Those First 30 Minutes.....

A few years ago a friend of mine wanted to get into PC gaming, this is circa 2010, so I gifted him The Orange Box as a "Welcome to PC Gaming" gift. He had never played any of the Half-Life series but he had heard a lot about them and how good they are.

So a few days later I was chatting to him and asked him what he thought about the gift I sent. He loved Portal and Team Fortress 2, but found Half-Life 2 to be too slow and nothing happens. My first response was to raise my eyebrow and think, slow? nothing happens? Did you play the same game I did?

I know that HL2 doesn't have action from the start, but that's a good thing. You are drawn into the world, from watching and listening to all the other passengers, been told to pick up the can, to when you walk out into for the first time into the square and seeing the whole 1984 vibe the place gives off, to walking through the housing complex.

So my question to you dear reader is: Is a game better to have a big set piece opening? Like the ship invasion at the start of Halo? Or the opening of Uncharted 2? Or the Tomb Raider reboot or do you think that games would be better served with a slower paced opening 30 minutes? Like Half-Life 2 or Okami or the Bioshock games?

But then there's the other side of the coin, look at the fantastic opening to Doom (2016). The story is kept to a minimum and the action is put up front.

So your thoughts?

They are both valid approaches. I will say that HL2 is not really a great game now though. At the time I felt like it wasn't for me. It's not surprising he doesn't like it, doesn't necessarily have to do with the opening.

Yeah, I agree with Zevvion neither approach is inherently better or worse than the other. I am personally partial to the giant kick in the balls to start a game off like in Bayonetta 2, but both have artistic merit when taken in a vaccuum.

Both are perfectly viable ways to start a game, though personally, I don't like Half-Life 2 at all. Outside of the opening, it is one of the worst paced games I have ever played. Every segment lasts an hour longer than it should (I'm looking at you, hovercraft), and it's just awful.

There's nothing wrong with having a slow opening, but I played Half Life 2 for the first time about 6 or 7 years ago too and also found it boring. It's a game that has dated poorly and I'm not surprised it didn't leave much of an impression.

I get the impression Half Life 2 in particular gets a big pass for having cool tech that was novel at the time (all the physics interaction) but in actual fact it's not a great game.

Fight me.

As someone who played through Kingdom hearts 2's insanely long slow tutorial more than once I can honestly say it depends on the game. If it's supported well in the narrative its fine.

As I'm getting older, I'm certainly preferring to just be thrown in to the action. I know how to play all these games by now and I just want to get to it.

Totally disagree with anyone saying Half Life 2 is a bad game btw. That's nuts.

Seconded, to the death

To be fair, it was more than novel. The physics were pretty groundbreaking, and I thought they did a pretty good job of showing that off (especially in the end). I do agree that it's not aged super well, but I wouldn't say it got a pass.

That's fair, maybe it's just more of a "you had to be there" kinda thing, then? I found I got very little from its strict linearity, and the story/characters didn't keep me engaged nearly as much as Portal did.

Well, I think a Video Game works best if it has a a consistant narritive that goes throughout the game instead of exposing the player to a set piece of story, then moving on to the "action part" of it. A good example on how the world and story progresses with various aspects of the gameplay is Star Control 2.

This may perhaps be the biggest criticism of one of my most favorite games, Half Life 1. But its not 30 minutes long though but still.

EDIT: Unpopular opinion, I believe that Half Life 1 is way better than Half Life 2, both are great of course but Half Life 1 does take the lead by a large margin. I do agree that Half Life 2 had the bigger impact for those who played it in 2004 than those who played Half Life 1 in 1998.

Half-Life 2 was and still is head and shoulders above the vast majority of first person shooters. It is excellent.

I'm fine with either the slow start or the big set piece, but these days the big set piece usually isn't very interesting to me. I love the atmosphere and moody vibes of Half-Life 2's and Bioshock's opening.

HL 2 does still have the best opening to any game I would say. I wrote a paper on it in school. It was fun to break it down in detail and made me really appreciate it thoroughly, even many years after its release. One thing I used was this great video series which I highly recommend. Interesting to see just how they deliver all this world building without sitting down and going through exposition.

@artisanbreads: great video, thanks so much for sharing.

i played the game for the first time in 2011 and thought it was fly as hell. intro set the tone, which is critical to hl2.

@pauljeremiah: Check out other ones by him if you like it. He broke down just about the whole opening and other parts of the game too. Makes you appreciate what Valve did.

talking about great first 30 min, bioshick and bioshock:infinite have some quite fantastic ones. mgsv too (though i guess some slighted fans would say those are probably the only good minutes).

i will say hl2 does set a fantastic mood.

The Half Life series is special for that reason, i can see how a person approaching it expecting a badass no holds barred shooter right out of the gate might be disappointed, but i'd venture to guess they'd be disappointed in most games with a story to tell, not just Half Life.

I do really like the opening of Half-Life 2 in the way that it sets up the atmosphere of the game, but holy hell if that game isn't one of the worst-paced games I've ever played. Every section goes on for 30m-1hr longer than it should. Over the last decade+ I've tried to play through it four separate times and have never made it more than a few hours in.

To be fair, you played it 6-7 years after release. HL2 was groundbreaking at the time but many of the things that made it so special then have long since been incorporated into thousands of games in much more refined forms. It's akin to saying Bad Company wasn't actually a great game because in 2017 we have things like Titanfall 2. Games don't stop being great just because later games borrow their ideas and iterate on them, if anything that is usually what defines a really great game.

@artisanbreads: Will do.

I think I prefer games that have a strong opening and then they slow down to an increasing but more natural progression. Games like God of War 1 and 2 are perfect examples of games that grab you by creating a pretty strong first impression.

Also, I wouldn't call the beginning of Bioshock "slow". True, the action is less involving since you have fewer weapons and powers, but I think everything in Bioshock 1 up to the part you get your powers is a masterclass lesson on world building.

Some people play games for the story, so a slow paced intro like that works, others like to skip cutscenes and just shoot stuff so for them it probably wouldn't work. To be fair i feel half life 2 is pretty dated in terms of mechanics, i went back and tried to finish it (maybe around the same time 2010/2012) and had to tap out once i got to the driving stuff. The coolest mechanic in the game is the gravity stuff (which isn't all that novel now) and if i remember that takes a while to get to as well. HL2 was one of the early games to try and do the cinematic thing, and it succeeded and failed in a lot of ways that i can imagine it could be harder for someone new to get into it.

Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is miles better than Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. I feel like it has the set-piece opening OP is talking about that gets you involved and ready to play.

I think games could benefit from both choices, either a big booming opening or a slow-paced world-building opening. It really depends on the kind of game and the gameplay. If Doom's opening was as drawn-out and plot heavy as Doom 3, it'd feel completely out of place from the fast-action shooty-bang-bangs of the rest of the game. If you took Mass Effect 2's opening and put it in the first one instead, you'd be confused and it'd feel like it was setting the pace for a fast action-heavy game (ME1 was a slow space opera with action in it). Sequels I think are kind of exempt from this, though, because most sequels are made with the frame of mind that players know the setting they're getting into and try to skip most of the world-building you'd normally see in the first minutes of a game.

I'm all for world and character building, though. I live for moments in videogames that make my eyes widen in shock or amazement like that gif of Chris Pratt on Parks and Rec, but I appreciate the game a whole lot more when it takes the time to get me invested in the story and the characters. If the game doesn't give me motivation to care, it's a bad game.

I kind of wish the rest of Half Life 2 was as good as the opening. As someone who got accustomed to games having button overlays for every player interaction, that thing with the security guard who asks you to pick up the can blew my mind when I played the game four years ago.

As for the main question, I think it depends on the game and the tone it's trying to establish. I doubt a slow-paced, exposition-heavy opening level would've worked for last year's Doom. It also obviously depends on the execution. For example, both Mass Effect 2 and 3 opened with a "bang," but the former did it much better.

Obviously both approaches can be done well, but the slow pace approach is much more interesting to me due to what it means for the evolution of video game stories.

Simply put, I think game developers' struggle with pacing is the biggest reason why video game stories are still "video game stories". The best action movies are not 90 minutes of gunplay and roller coasters are not constantly going downhill at breakneck speed for a reason; slow, quite moments highlight and enhance the action. This concept has struggled to find a footing in video games. To be fair it is hard to pull off well in games, so I understand why the struggle exists.

I prefer the slow start because I see it as an attempt to solve this problem. I'd like to start seeing some games that do more than have a slow start followed by 9 hours of constant combat. Give me some good slow bits of exposition throughout, maybe throw in a dénouement at the end. Many games have these kinds of things, but they are either relegated to cutscenes or radio chatter that I half listen to because I'm in the middle of a shoot out.

It depends on the game, Final Fantasy XV is a JRPG so it can get away with pushing a broken down car while "Stand By Me" plays. (which I thought was a pretty great intro)

But if an action game like Bayonetta started that way then some people might be pissed. (I'd probably be okay with it though)

Half-Life 2 has a heavy emphasis on story and world building so it's intro makes sense. (the original also started in a similar fashion)

I should state as an addendum to my original post, I do actually like the opening of HL2, at least before the action starts and things kind of hit a wall. But the atmospheric story stuff setting up City 17 is all fine and good. Probably one of the better moments of the game, if not the best. I suppose the main fault with HL2 (and HL as a whole) is that it's an interesting universe with some rough characters. I mean, for crying out loud, they try to set up a romance between a mute, personality-less protagonist that doesn't even have scripted animations for cutscenes and Alyx! However, that's neither here nor there to this topic.

Out of curiosity, what are some other games that have some classic, slower openings outside of Bioshock and Half-Life? I only ask because I am struggling to think of any. Not saying they don't exist, I'm just genuinely drawing a blank.

Whatever the creator's vision is. Today's jimquisition on RE7 makes some great points on this.

Half-Life 2 was a solid 4/5 for me when I first played it and it's still a 4/5 for me now. Way better than the majority of first-person shooters released now.

I'm with your friend, I don't think HL2 holds up at all. I realize it is the progenitor of the genre, but woof! I tried very hard to finish even half of that game. Zero interest in returning to the series.

I agree on Bioshock's but I think MGSV wasn't the best. Personally I am a fan of the old style Metal Gear and what V was going for more too. What V started with was quite different from the whole series. It was a horror bit basically that played like scripted moments in games like Uncharted. Not that it sucked but it could be tedious and when you played it again and had to sit through it all, wasn't so hot.

For me, when that game really opens up and you're out there was where my mind started really being blown.

I would say that for me Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 were more amazing in their first 30 minutes. The Tanker is basically all the best gameplay in MGS2 for me. 1 was just mindblowing in all ways. I remember not being able to figure out the controls for a while but details like how you could dive into the water and footsteps in puddles could be heard or tracked in the snow were pretty awesome. Five-Five Sixers and Pineapples and the Hind-D.

Both approaches have their own merits; that's art and interpretation. I'm actually playing through Half-Life 2 fully for the first time, right now, and find it amazing. It's thrilling, paced well, and the design is awesome, in terms of individual levels and how the levels come together, each with its own identity.

@quarters: That stupid hovercraft, omg! Thank you for mentioning that ridiculous thing.

Anyways, I remember Bungie had some vidoc (of many) where they were making one of the Halo games and one person said that if a game doesn't grab them within the first 5-10 min (not sure what actual time was given) then they would stop playing it. I'm paraphrasing horribly, but I think I feel the same basic way. If I did not play the original Half-Life, and I just played HL2 today, I do not think that I would keep playing it, because shooter campaigns have changed.

There are just so many games out there that I don't have time for a game to meander about without showing me what the hook of the game is for 30 minutes. And to what others have said about slow starts in comparison to movies, movies move along much more quickly than games. A movie usually does not spend even 30 minutes before even hinting at a potential flaw in a character, a dramatic twist or turn, or a physical conflict. Games are not only longer and thus require a big investment, but they also include some sort of player agency. Playing a game where the tutorial seems to drag along for too long is a different feeling than watching a slow movie. Usually a game feels too slow when I have already mastered mechanics that the game is trying to teach me repeatedly, or when the narrative and gameplay are not properly paced and neither element is introducing new things.

This varies though, because different players have different thresholds. I'm just trying to relate to someone who is playing HL2, which I enjoyed, and did not like it.

I agree with your friend whole-heartedly, and I don't think it has anything to do with the pacing. Having played Half-Life 2 around when The Orange Box came out, I (as a newcomer) found the world to be utterly uninviting and uninteresting from the jump. I don't mind a languid pace if there are hooks, but I found none in that game. The only I reason I could give myself as to why I kept playing was "critical acclaim," but that wasn't enough in this case. I permanently bounced off after about 90 minutes.

Assassin's Creed III had a 5 hour tutorial/prologue although i'm not sure if that's what you mean.

As for FPS games Doom 3 had a good 10-15 minutes of walking around and talking to people before hell opens up. (and it's still my favourite Doom game..!)

A lot of people have already said what I'm thinking in that it depends on the game's genre, tone, narrative and all that fun stuff.

I vaguely remember roughly an hour or two going by before I finally got to hit something. It makes me wonder how I somehow didn't immediately get bored with it 11 years ago given my hypeness for Devil May Cry 3 at the time.

...But then again, I am one of those crazy people who grind Destiny Islands for levels and potions in the first game, over 100 wins against Riku on one occasion, so who am I to talk shit when I am also shitty?

I liked playing around with circlesaws and the weapons, but apart from that HL2 doesn't really stick out to me as a great game. I mostly remember being stuck in rooms waiting till the npc's stop talking and constantly being on that hovercraft. I like Half Life 1 much more.

@artisanbreads: like you, when I first played through the opening of MGSV I thought it slow yet fascinating. But a couple of months later I picked it up on Steam via a sale and have yet to get through the opening. Just feels like too much of a slog to get through now.

I can see someone not liking HL2 today, to me, it quickly went from one of my favorite games of all time (04-05) to archaic feeling (07 to today). That said, I am still to this day impressed with many things Half Life 2 does and I still like it regardless. As for the topic at hand, it doesn't really matter if it's slow or bombastic, it's just how well it's done. Bioshock and Half Life 2 (even the first Half Life) are perfect examples of how to do slow openings. Talking specifically about Half Life 2, it starts slow and for me, it brought into question where the heck Gordon Freeman was, and how far into the future was he for all of that to have happened? I absolutely loved the mystery and how it really left room for imagination. Half Life 2's biggest issue today for me is the act of holding a weapon; simple as that really. Shooting dudes and how they animate going down is still good, but walking around with the gun permanently to your side just feels off to me. Some games do it fine, but it just doesn't feel good to me in HL2. Honestly, aiming down the sight and lining up shots would make it feel so much better. I wonder if there is a good mod for that...

@quarters: Not quite as slow, but I thought Dead Space was somewhat of a slow start and a good one.

It depends on the game, and what it is trying to do narratively. Persona 4, for instance, has an extremely drawn-out opening, but it makes sense in the story - throwing a set piece into the first hour of the game wouldn't fit, because moving to a small town should be a sedate affair before the rest of the game kicks off. On the other hand, Persona 5 drops you almost immediately into combat, which works for that game because the protagonist is already involved in hijinks before the game begins.

There's also a middle ground, which I think Steins;Gate hits - there's an immediate hook to draw you into the story and make you wonder what is going on, then the next five or so hours move _incredibly_ slowly. It pays off though - the tension and dread is constantly ratcheted up during the game, evoking a strong sense of empathy for the characters, which it couldn't do as well if the opening was done any faster. It's one of the reasons I don't think the anime is as good as the VN - by jumping into the meat of the story faster, and not having as much of the happy-go-lucky times at the start, the choices forced on Okabe aren't as impactful.

I've always found I was the minority on HL2. I really didn't care for it. Couple of physics puzzles here and there, couple of pops here, meh. The graphics were great, the animations superb, but I just thought the game was boring.

Kids these days!