Best opening area/level to a game

Just started playing through Witcher 3 on Switch and it reminded me just how great an opening area White Orchard is. Just big enough to give you an idea of the scale of the game without being overwhelming, not too short or too long, couple of good bosses and some interesting quests.

So GR, what is the best opening area or level you've played in a game?

The Great Plateau.

It's an easy answer but it's probably the truth. If it's not, that'll be because of Level 0 in Celeste. The latter part of that level remains the perfect marriage of mechanics and music to my mind: when the snow falls out from underneath your feet, giving you some basic idea of the difficulty of the rest of the game, and the music bursts into life, fading out just as you fail to make the final jump - and then the bird flutters down and teaches you about your dash mechanic, the rest of the level wrapped in utter silence? And the tiny chime as you make your ground? Sublime.

I'll add other candidates if/when I think of them.

[Obligatory Liberty Island mention]

A lot of opening zones are a bit understated but end with a big wow moment - like stepping out of the sewers in Oblivion - and it's hard to argue with that as a pacing choice, but what makes the Great Plateau special is that it's a wow moment itself that still somehow ends with an even bigger one when you get the paraglider. What a great game. :wub:

As that's been said already (typical!) I'd say that I think Metroid games tend to have very solid intros. Taking Prime, landing on Tallon IV at the end might be the most memorable part of the intro, but the space pirate research ship actually has its own big moments, like looking up and seeing Tallon IV at the start, or fighting the giant parasite in the middle.

The asylum in Dark Souls is a really iconic intro that sets up the game perfectly without overstaying its welcome. Sometimes intro zones feel very separate from the rest of the game, and I like that the asylum subverts that expectation.

good question!
purely 'of their time' it would have to be GTA3 off the top of my head. after playing GTA1 & 2, that opening cinematic and then being given the driving seat to take off in full 3d of Liberty City was mindblowing.

Metroid Prime 3. It kinda sets the tone. It's a galactic war now. The base gets attacked, Samus and the other bounty hunters get wrecked by Dark Samus. The LotR style sequence where you fall down a massive tunnel and fight Ridley is also cool. I like it a lot, but I could understand if people didn't.

And I always loved the chase level at the start of Dynamite Headdy. TARGET. TARGET. WOOEEEEEEEEE

The ship and Tallon IV from MP1 is a tremendous shout. As for MP3, I think I would have annoyed it if it hadn't set the tone for it being something very different from what I wanted from a Metroid game, ditching the creepy isolation in favour of NPCs up the wazoo.

Breath of The Wild, the Great Plateau was amazing at showing you most of what the game would have you experimenting with for the rest of the game.

Snowballadeer wrote:The ship and Tallon IV from MP1 is a tremendous shout. As for MP3, I think I would have annoyed it if it hadn't set the tone for it being something very different from what I wanted from a Metroid game, ditching the creepy isolation in favour of NPCs up the wazoo.

I feel like MP3 had to do that. There needed to be an escalation to the whole plot of the trilogy. Phazon was a galactic crisis. I thought it worked well, it still had isolated exploration.

The tanker level in Metal Gear Solid 2 was superb. I hadn’t owned a PlayStation so had missed out on the first game and I instantly understood what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, the rest of the game wasn’t quite as good.

Bayonetta 2 hands down. Best opening sequence ever.

The first few chapters of Yakuza Kiwami.

The opening level of Halo: CE is an obvious choice for me as the ship is small and yet well fleshed out enough to give a sense of the ship being huge and having sections for a large crew. Yeah, it's not The Enterprise but that's because it's a pure combat ship and it looks the part. It does a good job of starting the story and even has a couple of decent choke point battles.

It may not be overly creative but it's memorable and that's what the series needed from an opening section.

Peter Crisp wrote:The opening level of Halo: CE is an obvious choice for me as the ship is small and yet well fleshed out enough to give a sense of the ship being huge and having sections for a large crew. Yeah, it's not The Enterprise but that's because it's a pure combat ship and it looks the part. It does a good job of starting the story and even has a couple of decent choke point battles.

It may not be overly creative but it's memorable and that's what the series needed from an opening section.

I actually disagree with this, and I think it's quite a bad opening level and that the second (appropriately called "Halo" if I remember rightly) is so much better. The first is a linear, corridor shooter in the Doom mold.

The second, is a wide open space, with various approaches open to the player. I think you might even get some objectives you can do in any order. You get a few more enemy types (I think Ghosts and Hunters appear) and, crucially, you get vehicles.

Parksey wrote:I actually disagree with this, and I think it's quite a bad opening level and that the second (appropriately called "Halo" if I remember rightly) is so much better. The first is a linear, corridor shooter in the Doom mold.

The second, is a wide open space, with various approaches open to the player. I think you might even get some objectives you can do in any order. You get a few more enemy types (I think Ghosts and Hunters appear) and, crucially, you get vehicles.

Even though I disagree with you on how good an opening it is I can see why you think that as yes, it's pretty much a corridor shooter.
I just thought it was a decent way to transition The Chief from the ship to the outdoor areas and introduce some of the crew.

The opening sequence in Battlefield 1 is incredible. It really sets the tone of being stuck in the middle of a bloodly battle during WW1.

Super Metroid. Everything from Ceres Station up to heading back to the surface after getting the morph ball and "waking up" the planet.

Masterful and dripping with atmosphere. And all that on the SNES.

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I really love the opening segment from Call of Duty Infinite Warfare.
It does a great job of setting up how much larger scale the stakes are compared to your usual CoD fare.

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Doom Spoon wrote:The opening sequence in Battlefield 1 is incredible. It really sets the tone of being stuck in the middle of a bloodly battle during WW1.

Is this the one where you're dying over and over, playing different soldiers? I thought the intention was good, but the whole thing was an utter chore to play. Maybe that was the point, but it was more frustrating than affecting for me. I'd argue that gimmick would have made a better finale than opening.

Lewis makes a good point about BioShock, but probably the one that's stuck with me over the years is the Tauren training area in WoW. I don't think it did anything revolutionary but it was a fantastic introduction to this massive beast of a game, and the expansion from village, to field, to city to region was perfect.

Best opening area/level to a game

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