Brutal Legend has an amazing opening that is then squandered by the rest of the game (which is fine, but not as great as I'd been led to believe by the intro). The live Jack Black part is good, too.
What a great pick. The first one that comes to my mind is the intro to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I still get chills from the opening cinematic.
This is going to sound like I'm going with an obscure title just to be That Guy, but I've really gotta say BioForge. Very close runner ups? Full Throttle (still the best damn intro cinematic... in the world), Hero's Quest (purely for nostalgia's sake), and Final Fantasy VII (I'm a sucker for Square's CGI). I've linked that Bioforge name to the Youtube video of its introduction sequence, since my computer gets fussy about embedding.
Also? Police Quest 4 and Club Dead. Greatest (cough, cough) intros of all time.
I remember this shit blowing my mind in 1999. Still rocks.
Probably a popular choice, but it's my honest answer. I agree with Stepside here. I remember when FFVIII came out, I scoured Superstores and Wal-Marts to find a copy. When I finally did, I popped in Disc 1 of this 4-Disc epic to have my mind absolutely blown away. Remember starting up a new game several times just to watch this. Even today, this opening holds up incredibly well.
What a great pick. The first one that comes to my mind is the intro to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I still get chills from the opening cinematic.
Damn, beat me to it. I remember playing the demo of MGS2 that came bundled with Zone of Enders soooo many times.
@Willin: I remember that - looking back that maybe one of my favorite openings.
I also really liked the opening of Mass Effect 2, Portal 2, Bioshock... Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare also had a great opening - the Cargoship, meeting Price and Gaz, getting executed at pointblank range.
What a great pick. The first one that comes to my mind is the intro to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I still get chills from the opening cinematic.
That is maybe second to me. There was no greater vision in my mind for the times these game were released than FFVIII's opening movie and initial play-through that was released as a demo with Brave Fencer Musashi.
It was beyond anything previous. MGS2 certainly marked a watershed of in-game video, but Square reiterated their prowess at FMV manyfold.
The video above isn't the whole opening to that demo release. It was much longer. I'm going to try to find the rest of of it.
There we go. Blew people away. Pretty Square hair in the wind.
It was a little like Kingdom Hearts showing at E3 in 2002. That changed a lot of cynical minds:
People had a lot of distrust for the potential of this franchise; I did too. We were fools as to how much it would resonate.
Nothing beats Half Life. Though it was originally a lot longer than 5 mins with loading of sectors.
though after the first time, it's extremely tedious to sit through ...
I love how they handled that with HL2, making you think "another 10+ minute train sequence where I can't do anything but jump in place and run from one seet to another?" and then it ends within a few moments. Come to think of it, Half Life 1's opening is pretty much what they copied for Arkham Asylum, except they had characters talking to you the whole time and you controlled Batman instead being in a train car.
Another strong opening was inFamous 1 ... it just sits there at the startup screen in an idyllic afternoon-at-the-park scenery until you push a button and BOOM you blow up the city and the game starts. Genius!
Amped 3 was the first thing that popped into my head. Blinded by the light, bunny suit, craziness from the start :Dand @LordXavierBritish completely gameplay
I can get behind this; Mass Effect 2 Normandy crash was pretty intense too.
@SeriouslyNow: Love that intro, brings back memories..Barney getting locked out..good times. When I got a 3DFX video card and started from beginning now with silky blurred up textures oh man oh man.
@SeriouslyNow: Love that intro, brings back memories..Barney getting locked out..good times. When I got a 3DFX video card and started from beginning now with silky blurred up textures oh man oh man.
Haha, same. I played that with a really good friend (HL: Day One actually, it came with his 3DFx Voodoo1) and we were constantly blown away and lost hours playing it.
Saints Row The Third has a great intro, but my favorite would be the Halo: Combat Evolved intro. At one point, I had the entire dialogue memorized for the first level, and I can still remember a large amount of it.
Kind of hard actually. While simple (and probably the Id game that has aged the worst), I think Quake 2's first few minutes have been ingrained in my memory since I first experienced it - from the extremely epic intro movie cutting straight into the action - the first second of the game after the intro is filled with explosions and gore, as your dropship has just crashed through the ceiling of an enemy installation. I also love the Half-life opening, which is pretty much the opposite, with the 5 minute train ride, and another 5 minutes before shit starts hitting the fan and you encounter your first enemies. Oh, and the original Red Faction also had a really strong opening, some great menu music, a short spoken intro and then straight into the mine moments before the revolution starts.
If I remember right Just Cause two had you jumping out of a plane to grab a micro chip from a falling corpse. I thought that entire opening scene was epic right up until the game turns into an open world game, really let you know how crazy the game was going to get.
I also loved Skyrims intro I was so hyped for that game and the title screen music to just after the dragon attack really set the mood. Riding that cart to your execution and just admiring the world you could see was amazing.
MGS2 is another one of my favourites, along with BioShock, Saints Row The Third, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Resident Evil 3, Silent Hill, Mercenaries: PoD, Uncharted 2, DMC4 (fighting off Dante as a boss battle was such an incredible moment) amongst many more that I'm no doubt forgetting.
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