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Favorite Game Openings?


Monochrome_Complex

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First impressions are important in games, and it's nice to have a game make you want to play it before you've even pressed a button on your controller. What are some of your favorite videogame openings?

Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate had a rather memorable one where it gave some nice backstory in some impressive for its time CGI(ayane's hair in the haircut scene is still impressive even today)and all set to Aerosmith's Dream On, which might seem awfully cheesy at first but works so well that it ends up awesome. See for yourself...Dimensions had the same video but without Aerosmith it's just not as good. Dead or Alive needs Aerosmith back(though I did like Bomb Factory's Exciter in DOA2) and it's one thing DOA5 in all its iterations is lacking. Also, Dead or Alive 4 also has a very good ending movie in the same vein, set to Aerosmith's Amazing.

Soul Calibur's 2 opening is HYPE. It lets you know you're about to play an epic fighter and the CGI was top tier for its time. This was back when Japan regularly had the best looking games out and the whole thing does a good job of showing off the roster with epic music and sound direction.

Guilty Gear Xrd plays like an awesome opening to an anime, but what really sells it for me is Heavy Day, which is one of the hypest opening tunes you can get. In fact I usually just skip the exposition in the beginning and head straight to the music since that's the best part.

Speaking of anime, we can't forget the legendary Namco X Capcom opening. The entire Namco X series has great openings but out of the 3 this one is probably my favorite.

Sonic Adventure's opening is still my favorite sonic opening, and Open Your Heart is straight up one of my favorite videogame tracks ever(though admittedly i like Live and Learn and What I'm Made Of over it but they weren't used in openings. An awesome way to start a new era of Sonic.

Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver's opening still awes me even now, with it's wonderful narration and incredible music. It's such a perfect start to the epic Soul Reaver saga..

Ah one more: Persona 3's opening. It oozes style and the music is fantastic.

Edited by Monochrome_Complex
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The ones that immediatley come to mind are many Final Fantasy titles...

Final Fantasy Tactics - the music is so good... and the change of pace once the cutscene goes over into the main-menu screen.

Final Fantasy VIII - The duel between Squall and Cifer that actually goes over into the actual start of the game, and "Liberi Fatali" as a music choice!

Final Fantasy X - The Blitzball Game with Tidus, Auron standing on the rooftops, while "Other World" is blasting thorugh the speaker and then the Attack of SIN!

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Maybe these are not strictly cutscenes since you can move around and control your character while they happen, but they're the introductions to their respective games more than actual gameplay, so I'll talk about them:

Evoland 1 - You start and this is the first thing you see:

Evoland-large-0.jpg

You can only move to the right. When you hit the chest it opens and it unlocks the left key. You can then go to the left and open the other chest, which unlocks the up and down keys. It's in my opinion an awesome way to introduce the game's controls and the mechanic of opening chests to evolve the game.

Pokemon Reborn - The bomb, the torture scene and the atmosphere of Peridot in general are shouting at you that this isn't a regular Pokemon game. Reborn was the first fangame I played, previously I had only played Emerald and Pearl, so this beginning was certainly shocking, and it caught my attention since the very first moment.

Undertale - The contrast between the presentation Flowey makes of the Underwold, trying to fool you with the "friendship pellets" in order to kill you and get your soul, shouting that here is killing or being killed, and right afterwards Toriel showing you a radically different game where you need to talk to the obstacles to beat them shows the player both the pacifist and genocide routes without even talking about them. It also makes you instantly interested in the game and the different possibilities it may have depending on your choices.

Edited by Lugruf
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Favorite Video Game openings? Someone had to bring up the Tales series, of course. Nothing like a bunch of out-of-context spoilers to start up your game. I'm not kidding, these intros would be massive spoilers, if it weren't for the fact that they completely lack context. Some of my personal favorite Tales series openings.

Tales of Graces F (English)

Tales of Xillia 1

My personal favorite, because Xillia 2 is my personal favorite in the series.



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This may be an odd choice, but Castlevania Judgement's opening is quite wonderful. The music, animation, coreography combined with the awesome fighting scene between Alucard and Simon makes the opening one that that makes you oh so very excited to play the game.

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Probably Skyrim.. has that classical "You're a prisoner and are going to get executed." opening, and then a dragon comes and kills basically everything and everybody forgets about your past crimes and all is fine and dandy.

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Any Smash Bros game.

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 had hype openings where Dark Souls gives you a glance of the game's bosses and lore in an epic way.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch had a very emotional opening which was pretty good.

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Persona, Kingdom Hearts, and any Fighting Game OP.

All the Persona and Kingdom Hearts OPs

All the Smash OPs

PlayStation Allstars OPs.

Guilty Gear and BlazBlue OPs

Tekken and Street Fighter OPs.

Final Fantasy X-2's OP and FF8's OP.

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So many that I could name!

A "short" list for me would be:

-Kingdom Hearts series

-Blood Will Tell

-Persona 3

-Tales of Zestiria

-Street Fighter X Tekken

-Monster Hunter 4

-FFX (Hyped Feeling) / FFX-2 ("Well that was something" Feeling)

-Disgaeas 3, 4, 5

There are so many more I could name, but these were the first I could think of! I remember I used to love openings to video games back when I was a teenager. I remember the old show on G4 called Cinematec and I'd watch it quite a bit. Even went as far as to record my own "Cinematec" by starting up a game and recording the openings on a VHS tape one after the other haha. Needless to say I was an easily entertained kid. Good times though. I still will 9 times out of 10 watch a good opening every time I start up a game.

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Pokémon Reborn: The fact that this game starts with the MC nearly dying really gives off a great first impression of the game. Just after that, you see this city ruined by earthquackes and shit-brown polluted water. I remember my first thought when I began playing it: "This is NOT your typical happy-go-lucky Pokémon game!"

Pokémon Rejuvenation: Same as with Reborn, it gives off a great first impression. I also really love how personal the story feels for the MC. Their mother was kidnapped and god knows that Team Xen would've done to them is Teslas Talonflame didn't rescue them!

Super Mario World 2: Yoshie's Island: Ah, this game is just beautiful. I really love how the game starts with narration. It makes it seem as though someone is telling the games story to a kid, which is very charming. Also, the graphics might not be what it is today, but it is still very pretty.

Silent Hill Downpour: Yeah, yeah, I know some people might not like this game. I, however, do. It ain't my favorite, but it is still a good game. I especially love the opening sequence with Murphy, as we really get an interesting first impression of his character. The music also helps. Gives off vibes that builds up the atmosphere of this game.

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  • 4 months later...

Blinx - The time sweeper. The intro has such a joyful tune to it, and it also shows off the different time-abilities you can create fittingly to the tune. However, the intro is rather 'simplistic' compared to other games

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  • Support Squad

Huh, ok so first shoutout to Simple and Clean for the opening from KH1, that is god tier awesome. Persona 3 as well is mmmmm, shame the animation was less than on point.

 

My favourite opening in general though isn't actually the opening of the game per se. Shin Megami Tenseis menu screen theme is my favourite because of how at odds with the rest of the game it is. It belies a world of horror, death, strife, conflict and philosophical fuckery with these calm, relaxing and veritably beautiful notes and that is very unique within the games OST, mostly comprised of rock, metal, grungey kinds of music or just downright creepy warbling.

 

I figured that seeing as it's one of the first things you experience of the game aside from the ACTUAL opening it fit well enough.

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I think by default I'd have to say Monster Hunter tri's opening, because the entire reason I wanted to buy it was because I saw the opening somewhere before the game came out and somehow I just felt like I had to get it. And I've never really had that happen with any other game's opening to be honest. But I don't know if that speaks more of my self control since then or just how much I like Tri's opening. I like the openings to Monster Hunter 4 and 4 Ultimate too but I bought 4 Ultimate because I already knew what Monster Hunter was like and enjoyed it.

 

I guess I just like openings that tell stories within that game's universe rather than show off the game itself. Really makes the games universe feel more alive, like stuff happens when the player isn't around beating massive dragons to death with oversized, impractical weapons. But I get that those kinds of openings don't go with everything.

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