The games here are
Final Fantasy VII (1997) vs Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
Parasite Eve (1998) vs Parasite Eve 2 (1999)
Resident Evil 2 (1998) vs Resident Evil 3 (1999)
(You could place Parasite Eve between FFVII and FFVIII since it came out between the two and was used to prototype some of the tech for FFVIII)
The leap in quality with the human character models is especially impressive. Look at Sephiroth’s beautiful visage here and just think that Square went from that to feeling like their animation was convincing enough to carry an entire sci-fi drama movie with a realistic human cast in less than 5 years
spoiler
Then of course you had Oddworld Inhabitants who came right out the gate with movie quality CGI. Their characters all being fish-faced aliens instead of humans probably helped
Sepphy’s beautiful auto-smooth facial geometry
Honestly I can never truly make fun of early 3D graphics because 3D modeling programs are a fucking nightmare even in the 2020s, I can’t even imagine what they went through trying to use them in the 90s without the multiple decades of QOL development.
Same with early 3D game development. I’m always haunted by the knowledge that they didn’t have skeletal animation for the PS1 for a long time and Crash Bandicoot was animated on a per vertex level. Like that is fucked up. I’m a weak, spoiled 3D modeler and trying to do that would straight up kill me. I would not survive the attempt.
