Best Opening Sequences in Gaming

[Artina89]

For me it would have to be these:

Final Fantasy IX


Vagrant story


These two just always strike a real chord with me for some reason. It makes me feel quite nostalgic, especially the Final Fantasy IX opening sequence.

 

[laggyteabag]

Gotta love Halo 3 ODSTs opening.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

God of War games. Ascension by far has the best opening level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYJ4A53UziQ

 

[Sefa Lagaaia]

Devil May Cry 3 and 4 - balls out action sequence in the former, less so in the latter but still a memorable sequence and introduction to Dante and Nero
Smash bros Brawl - although a tad overlong was still pretty sweet as the setup for the game to come, and that music was tan-fastic
Just Cause 2 and 3 - Not cut-scenes but just letting you fuck around in their sandbox and blow shit up, timeless.
Dark Souls 1 - The prison teaches you from the start that the game is going to stop at nothing to murder you outright, and if you aren't down for that, there's the door
Borderlands 1 - Yep

 

[mardocOz]

The opening that immediately comes to mind whenever this question crops up for me is still the opening mission of Medal of Honor: Frontline. Playing through the storming of the Normandy beaches was and is still one of the most exhilarating intros for a game I've ever played.

I was wondering if anyone would mention this. One of the best example of front-stacking a game, this level was was immersive, exhilerating and atmospheric, promising so much for the rest of the game to come. Which, of course, it utterly failed to deliver on. Still for an opening sequence, its definitely up there.

I'm gonna say Bayonetta. The scene where you're kicking the crap out of angels in the cemetary whilst "Fly Me To The Moon" is playing in the background. For me it oozed style and charm and perfectly encapsulated the character of Bayonetta and the tone of the game to come. I was a fan.

And I don't know if it's just nostalgia talking at this point, but the opening to Final Fantasy VI, where they're running across the snow in the Magitek armour whilst Terra's theme is playing. Beautiful.

 

[DementedSheep]

I'll throw my vote in for Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock which have already been mentioned. Bioshock infinite aswell, it's intro pulls off the same effect as bioshock, I guess they are just really good at doing city reveals. With ME2 I hate that they worked being resurrected into the plot but even still that opening was awesome.

Fallout 3 has one of my favourite intros even if it get a little annoying on replaying the game. I've never played another RPG that introduces you to world quite like that.

 

[pookie101]

SHAME !! SHAME ON YOU ALL!!!

no one mentioning the start and first mission of Homeworld

 

[Veylon]

I still gotta go with the one for Final Fantasy 7.
You get a pretty neat sweep in and out that establishes Aeris, the city of Midgard, and it jumps straight into the opening mission.

 

[TheMann]

I'll throw in yet another vote for Bioshock. The whole visual intro to Rapture with Andrew Ryan's speech and that magnificent soundtrack was amazing. Bioshock 2 was meh. Infinite wasn't bad either, it really conveyed an ominous feel, even though the player was mostly in control during the whole thing.

Deus Ex

Oh I agree. Despite the aged graphics and somewhat wooden voice acting, the whole thing is very chilling.

I got a couple:

Spoiler: Starcraft: Brood War

This one just gets so much right. And when I first saw it in 1999 it looked amazing.

Also:

Spoiler: This. Just... just this. The whole thing. If you haven't seen it, just watch it.

 

[Viltry]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mlbJCwWsJEk

Heavy Gear 2 intro ftw!

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I like the KH cinematic intros myself. They recap all preceding chief plot points within the span of a J-pop song, which is more than I can say for other JRPGs.

Except for Dream Drop Distance, which also seems to recap plot events that WILL happen in KH3.

I mean, some stuff in that intro made me go "Wait...The implications of this are beyond obvious and are probably spoilers for KH3. What the hell, guys!"

 

[Silvanus]

My favourite game opening sequence by quite some margin is Arkham City.


It's brutal, and gives you the tone of the game perfectly. I love it to bits.

Second would be FFX, which has already had a mention.

 

[kris40k]

Lost Odyssey


9 min intro, but totally worth it to set the scene of:

• A war between states.
  Kaim being a complete badass who can't die.

When I first played the game after all that and sky fell, and Kaim got back up, I was just amazed.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

seems this thread was slight necro'd...although I never posted in it the firs time around, so here goes:

couldn't agree with you more on this, I just played through this game recently and this intro was by far my favorite, and might be in one of my top 5 of all time for intros.

alot of intro's I like have already been mentioned here...so I'll switch it up and say:

Star Wars: The old republic


say what you want about the game, I think the cinematics were always fantastic (This is technically labeled as the intro, so I'm gonna roll with that.)