Video game openings help set the stage for the game itself. What are your favorite video game openings? Could be the title screen, or the first bit in-game before the play starts. Could be that you like the music, or that they have a clever twist, or that they’re technically impressive. Bonus points if you can link to a PeerTube or YouTube clip of them to let other people here who haven’t yet seen them watch them!
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Borderlands 1. Fun, over the top, and great song to go with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqbgncFCO0M
EDIT: I’d add that the later games in the series also thematically followed the first game’s opening:
Bioshock sticks out in my memory: https://youtu.be/cMc92ekgJiI
Especially because of how the ending completely recontextualizes it.
(spoiler)
Oh shit, I brought down that plane…
Prey, hands down. It would be a disservice to just watch it just go play the first bit.
Edit: I was talking about Prey from 2017, but based on the comment both may be good to play.
Which Prey?
I assume the immersive sim one. It’s genuinely great.
The original one’s opening is also great. Every time I hear “Don’t fear the reaper” I have to think about it.
This game made me fell so bored in the first few minutes and then BAM! “Don’t Fear the Reaper” starts blaring out of the jukebox. Great opening to a mind bending game!
That jukebox scene is about the only bit I still remember. The Prey from 2017 was much more my style and has an amazing opening sequence as well.
The opening to the original Final Fantasy VII blew my mind and changed my life when I was kid
The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver intro is top-notch writing and direction. Everything from the intro cinematic feeds into the feel of the game and builds excitement that never lets up until the game is over.
If this is your first time seeing this masterpiece, I envy you.
I think it’s hard for modern audiences to imagine just how hard Amy Hennig and her team knocked it out of the park with that one.
Not to mention all the cut content, like a human priestess worshipping vampires, Turel, the 3rd and final fight against Kain and the realization that Raziel was a useful pawn in the tentacles of Tony Jay
I replayed it via the remaster a couple of months back, and there are so many places that just seem completely optional, like a lot of the shrines and the human citadel.
For some reason they’d reintroduced a cut day/night cycle and it made the bit outside the cathedral completely unplayable as it was pitch black.
Turel at least made it back for Defiance, along with more Elder God stuff.
It’s even deeper than this. This was the first time a game disc or cartridge included actual dialogue at this scale like in a movie. Other games like Metal Gear used smart workarounds to seem this way but Soul Reaver changed it all.
There’s a really cool podcast that delved into this. It’s a fascinating listen.
This intro cinematic goes so hard it’s still not been dethroned and no one has the balls to do it
This was on the original PlayStation. They stretched that system to its limits.
Once in game, no “loading” screens, you could traverse from one end to another without downtime. That was a masterful feat with the PS1
BAAA BAAA BAAA BAAA
Kain is deified, the clans tell tales of him. Few know the truth…
Final Fantasy 6 with the amazing music and mode 7 effect.
The first quest of Oblivion was pretty cool imo.
Most of the Uncharted games but especially Uncharted 2 where he starts out on the train on a snowy mountain. This game forever changed my expectations for video games. I just wish they would re-release then on PC so that I could now easily enjoy them again.
Still mad that they ported uncharted 4 to pc but not the original trilogy. Why did they think pc players would want to start at the final entry?
The first time I played Uncharted 2 the opening sucked me in so much that I played 6 hours straight, amazing game.
Yeeeees I would replay those games on PC in a heartbeat!
War. War never changes.
Fallout 1 was absolutely seminal.
And…
L…L…L…look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone.
System Shock 1 and 2 were some of the most incredible experiences in the 90s/early 2000s.
Fallout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG3uBgQmTnk
System Shock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tKIJUxSyaU
System Shock 2:
Witcher 2. Amazing production quality. Every shot is perfectly framed. There’s a ton of small details, like the archer missing his shot because the ship cracks at the bad time, and Letho briefly holding the arrow in his gaze as it passes by…
IIRC that intro wasn’t in the game originally, but was added in the Enhanced Edition. Basically every CD Projekt game gets a huge (and free) overhaul a year or two after release that vastly improves them, and this cutscene was one of the things they added.
Homeworld.
Beautiful, moving, elegant.
A story, a tutorial, a punch in the gut
Love it.
My pick as well.
It starts off with such hope, the promise of new beginnings. Then the the initial sense that something is wrong.
Hurry back and the adagio swells as you realize the emensity of the tragedy. Then the desperate attempt to save as much of what’s left as you can before fleeing.
I agree, it’s a very special game.
What does it for me is the quality of the voice acting. The way I can hear their voice almost but not quite breaking in the sorrow. Superb
Outpost, while a mediocre game had an opening cinematic set to “Mars” from Holst’s The Planets which sounded AWESOME on my Roland MT-32/SCC-1 (I don’t remember which I had at the time.)
Here is the intro with standard Sound Blaster music, and here is just the music played on a Roland SC-55 which sounds pretty much the same as an SCC-1.
I’m assuming, based on the YouTube channel name (“MT-32 Theater”), that this was rendered with a Roland MT-32:
Yup, that definitely sounds like an MT-32. I’ve updated my comment with an SCC-1 version (or close enough).
"now it is time to leave the cradle…
or die in the attempt."
Demons Souls
I used to put Wild Arms and Duke Nukem into my PS1 just to watch the intros. Things were quaint before cell phones.
Thank you! I was otherwise occupied, so I didn’t have an opportunity to pull up links.
And then the transition to the Wild Arms title screen music. Here’s one with that is there, too: https://youtu.be/wg2Lo-6aisY
For music, there is nothing better than coin-op SpyHunter.
I’d played it on the Apple II, but I don’t think I’d actually seen arcade Spy Hunter until now. The graphics are significantly better.
