I recently purchased the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for my Xbox. I popped in the disc, extremely excited to experience these games for the first time ever. I had always wanted to play through the PlayStation classics since I played The Twin Snakes on the GameCube long, long ago, and because I’ve had a copy of Guns of the Patriots sitting on my shelf untouched for about two years now. I popped in the disc, sat down, and awaited to play Sons of Liberty. I watched a cut scene, and watched another, and then a codec sequence, then a light tutorial that only glazed over the control scheme, then another cut scene, and then another codec sequence. It took me twelve God damn minutes to gain control of my character. Twelve. Fucking. Minutes.

Let me just say that I did expect this. Metal Gear, after all, is a Hideo Kojima game. Lengthy exposition is his lifeblood. If it were any other game, however, I would throw a tantrum. It’s torture, essentially, second only to the likes of pepper spray and waterboarding. Though my claims may be slightly exaggerated, there’s no denying that a good game usually has you in its grips within the first few minutes. Halo has you on the go in about a minute. A Link to the Past and Super Mario Bros. has you start within seconds. And the grand-daddy of them all, Braid, let’s you begin playing immediately from the start screen. These are the games that live forever in the memory of gamers. These are the games that have such a lasting impression, because their openings illustrate what it’s all about.

This makes me recall the greatest opening scene of all time in film history, from the original Star Wars. Right away, you knew what you were getting from that movie: an adventurous tale in space. All from a simple long take of a big starship running away from an even bigger starship, all set to the sounds of flurrying lasers and a grand, thundering orchestra. Star Wars has, by all definitions, the perfect opening, and I think game developers should try more to emulate it.

The issue that video games have is the notion of the start screen, being the first thing a player usually encounters in a game aside from maybe a demo reel. Granted, some games handle their start screens rather well, illustrating the feel of the game exceptionally well while not allowing any player control. Metroid Prime is a stellar example. It manages to convey the overall tone rather well, with its hypnotic, tingling music and red-and-black DNA imagery effectively coming together to convey a very scientific kind of isolation. When the player presses a button to go to the save selection screen, the spine-tingling music makes a dramatic tonal shift, turning into an overdramatic choir that suggests a sense of discovery and overcoming of the fears that seem to have been perpetuated by the first start screen. It effectively recreates the sensation of Metroid games; the player traverses through unfamiliar alien environments, eventually coming across an upgrade that may or may not enlighten a pathway to the next level. Prime’s start screen, then, is effective in foreshadowing the series traditional structure.

Another example, more recent and simplistic this time, is Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D Land, although it takes a more direct approach rather than Metroid Prime’s more subtle queues. The game combines the traditional demo reel and start screen into a fantastic introduction to its mechanics and visual style; Mario is seen in the background doing his jumping thing, acquiring a Tanooki suit and using its powers among other elements. It’s brief, but eloquent and useful, skipping the tedium of a forced tutorial. In addition to the reel—and in the spirit of Super Mario 64’s stretch demo—the player can choose to play around in a small constrained world that quickly demonstrates the Escher inspired visual mechanics.

Nintendo is pretty big on immediately expressing exactly what their game is to the player before they even start. Other Japanese developers aren’t quite as resourceful or successful in this area. Squaresoft used to, and to an extent still do, express the story in their games quite early on, cementing the overall tone of the plot and atmosphere as well as showing off the visual fidelity of games such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger rather well, but not touching on the nuances on their structure or design. Final Fantasy VI actually forces the player to sit through a credit sequence before starting the actual game, showing off the once impressive Mode 7 graphics which surprisingly turned out to be a big part of the game. This is mostly forgivable, since story was and is a focus for Squaresoft (now Square Enix) and many other Japanese developers, such as Kojima Productions and Namco’s Tales teams.

But so far, the only examples I’ve illustrated have openings that do not let the player start right away: there’s always a demo reel or star screen that provides a barrier between the player and the experience. This, I think, should be removed for the benefit of the player. Take Jonathan Blow’s Braid, for instance, a game that decidedly breaks this barrier in a rather spectacular way. Blow decides to keep the traditional start screen but does not keep its traditional function as a barrier, and instead he lets players take control of Tim immediately. Blow has effectively fused the game and the start screen together, seamlessly and expertly, much like a filmmaker who injects the audience into a film without so much explaining who made it, what it is, or what’s going on. Instead of following directions such as “Press A to Start”, the player is encouraged to explore the controls, to see which button does what, engaging them from the moment the game boots up. Even the level selection is built directly into the gameplay, rather than being treated as a separate entity outside of the game itself. It’s an experience designed to make the player think twice about how a game can be structured. More importantly, it allows the game to feel like a more wholesome product because there’s nothing standing in the way between it and the player.

That isn’t to say that the start screen should be totally eradicated from the face of the earth. The Star Wars films still has its equivalent of the start screen in the form of gigantic yellow font flying through space. It has the same function, then, as Metroid Prime or Super Mario 3D Land in that it gives the audience a specific idea as to what they’re about to partake in. Also, like Metroid Prime and Super Mario 3D Land, Star Wars wastes no time getting to the action after the initial “demo”. Some games fail to do this, punishing the player by making them sit through a long cut scene rather than get straight into the game. Halo does this on the more tolerable level, keeping its opening sweet and short and to the point. The Metal Gear Solid games are the more extreme example, taunting the player who wants to play by forcing them to sit through several minutes worth of cut scenes. And it’s worth mentioning that Metal Gear Solid does this kind of prolonged exposition well. Other games, mostly, do not.

In the broadest sense, the opening of a video game should be the magical moment for a player, and also the most helpful. It lets them understand what kind of adventure they’re about to partake in, whether it’s a simplistic, cheerful puzzler, or a foreboding, isolated trek through sci-fi worlds. We can look to games like Metal Gear Solid and Metroid Prime and Braid to see just how much variety a developer can inject into an opening. The perfect opening, I might add, comes not from these games, but the games that do not yet exist; the game that puts the player smack dab into the middle of something they’re not familiar with, and encourages them to explore and familiarize themselves at their own leisure. That is the perfect video game opening.