Blizzard's cinematics always impressed back in the day. SC, D2, War3, and then WoW.
Comite-re! Saluta-re! Coabes-so-atuu re-re!
Final Fantasy 6 with the amazing music and mode 7 effect.
As an angsty preteen, I loved Final Fantasy 8's opening cinematic. Because of that game I went to watch the Final Fantasy movie with high hopes, but even my childish brain found that a complete letdown and waste of time.
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.
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
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has an amazing opening, with the Bionis & Mechonis fighting it out. Then freezing in place & cutting to thousands of years into the future, where sudeenly you realize those giant gods in rhe intro are the game world that you're going to be exploring.
Spoilers for XC1
What's even better is how almost every sentence in this intro is proven to be wrong. And the opening foreshadows the real conflict of the game for those watching closely.
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.
Although I prefer the sequel more, personally, Sonic Riders has my absolute favorite opening. I also think the Sonic Unleashed opening cutscene when you first start the game is amazing as well.
Bet you can't tell I'm a sonic nerd. /s
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.
BAAA BAAA BAAA BAAA
Kain is deified, the clans tell tales of him. Few know the truth....
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.
Nier Automata's true opening is placed after 20 hours in the game, but it is truly devastating.
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.
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:
Gothic 1: https://youtu.be/PVal5HLgIys
Not necessarily all the exposition. But especially "Welcome to the colony". This simple scene perfectly shows that you are not the great destined hero but just a wuss who is weaker than everyone else in the beginning.
Omega Boost:
The music, the FMV, it was just silly and oozed attitude. And it was god damn confusing. Some dudes go back in time to get the very first AI and you have to go back in time to stop them. The Pilot of the Omega Boost (I think he was even played by Steve Blum) is such a bad ass and he KNOWS he's hot shit. you get in the mecha and the mechanics all start cheering as you walk off to launch. And then there's the Jamacian mechanic who is like the pilots best friend and they're bantering and you have no idea what the hell they're saying because the damn awesome song is blaring away. It's awesome, it's epic.
Street Fighter x Tekken: yeah an odd one but the opening track and cinematic for the game are awesome.
Colony Wars: Vengeance: It lays out the setting completely. tells you what's going on, why you're fighting, and all the sides involved.
Xenogears:
It's confusing, it's weird, and it's an opening you won't understand until you're well into the game.
Starsiege: It's narrated by a child with a twisted poem to start. It feels like Warhammer 40k with mechs. Honestly Earthsiege/Starsiege/Tribes is one of those universes that really needs to be revisited and fleshed out.
Quake 3 Arena: Again just another opening that hypes you up to play. And the opening Animation with Sarge was pretty jaw dropping at the time. It was a VERY simple arena shooter but man was it a blast to play.
I used to put Wild Arms and Duke Nukem into my PS1 just to watch the intros. Things were quaint before cell phones.
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 always like Fallout 4 opening, right until you surface from the vault. It have the feeling of dread and it's lengthy enough to make you hate Kellogg and whatever this new entity are.
New Vegas for the polar opposite of it. It's extremely short and sweet, and push you out the gate so quick you will be exploring in just a few minute, yet it doesn't do much to make you hate Benny.
Bioshock is extremely well done, it give you that famous "would you kindly" quote as early as the opening cutscene, set the stage of what Rapture stand for with that famous banner once you enter the lighthouse, and then let you take a glimpse on Rapture, and then immediately give you the "what goes wrong" with the whole city. It's damn great.
Breath of the Wild for just "Link, wake up and fuck off", and then you run out naked(because you missed the chest with clothing) and smell the wild.
Wait, there was a chest with clothes?
Right? I just walk past the two chest and off i go, link is naked all the way to kakariko. I only noticed it when i go back for something. It's inside the shrine of resurrection.
Yeah, a shirt and pants. 2 armor total.
Metaphor Refantazio intro, the one with battle music because it slaps
Also the walking in school in headphones bit in Life is Strange, just after 1st Jefferson class. Nice cosy vibes (poor Max didn't know what she was getting herself into)
A Fediverse community for questions related to gaming.
It's dangerous to go alone! Join AskGaming.
Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
Related communities:
!TipOfMyJoystick@retrolemmy.com
!videogamesuggestions@lemmy.zip
!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
!tycoon@lemmy.world
!crpg@lemmy.world
!ask@piefed.social