Is there any modern engine that can compare to the pictures below, definitely not. However it would be possible to put these renders into a 3d engine as layers and have a 3d character run through it. Parts of the picture could be animated, this has been done before in Myst, Final Fantasy and numerous older games. There are some benefits to be doing this even today.
•Unlimited details, won’t have to worry about polycount or topology.
•Great performance, because you’re looking at a screen of sprites and images a lot of details can be put into the 3d character that would be moving around in real time.
•Highly realistic and beautiful rendering, particles of grass, flowing water, waving trees, fire simulations and very realistic lighting and materials.
Why isn’t this more common then, because there is no engine designed for these type of games. Also something that is difficult to get right is a panning camera because the perspective is distorted an won’t align with the invisible geometry the character is walking on. Anyone who would be interested in trying to get something like this running in the unreal engine? I’m fairly good at content creation and could render out layers of a rendered background to be layered on top of each other in the engine. What I can’t do is make the camera pan or come up with a good method of layering the sprites on top of each other.
