Video games with intricate stories need to have an impactful beginning that sets you into the world of your venture. Many of these beginnings are designed around getting you started in a tutorial that takes you up to speed on any mechanics and new additions if you’re playing a sequel.
Some of these beginnings tend to take some time to gain momentum. Boring openings can halt the momentum, and if it is a particularly long tutorial, it takes a very special, memorable scenario to make these openings worth the dragging momentum.
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Boring openings are also bound to be beautiful to look at. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of these examples. The game starts with an overstretching cinematic showing baby Aloy getting her name while her caretaker, Rost, exposits the setting of the world where the machines wander freely.
After the cinematic, you start the game, which takes you through Aloy’s early childhood, the hardships she faced, and where she stumbles into a mysterious cave, where she obtains the Focus device. From there, you have another drawn-out cinematic that soon takes you through the Proving ritual and the attack of the Eclipse cultists. After that, thejourney truly starts, and it’s engaging enough to get you through the tutorial parts.
In the classic experience of Monster Hunter, Before World and Wilds, there is at least a decent 10 to 15 hours where new players commit to gathering simple materials, doing small village and guild quests. From getting herbs to learning how to combine items for better items, there’s a lot for you to get started on, and you haven’t even fought the toughest monsters yet.
But the grind for materials gets easier, you get accustomed to how things work, and then you start hunting the bigger creatures, you take on your first major threat, challenge yourself on the next, and gain the means to make better weapons and armor from those experiences. Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is the most accessible form of this old-era grind that still felt like a slow grind until the quicker paces in Monster Hunter World and Wilds were introduced.
Doom 3 took a very different approach to the action of the demon invasion on Mars. Unlike previous games, orthe recent gameslike Doom 2016, Eternal, and The Dark Ages, Doom 3 was treated as a survival horror exploration that has more in common with the setup of the first Half-Life. It starts the same way as well, with your character, the Marine, being made to explore the UAC base on Mars.
There is a lot of setup as you follow NPC conversations, get your first weapon, and see many of the dreary and gritty set pieces that will come to play once the disastrous demonic invasion happens. Once the invasion took hold, you witnessed your colleagues become zombies. The action takes over, and all the boring setup you relaxed with ends with a terrifying invasion of monsters.
Death Standing has a very long beginning, to the point it’s pretty hilarious. But it establishes a lot of aspects in the game. From you playing as Sam Bridges, to his job delivering packages and traveling the massive, empty wasteland, and finding your way to your destinations. It does take a while before the gameplay starts, and with the sheer amount of cutscenes that weave in between the gameplay is bound to get overwhelming.
Hideo Kojimadoes an incredible job atbuilding and setting up his worldin Death Stranding, along with keeping you engaged with the massive environments and hazards you’re bound to come across. The issue is that it extends for so long that it’s hard to tell exactlywhere the cutscenes endsand become the rest of the game.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, theseries' first big foray into 3D,starts out your adventure in Kokiri Village, a nice, whimsical place where you get slowly drawn into the wonderfully nostalgic game. That said, until you get your kokiri sword, there isn’t a lot of excitement to be had yet.
The game truly starts after you complete the Deku Tree ‘dungeon’ and defeat the Gohma. From here, you get a base exposition on the nature of the Triforce, the looming threat in Hyrule, and the quest to meet up with Princess Zelda. This game has a great opening that gets you embarking on the adventure, despite the initial boredom you start with.
Witcher 3 starts after the dynamic cinematic with Geralt’s flashback in Kaer Morhen, where you learn core elements of gameplay while exploring the castle alongside other witchers, Yennefer, and Ciri when she was a child. From you learn basic moves like attacks and parries. You get a decent glimpse of the dynamics between Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, and Vesemir.
The tutorials continued after the flashback and concluded officially with the Griffin hunt. All these moments in the first four hours of the game were meant to give you a good idea of the gameplay and the many choices you can make in dialogue, along with the preparations for monster battles and contract quests. The rest of your gameplay experience is pretty much based on how quickly you took to the controls after sitting through the cutscenes.
Kratos’s journey through Norse mythology started with preparing his wife’s funeral alongside his son, Atreus. The heavy atmosphere sets in and brings players to the new setting while slowly navigating through the forest and back to their home. Once the funeral is complete, you get to play the game fully as you learn the new gameplay mechanics and fighting styles for Kratos using the shield and the Leviathan axe.
This beginning does its job in being the key divide between Kratos’s destructive vengeance during the Greek era and his reclamation of peace and redemption that takes the narrative focus in the Norse era. It’s a great way for old fans of God of War to reunite with Kratos and for new players to have a fresh start on the series.
The first Half-Life puts you into the ordinary routine of Gordon Freeman as he goes into the Black Mesa Facility before the Resonance Cascade unleashes all kinds of dangerous monsters. The first hour or so of the game takes you at a slow and steady pace as you explore the facility, put on Freeman’s HEV suit, and make your way to the experimental area.
Thanks to this slow pace to the game, you don’t have an idea of what to expect as you get accustomed to the controls and UI, along with getting into the surrounding setting. Once the action kicks in, the subtlety in the slow buildup blasts away as you battle for survival against threats from another dimension and bear witness to the carnage from the dimensional monsters.
The interactive, multiple-choice storyline in Life is Strange takes some time to pick up. The first episode is mostly focused on establishing Max and the main setting of Blackwell Academy. You spend some time in class, talking to other students, and looking through environmental details. All of this drags quite a bit until Chloe Price gets shot in the girls' restroom.
After the shock of that scene, the game’s main plot kicks in. Max learns she can control the flow of time, and her first action is to find a way to prevent Chloe’s initial death. After that, the game becomes part mystery, part experimenting with different outcomes of conversations with Max’s time powers, but these opening moments define the rest of the game’s experience.
Kingdom Hearts 2 has one of the most memorable beginnings in gaming for giving you over four hours of aprologuebefore the game begins. You spend a week in the life of the newly introduced character Roxas and his friend’s attempt to reach the beach for summer vacation. After undergoing his ordeal, you return to playing as Sora and begin your world-traveling adventure.
Roxas’s story is filled with moments of mystery, while you learn about new and old gameplay mechanics. This section of the game can go as long as two or so hours, and is a very interesting way to bring you back into the world of Kingdom Hearts, especially if you lack the full context of what’s going on.
