Question The perfect start

[Pifanjr]

There have been a lot of complaints of AAA games becoming stale. If you were to get a brand new AAA game, what would it need to do in it's first 10 minutes or so to really hook you?

Personally, I prefer it if a game lets me just play the game as quickly as possible. I'm done with the slow introductions of, for example, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, etc. Skyrim was probably the last time I was still excited during the opening, by the time I got to Fallout 4 I was just annoyed I had to go through the intro sequence before I finally got to play.

Baldur's Gate 3 did it much better. The opening cinematic is awesome and as soon as you start playing you have full control over your character. And while the start is obviously a tutorial, it already feels (and is) impactful.

Subnautica also has a great start. You get a very brief tutorial on how to move around before you're dropped right into the open waters.

 

[Frindis]

Good examples you shared there, I would also like to add Path of Exile 2. That game sucked me right in and that is not because of the cinematics, but because of just how awesome the movement and combat feel right (especially being able to use WASD for movement) out of the early access box.

You start at the beach (shocker there), find a weapon, fight some monsters, get a skill gem, and suddenly you are mowing down stuff. Then you are met with your first boss, a savagery thing roaming the beach and you notice that you might not be as strong as you think.

Then you get to the first safe spot called Clearfell Encampment where you meet most quest givers and get stuff to help you progress your character. All this happens within the first 10 minutes and has just the perfect amount of exploring and combat to get you interested.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, I've recently discovered that the perfect start doesn't involve having to manually assign all the keys.

Most of the games I play require a tutorial because of the type of game they are, but I would prefer that the tutorial be a separate thing on its own rather than the first hour of the game. That way when I get sick and tired of the tutorial I can just go try to play the game, but the tutorial will always still be there if I change my mind (as opposed to it just going away because you are past that part of the game).

For more action type of games, I'd say that my favorite type of beginning is a short cutscene--less than a minute--immediately followed by the game itself. It's the opening of Skyrim that has been the main reason that I've never played the game.

 

[mjs warlord]

I dont care if games are AAA or made by an indie guy in his shed all i want is to go back to the good old days where games were relatively bug free.
When you could only get games on a disc they had to be bug free and work as they should because not many had a way to download and install patches.
It seems to me that programmers are becoming a bit sloppy and rely on the paying public to tell them whats wrong.
The one bit of sloppy programming that annoys me is when you are on the menu screens and not playing a game and you can hear your usually silent fans going flat out and task manager says cpu is at 100%

 

[January's Ghost]

Not sure, but The great Circle did it right by starting us off playing through the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Things like that work. For me, having watched the movie opening day when it first came out, it was a great burst of nostalgia and even nostalgia aside if you didn't know who Indiana Jones is that opening sequence pretty much tells you what Doctor Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr is all about.

 

[Zloth]

Baldur's Gate 3 did it much better. The opening cinematic is awesome and as soon as you start playing you have full control over your character. And while the start is obviously a tutorial, it already feels (and is) impactful.

Eh? First about 5 minutes going through all the options, then a video that I had already seen, followed by 20 minutes of character creation? Or was that just me?

A lot of AAA games have started following the James Bond opening that's starting to get a little tiresome for me. Start with an exciting battle that you know little about, make sure everybody understands that, yes, there are going to be battles, and then calm things down so you can explain what's going on and start telling the story properly. It's a good method to use, it's just that I've seen it so many times that it's getting frustrating. Plus, you often end up getting the battle tutorial followed by a long stretch of game where there are no battles, meaning I'm going to forget things the tutorial taught me!

Come to think of it, Fallout 3 broke that mold. You started out as a kid. I think you got into a little fight, but it was mostly story telling. It took quite a while before you got out into the world. It certainly wasn't the Elder Scrolls tradition of breaking out of jail.

 

[Pifanjr]

Eh? First about 5 minutes going through all the options, then a video that I had already seen, followed by 20 minutes of character creation? Or was that just me?

That's secretly the most perfect start of any game: an expansive character creator. Even better when you can redo it without having to go through the tutorial again (Oblivion did this perfectly).