>>3839699
>Callback
It's not a "Callback." The blocky FF7 sprites don't actually look anything like SNES-style chibi sprites. If anything, by conservative Japanese standards, it was ambitious for Square to even use 3D models at all in 1997. Other RPGs at the time still used 2D sprites. Wild Arms had 3D models for the battle system only. Breath of Fire III, Vandal Hearts, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Xenogears all used 2D sprites.

FF7 sprites are designed with the following priorties:
- Need to render many models on screen simultaneously, in a quasi-3D space where the models could be near or distant.
- This means low polygon counts.
- Model animations must by comprehensible and expressive.
- The models, Cloud especially, should pop out and be easily visible to the player.

To make animations comprehensible at low polygon resolution, hands and feet were made oversized. To make Cloud pop out more he was given his famous blonde, spiky hair. The asymmetric spikes of his hair even helped indicate Cloud's orientation to the player. Note that while FF8 had realistic proportions, FF9 went back to gigantic hands on everyone. The difference is that in FF9, they oriented the entire art style of the game around those warped proportions.