The slowest game beginnings ever?

[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."