The slowest game beginnings ever?

[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

 

[P_L_A_G_U_E]

baldur's gate 2
fuck irenicus, fuck his dungeon, fuck his traps, fuck the captured dryads and fuck his golems. thank god for dungeon-b-gone, the tutorial dungeon-skipping mod that paved the way for all the others.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Ni no Kuni and FFX, both JRPGs, unsurprisingly. I think FFX doesn't let you play with the full mechanics until after the fucking blitzball tournament, and that's easily like 7 hours of gameplay. Though probably half of that is cutscenes anyway, which makes it all the more baffling why they're still unskippable in the remaster.

Ni no Kuni had the same problem, but to a somewhat lesser degree. But when new mechanics are still being introduced 10 hours into the game, you know you've got pacing issues. And given the hordes of different mechanics and how convoluted they can get, that's a problem. But thank fucking Christ, at least they let you skip the cutscenes if you want.

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

I haven't played MGS5, but I watched the whole intro on Youtube. And fucking hell, what were they thinking? That every single possible life or death, edge of your seat, nail biting action movie scenario has to take place back to back in the first hour. And most of it barely seemed interactive whatsoever. After 15 minutes I needed a break. After 30 minutes it was all white noise. After 45 minutes I was begging for it to end. And it still kept going, like saying "You think that was crazy? Well take THIS!! You know how crazy that previous thing was? Well this is even CRAZIER!!! TUBULAR!!! INTENSITY TO THE MAAAAAAX!! OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!"

 

[gxs]

Max Payne 3, Half-Life 1. These two games have the longest intros. Ok you get to move in Half-Life but that small rail-car thingy is what 5 meters long? And Max Payne 3 is almost no gameplay at all. It would be a decent action movie though (if they cut out that half hour of gameplay it has).

Have I won?

 

[UniqueLorick]

People may complain about Persona or Skyrim but nothing beats this good old game in my mind for slowest start. Even in games like Final Fantasy 13 they give you some pretty visual and action to watch and help move things along. Star Ocean 2 on the other hand is roughly a 1-2 hour long exposition dump with one combat that serves as the tutorial and the rest simply being herded into the next plot dump by the npcs with little control over where and what to do. No action, not even changing locations.. Just.. Text blocks of talking, and talking, and more talking.. Great game, but my god it was a hard sell to your friends growing up to try it out because of this text wall.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Surprised nobody has brought up the Metal Gear series, specifically, Metal Gear Solid 4.

Now I can't quite remember if the opening specifically was super-long, but I don't think it ever felt like it properly got started, certainly not for a long while. That game just felt like 70% cut scene to me.

I only just remembered that this game exists. I'm not a hundred percent sure when the game actually gets started but for the first chunk of it...well for most of what I remember playing, up until Shadow Moses, it seems like you can trigger a cutscene after merely walking a couple of steps onward. It feels like the game is still in prologue mode up until Liquid makes everyone with Nanomachines do The Harlem Shake and if you sit and watch all of the scenes, that takes...it takes a while.

 

[Imre Csete]

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.

What talking? All I remember was the copious amount of stealing stuff for 3 hours.

 

[Roboshi]

I think someone mentioned it, but Digimon Cyber Sleuth. It took a literal hour to get your first digimon. To put that in context it rarely takes more than 5 minutes to get your first pokemon in their games. And in Cyber Sleuth you will spend about 70% of the first 5-10 hours in areas with no digimon battles whatsoever. The game is very fun so far but really feels like 2 entirely different games have been glued together.

 

[Zen Bard]

The first two Fable games. The beginning consists of a lot of faffing about as a little tyke.

Although to be fair, it's meant as a tutorial. But if it's not your first playthrough, it becomes a bit of a drag.

 

[F-I-D-O]

I've actually never gotten into Twilight Princess because I found the opening to be so slow. I can't get past those initial hours - I just do not care at all about anyone. Having to return to the town in wolf form after feeling like you finally escaped doesn't help.

Following that would be Persona 4. While it does a much better job at setting up characters than TP, it's still two hours of a watching before the game starts. Makes replaying it irritating.

Valkyria Chronicles and it's damn mission structure. I love that game to bits, but having to individually load each cutscene, and having so many between missions, gets really frustrating.

Also, any Tapletop RPG run by a first time DM. I find most systems to have ridiculous boring starting levels, and games don't really get fun skill or combat wise until players hit level 5. I get having the opening be needed for plot, but the DMs should then allow players to go through those openings in a more RP, less combat relying manner. Saying "I basic attack with my sword" for ten turns isn't fun.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Kingdom Hearts 2, oh god Kingdom Hearts 2. The entire first 4 hours of that game are some of the most glacial shit Ive ever had to do and its a shame because it makes me not want to replay the game whenever Im in the mood for Kingdom Hearts. Actually now that I think about it, Kingdom Hearts 1 also had a very slow opening to it. Hopefully 3 improves the pace of the opening, and hopefully ill find the strength to play 3 after all the weird story important spinoffs that I missed

 

[F-I-D-O]

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.

A lot of JRPGs also have pacing problems.
If the opening time isn't engaging, the intro feels even longer and the player's frustration gets exacerbated. There are ways to make Persona 4's opening more succinct and more interesting. Instead, it throws a lot of terms at the player, gets to points where it would make sense to have some interaction (realistically not fighting) and then continues an info dump that has become white noise. The weird, compelling moments like the Velvet Room get brought up at the start, but not again for the rest of the opening.

For example, the Metal Gear series has some problems with its cutscene over reliance, but MGS3 did a great job of introducing characters and story, at the same time as interactive mechanics. When the long cutscene comes at the end of the opening operation, players are more accepting because they've gotten a taste of both the game and the story in the opening hours. There's no reason that JRPGs can't also pace their game to make the opening more interesting.

 

[Dalisclock]

Ni no Kuni and FFX, both JRPGs, unsurprisingly. I think FFX doesn't let you play with the full mechanics until after the fucking blitzball tournament, and that's easily like 7 hours of gameplay. Though probably half of that is cutscenes anyway, which makes it all the more baffling why they're still unskippable in the remaster.

Can't speak for Ni no Kuni but FFX just seemed to have pacing issues in general. The beginning is nicely done, but once you get to Spira the narrative starts shuffling you along without really telling you jack squat and then once you get to Besiad, you're dumped into the whole Blitzball thing again, as well as the Pilgrimage(which is supposed to be the main plot).

Among other problems, I never found blitzball particularly interesting and part of that was because the game insists on making a big deal about it until you get to Luca but not actually letting you either see it(that big cutscene at the beginning doesn't tell you anything other then "it's underwater and it might be like soccer!"O or practice it. It's just kind of "Hey, you know this, so let's dump you into the big tournament and watch you try to figure it out". And then you never need to play it again. Thank fucking god.

Actually, the game didn't even start gripping me until Home, when the big reveal comes up. I think I played up until then out of hope it would all come together and explain the mystery of Sin and Spira(which it kinda did, just in a particularly not satisfying way).

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Every goddamn Bethesda game. Holy shit are their intros a drag.

Skyrim is probably the worst offender to me. You sit around waiting for that long cart ride to end, stand around waiting for execution roll call, stand around waiting for the poorly voice acted horse thief to make his move, DESIGN YOUR CHARACTER (YAY!), stand around waiting some more, wait some more (this time kneeling!), play follow-the-leader for a while (surprise, more waiting for dialogue you've probably already heard a hundred times), CHOOSE A FACTION (which you know next to nothing about yet, yay?), stand around waiting for the dialogue to finish so they can cut your bindings.

Then you get to fight your way through the tunnels and caves. Kill some soldiers, squish some spiders, attempt (and fail) to sneak up on a bear... then finally, SKYRIM!

...

Wait a minute. Something's wrong here. Where's the usual Bethesda "are you SURE this is the character you want to play?" screen. Y'know, the one that you can save in front of so that you can just bypass all of that bullshit next time like in every other Bethesda game. Oh, right... because you chose a faction WAY back there, they couldn't put that screen at the end.

It's times like that I'm glad the PC versions of these games have console commands. Like hell I'm gonna do all that bullshit again and waste an hour of my time.

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

I've actually never gotten into Twilight Princess because I found the opening to be so slow. I can't get past those initial hours - I just do not care at all about anyone. Having to return to the town in wolf form after feeling like you finally escaped doesn't help.

I came in here just to chime in about Twilight Princess. That game has a such a terrible intro. I really want to replay it some day but I just cannot get past the intro ever. I can never mange it.

 

[Michael Legault]

RPGs in general typically have slow openings, especially JRPGs. There are some standouts of course. FF7 has a really good opening that puts you right in the action and gives you just enough info to know sort of what's going on, but also makes you want to know more. Of course, the story kind of goes up and down after that point, but still a solid beginning.

I consider all of Midgar to be the opening of FF7, you're fairly restricted for gear and materia for most of it... it really *drags* on halfway through and it takes forever to get to the world map.

Granted I've started that game many many times as a friend had the game and every time I started it the file would get deleted by the time I visited again... so I've been through it many many times.

 

[n0e]

Any game that forces you to play a tutorial.

Screw tutorials, I know what I'm doing! LET ME SKIP YOU!