well yeah most people don’t have the hardware to play the pre-HD versions at their best

Maybe you mean an actual PS2, but IME using emu w/higher internal res on a non-stellar computer was a pretty good experience.

Meanwhile the HD version is data bloated (likely because everything is uncompressed for no reason, or multiple resolutions of FMVs including 4K) so the download would be painful for me. And really with Okami’s aesthetic especially, I don’t think HD is necessary.

I think it would’ve been better to change the FMVs into in-engine if viable, I assume the ones like that were just a hardware limitation if not just some production thing.