The slowest game beginnings ever?

[bossfight1]

Kingdom Hearts 2, obviously; there were times when the game just didn't want to take off the training wheels and put pointless minigames in an effort to keep you from doing what you came here to do - beat the shit out of Disney villains with a giant key.

Also, there's the tutorial for Overwatch, though I'm not sure this counts since it's in Beta and will probably be changed in the future. Basically, the game is extremely hesitant to let you even MOVE because it assumes this is your first FPS - which, granted, it's Blizzard's first FPS (to my knowledge) but still. "OKAY FIRST YOU'RE GONNA LOOK AROUND. LOOK HERE. NOW HERE. NOW HERE. OKAY NOW IT GETS SERIOUS... TAKE A STEP FORWARD. NOW TAKE ANOTHER."

 

[pearcinator]

Skyward Sword...tried playing through it again on Hero Mode, didn't even make it past the tutorial cos it was so long.

 

[aozgolo]

I can think of a few, not the slowest out there but certainly deserving an honorable mention:


Final Fantasy Tactics: First we'll throw you into a scripted battle you really can't lose, then we'll show you a cutscene with an excruciatingly long text scrawl (there's one section where it literally takes one second for one letter to show up like it's being typed by someone who never used a keyboard before as you're playing) Then you get to go into another tutorial battle, after all of this you're finally dumped out onto the world map, although until after Chapter I don't expect much in the way of choices on where you can or can't go, somewhat forgiveable since it's a Tactics game but still slow.


Baldur's Gate: While you can probably skip a good number of the side activities in Candlekeep the completionist in me won't let it happen, so I gotta go find medicine for a cow, grab a guard's longsword, return a book to a mage, clean out a barn of rats, and kill 2 lowly assassins. There's also all the stuff you can loot if you want to pad your finances by a handful of coins. It may seem nitpicky, this intro isn't too rough the first time, but playing again on new characters, this part is always rough.


Fallout 2: At least this has combat in the intro but it's ridiculously frustrating to get out of the initial temple, and hope you don't die in the process before you can start your journey. Even after you finish that part you are dumped back in your village for potentially a ton of other sidequests of the lowly variety

 

[Longview]

Kingdom Hearts 2's beginning really goes on for far too long

 

[emissary666]

Vampire: The Masquerade stands as the most frustrating for me. Not just the long unskippable cutscene at the beginning, but most of Santa Monica is feels more linear than the rest of the game. And, when you have a minimum of three completely different dialog trees for possible 'races' (Nosferatu, Malkavian, everyone else), that kind of slog becomes unbearable.

 

[ensouls]

Vampire: The Masquerade stands as the most frustrating for me. Not just the long unskippable cutscene at the beginning,

Ugh that unskippable opening cutscene drives me crazy. Its only redeeming value is the high possibility of entertaining glitches (no eyeballs for anyone!)

Setting aside all JRPGs, I just played Firewatch and holy crap the first days are dull. Nothing like walking back and forth in a mediocre forest environment with increasingly glib dialogue to get the heart pumping.
In fact, I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about the game as a whole, but at least things pick up a little around the halfway mark.

 

[Dalisclock]

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.

I'm not sure I'd call that a slow start and more like a case of early game hell. I'm playing the game right now and I was lucky enough to use the sphinxstone delivery quest to make a nice chunk of cash(after blowing my first chunk of cash on a new engine and a new deck gun). However, the profitable trade routes include a destination I still don't know where it is(IREM) and I can't yet afford to do the naples trade route.

The zee is fascinating but damn if trying to explore won't bankrupt you if you don't know exactly what you are doing.

 

[Saetha]

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.

A predicament which isn't half so frightening when you have the Fulgent Impeller! Zoom!

And also when The Khanate and Pigmote are both only a few squares away.

I'm not sure I'd call that a slow start and more like a case of early game hell. I'm playing the game right now and I was lucky enough to use the sphinxstone delivery quest to make a nice chunk of cash(after blowing my first chunk of cash on a new engine and a new deck gun). However, the profitable trade routes include a destination I still don't know where it is(IREM) and I can't yet afford to do the naples trade route.

The zee is fascinating but damn if trying to explore won't bankrupt you if you don't know exactly what you are doing.

In my experience, you just have to get really ballsy with exploration. I tried to grind in the first few starting ports, and not only did it get boring, it didn't get me a lot of money either. But constantly pushing the boundaries of known territory and remembering to always gather port reports kept me both interested and profiting. It also killed me a lot. But that's what merciful mode's for.

I also focused a lot on companions and storylets. They take you all around the map and usually have a nice reward at the end. In my opinion, the only upgrade that's immediately worth your while is the engine - the ship and the gun can both wait until you have piles of cash to spend on them, and certain late-game quests that require you to kill powerful zee-beasts or carry more cargo than the starting ship can possibly hold.

Spoiler: And if you want to know where to find Irem...

It's always in the north-east corner of the zee - if you go due north to Whither, and then head directly east, you'll always run into it on the very eastern edge of the map. Mt Palmerston should also be somewhere in the north-central Zee, so it's (usually, not always) a good restocking point for when you're heading to Irem (Supplies are just a little bit more expensive than London, and fuel's actually cheaper). Also also, bring a unit of coffee.

 

[snave]

The first Assassin's Creed. Not only is the mandatory tutorial atrociously slow, patronising and completely lacking in graphics, once the game proper begins, you get a regular old intro tutorial stage anyway. I swear I could feel the devs looming at me, breathing down my neck with their middle finger gently outstretched.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

The first Assassin's Creed. Not only is the mandatory tutorial atrociously slow, patronising and completely lacking in graphics, once the game proper begins, you get a regular old intro tutorial stage anyway. I swear I could feel the devs looming at me, breathing down my neck with their middle finger gently outstretched.

every assassins creed game has very slow begining. beside entire assassins creed series feel like glorified tutorial.

 

[Dalisclock]

Spoiler: And if you want to know where to find Irem...

It's always in the north-east corner of the zee - if you go due north to Whither, and then head directly east, you'll always run into it on the very eastern edge of the map. Mt Palmerston should also be somewhere in the north-central Zee, so it's (usually, not always) a good restocking point for when you're heading to Irem (Supplies are just a little bit more expensive than London, and fuel's actually cheaper). Also also, bring a unit of coffee.

Thanks. I found Mount Palmerston tonight and some other places but Irem still eludes me. As much as I wanted to search more, my terror was getting dangerously high and had to go back to London(which I did with 4 crew remaining). There might have also been some save scumming involved due to mutinys.....

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Entire BrooklynBroker chapter in GTAIV feels like a long intro into actual game.

Skyrim intro. Luckily it can be avoided by using this one weird trick.

Spoiler

Save the game right after you jump of the cart/leave the caves

Todd Howard hates it!

I guess the Half-Life tram part is one of the most infamous, albeit i didn't mind it that much.

 

[JonSherwell]

I have a bit of an odd answer. The opening to Donkey Kong 64 was always so slow that I spent a long while trying to figure out if it can be skipped. I think I finally did so by starting a new game, resetting the system, and using the same save file.

 

[The Raw Shark]

How to do an FPS intro properly?
Republic Commando: "You are a higher breed of clone, you are meant for war, here's your guns and armor, here's your squad, go get em kiddo."
How NOT to do an FPS intro properly?
Halo: "Oh you just woke up? Lets take a few seconds for you to look every direction on an axis so that we know you aren't a braindead 2 year old. Oh don't mind those aliens that are massacring your fellow soldiers. Don't bother picking up a gun, this old douche nozzle will give it to you in a few minutes."