The slowest game beginnings ever?

[BoogieManFL]

Most BioWare RPGs. As much as I like most of them, slow or slowish openings are common in my opinion.

 

[Snotnarok]

Any online game that has a ready button.

Shout outs to anyone who wants to stab the one guy who goes AFK till he idles during this time.

But seriously, any modern JRPG seems to take it's time. Dig it's heels in and 4 hours in you're still seeing some tutorials for things.

 

[hermes]

Dammit Kingdom hearts 2, I just wanna kick some Heartless Ass. I don't care about slapping up some posters and doing research on weird happenings in town and this kinda boring combat tournament with multicolor balls!

I want to do a Critical Mode run of KH2, but the thought of doing a 2 hour long intro before the game even really starts just irks me.

I thought of the same answer.

There are several hours of basic tutorials, unskippable awkward dialogue that makes Tidus' laugh scene feel at home, gibberish dialogue between characters you have never seen, scenes of kids looking at sunsets, and not a single Disney element in sight. It is like they decided to slap an unrelated game at the beginning.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

Sunless Sea.

It's a small Indie game, so it's less likely to have been known, and it's by the Fallen London people. The premise is you're a ship captain in a Victorian Lovecraftian ocean that exists after London and a lot of the earth fell down some deep, dark thing and wound up under the earth.

Jumping in to do something takes a mere minute after you go through chargen, but you can easily spend the next five to six hours visiting the same five to ten ports just grinding for stats and pocket change in the hope of being able to survive to the next part of the game. With permadeath and a near total loss of all progress when you die, very few players ever are going to be willing to grind it out.

It actually doesn't take long once you know what to do. Also if you actually plan on finishing a game you pretty much have to manual save, as sailing off the southern edge of the map is a 50/50 chance of death, and even if you live you end up at the miles from London with 1 crew and1 hull.

 

[Denamic]

Dunno about slowest ever, but Divinity: Original Sin, a game I love, is super fucking slow to start for real. You get some introductory battles, then you're stuck talking to people in the city for 3 hours. It almost got me to quit the game.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

KOTOR.
FREAKING.
2.

Peragus is not only boring, it also lasts long enough for regimes to rise and fall.

The rest of the game's really good though.

Thank you. I was gonna mention that. God, that intro lasts fucking forever.

I actually like the Peragus Mining Facility, but it does have some long ass stretches in it. As an exercise in atmosphere, I really like it, because it's got some neat murder mystery going on, and the setting itself is pretty interesting. But it is let down by two things. One: the visuals cannot maintain the same creepy atmosphere that the writing, sound design and music convey. Two, the murder mystery is well written, but it is also incredibly obvious for anyone who played the first game that the HK-50 was responsible.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2. Dear god those beginnings were long! Didn't stop me from sticking around for as long as a felt like it. A few hours of grinding on Riku and I'm ready for anything! Specially with all those potions I got. Kept going till I got the scan skill. Good times. Good times. And then KHII where I grind on shadows during that mural stage. Extending those ridiculous beginnings far longer than I should. I still love them, though. I love them soooo much!

Also, Assassin's Creed III. The first few sequences has the player play as Haytham Kenway and then child Connor before the world really opens up and the player gets to slaughter red and blue coats. So many blue coats died by my blade. I really want to play AC3 now.

 

[MerlinCross]

Sunless Sea.

It's a small Indie game, so it's less likely to have been known, and it's by the Fallen London people. The premise is you're a ship captain in a Victorian Lovecraftian ocean that exists after London and a lot of the earth fell down some deep, dark thing and wound up under the earth.

Jumping in to do something takes a mere minute after you go through chargen, but you can easily spend the next five to six hours visiting the same five to ten ports just grinding for stats and pocket change in the hope of being able to survive to the next part of the game. With permadeath and a near total loss of all progress when you die, very few players ever are going to be willing to grind it out.

Oh god yes this game is a slow boil. I've actually come up with a way to speed up the start to a degree but requires offing your first captain after a few quests. Goal isn't to power up your first captain, it's to make your 2/3rd strong enough to really go off and do stuff.

Really if you want to play it, put on a podcast in the background.

 

[The_Lost_King]

KOTOR.
FREAKING.
2.

Peragus is not only boring, it also lasts long enough for regimes to rise and fall.

The rest of the game's really good though.

Better than Taris at least. You actually get to start as a jedi instead of some useless class.

 

[RealRT]

In GTA games it gets progressively worse. One would think that it would be simple to write one mission that introduces you to driving, shooting and evading police, but NOOOOO, they all need their own dedicated missions because God forbid the game lets you have fun right out of the gate.

The beginning of most Bethesda games are pretty much like this. Oblivion and Skyrim in particular tend to take a good while before the game really picks up.

Skyrim maybe, but Oblivion? You're pretty much off the leash after the tutorial dungeon.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Literally any Pokemon game.

Oh, and Mass Effect 2. Cool the first time, anger inducing the fourth.

 

[Auberon]

Should have played Morrowind - the beginning is quite literally "deliver this to Caius Cosades, now off you go!". As for actually slow beginnings... both Endar Spire/Taris and Pegasus/Telos. Latter is great for atmospheric value but after you've seen it a few times it's just a slog.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

People mention FFXIII, and I have to disagree. It takes 20 hours to get good, but not 20 hours to get past the beginning.

No, the final fantasy that has a really slow opening act is XII. Still my favorite of the series, but after playing it about 10 times, oh god it takes so long to go anywhere. I'm not sure at what point I'd say you move out of what I would call the beginning (probably when you go to bhujerba), but it's easily 6-10 hours when you first play the game.

 

[Alma Mare]

Witcher 1

I stand by that game, it's one of my favourite games ever. It got a lot of bad rap from how slow the Prologue and Chapter I were and I can't fault anyone for thinking that. Even though the outskirts clicked with me right away, I can perfectly sympathize with people who dropped the game before the game started showing what it was all about (like, ending of chapter II, nearly halfway the entire game).

 

[Dalisclock]

Witcher 1

I stand by that game, it's one of my favourite games ever. It got a lot of bad rap from how slow the Prologue and Chapter I were and I can't fault anyone for thinking that. Even though the outskirts clicked with me right away, I can perfectly sympathize with people who dropped the game before the game started showing what it was all about (like, ending of chapter II, nearly halfway the entire game).

Funny, I was gonna bring that up. I just started playing it this weekend(after having it in my Steam library for years). It feels like someone on the game's staff played KOTOR and decided "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we made our intro levels JUST LIKE THAT?", not realizing that those levels weren't exactly liked. It also doesn't help that the opening cutscene is pretty cool, with Gelat fighting a were-wolf-ish creature and doing all sort of fancy action moves. Then the actual game starts you wake up with amnesia in a broken castle to go through some really badly paced, uninteresting and not particularly helpful tutorial training.

Once I got to the actual city in Chapter 2, the game finally started to click for me.

 

[Zombie Proof]

A lot of Zelda games. Specifically, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, and Phantom Hourglass. I might not mind it if the characters and dialogue weren't so banal, but it's almost as if the designers are purposely keeping you from what you want (the old man in phantom hourglass literally says "no" to giving you a sword so that you can start your quest lol).

There's no excuse for this. None.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Surprised no one mention Half life 1. that train intro was so long.

 

[Zombie Proof]

Surprised no one mention Half life 1. that train intro was so long.

It was long but that kind of intro and subtle storytelling was unheard of at the time. I think people were probably more intrigued than put off. Going into it now though, I can see how you could think that.

I liked the changes the guys behind the Black Mesa mod did to keep the whole beginning more interesting.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Jrpgs are kinda supposed to have lengthy openings. They originated from visual novels after all, the gameplay is just a tool used to enhance the storytelling. Like in persona 4 the first hour and a hakf establishes so much, the fact that you don't hit and fight anything isn't really important. The game is a sim/rpg hybrid.

 

[pookie101]

mgs5 tutorial hospital level was a lsd mind fuck of insanity for someone who has ignored the series until now. can we drop all the weird shit story and just get to the open world stealth game please, had this nasty habit of letting you think it was almost over then BAM something else