported Cloud's hi-res battle model into normal battles, but did the same for the other playable characters. Hi-res battle models for Barret/Tifa/Red/Yuffie/Cait/Vincent/Cid would of course need to be fan-made, but I wonder if the game would noticeably slow down if the polygon count was increased this way for all battles.

I know people have done a shitton of this stuff for the PC version but I don't know how much model-importing people have done for the PS1 version.

I'm very rusty on this, but if memory serves certain files on PS1 need to be modded in a super specific way because the pointers tell the game to look for chunks of data based on their byte location within each file itself, (as opposed to the PC .exe, which just tells the driver/ whatever to load an actual chunk of data within the file based on name rather than location) so there was a time where it meant that although the PS1 version could be modded nearly as easily as the PC version, barely anything worked because if it was pushed one byte out of place it would load garbage or potentially crash. I think this has since been remedied in some form but this is anecdotal because I haven't been near the modding community in a serious sense for a long long time.

 

[Odysseus]

I should just keep my mouth shut about technical stuff. Would it be possible to run a ps1 version mod on real hardware? That'd be the best way to see how the detailed model effects how the game runs.

 

[Lex]

Yes it's possible, you just mod the game files then burn it to a disc (and insert in a PS1 that is capable of running them).

The easier option is just to run it in an emulator like pSX or ePSXe with software emulation enabled rather than hardware.

 

[Odysseus]

Oh, I wasn't sure if burning PSX games was as comedically easy as PS2 games are.

 

[Prism]

Square always has been a graphics pioneer, and I think they’re not above showing off - especially for the final moment. They did it because they could.

Cloud and Sephiroth are the only two things on-screen, so they had the ability to go all-out. They didn’t have to worry about any polygon-heavy backgrounds or other characters.

Not to mention that since Disc 3 is just the final area, they had room on the disc to do some crazy things (the long FMVs like the ending, credits, and Sephiroth destroying all the solar system)

Edit: Now that I think about it, it’s kind of a precursor to the cutscene model / gameplay model differences Square and other companies would adopt.

As for running them in-game, I wonder if the game could take it. An emulator definitely could!

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

@Prism
If I remember correctly, all three discs had the same data on them with the exception of the FMVs.

 

[Odysseus]

@Prism
If I remember correctly, all three discs had the same data on them with the exception of the FMVs.

Yes, that's correct. The only difference is the FMVs.

 

[Prism]

Thanks for the correction! Since you can go to any area of the world map without having to switch discs out, that does make sense. The same enemies and maps / etc would all have to be on all of the respective discs for it to be seamless.

I’ve only ripped disc 1 onto my PC before, so that is good to know...
Edit: Yeah, wait a second. I remember inspecting Cloud’s high poly model on my disc 1 rip. So yeah, that’s definitely not the case that it’s a disc 3 thing.

 

[Odysseus]

Hey if I can tack on a second question here, why is young Cloud a separate character from his regular counterpart? Is it just so they didn't have to make code for storing your equipment, level experience, etc from Cloud and reverting him down to level 1 until the flashback ends? I guess it would be less work over all that way, to just have a duplicate party member just for the flashback. I think its interesting he has a different party icon though.