>>717090424
It's an rpg so a lot of this stuff was done for the sake of the fantasy of the game (rp), random encounters meant there was a world that was more unpredictable (or dangerous for some games) and this was a different time where they were experimenting with new effects, new animations, dramatic camera angles where they were figuring out what worked and what didn't.
A lot of it tied into the aesthetic of the time where new spectacles were less constrained by people that were like 'okay let's get this over with', the teens of the time would play them for what they were instead of holding them to the standard of time = money, there was a level of padding involved but the audiences wanted longer games with more personal investment. Think about it like this, if you speedrun FF7 with the fast forward option and then get to the halfway point in a few hours you're gonna have a different emotional response to what happens to Aerith when you've already been playing the game for like 15-20 hours up til that point
It was a product of its time and It's not for everyone, the classic RPG did fall out of favor with modern audiences for a reason but they essentially paved the way for how games are now in many different ways where nothing else was trying to be cinematic at the time.
