After doing a “best endings of all time” list last week, I, of course, immediately started thinking about what a “best intros of all time” list what would look like. So here we are.
I believe that having a good introduction is very important for any piece of media. If you have a boring opening, you essentially dig yourself a hole, and you have to climb out of it. Plenty of games and other pieces of media overcome bad intros, but I think almost all of my best games of all time had a great opening. More often than not, games with great intros don’t stop delivering. It’s nice when you don’t have to wait and hope that something will click with you, and it has you all in from moment one.
I think the best intros hook you into the plot or characters immediately, and also ideally introduce you to gameplay mechanics without it feeling like a long tutorial. It’s a very tough mix to pull off. I think a great gaming intro is infinitely harder to pull off than an intro in any other art form. That means that when a video game pulls off a special intro, it becomes unforgettable.
Here are the ten best intros I have ever experienced. It’s really difficult to define an introduction. One of these is literally a one minute start screen cutscene. A few of these are close to an hour, but I just used my best judgment. Enjoy!
You can see my top 10 video game conclusions of all time here.
10. Chrono Trigger
I think in a vacuum, I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying this is a silly choice. But I’m telling you, if you were around when this actually came out, there was something so magical about this intro. There’s a reason why Chained Echoes clearly pays homage to it several decades later.
Most JRPGs started in almost the exact same way in the 16-bit era. You’d be in your idyllic hometown, and then something bad would happen (in many cases, the town would be attacked), and this would set off your adventure.
These intros could be mind numbingly boring after you had experienced enough of them. But Chrono Trigger managed to make it fun. After being woken up by your mom, you end up going to a festival in town. This allows you to play some minigames, and it smartly introduces you to the battle system quickly as well. From there, you end up in a time machine and get transported to the past, and things really get interesting from there. While there is some magic in those peaceful JRPG intros, this is one of the few that actually locked me in right off the bat by doing something different.
It also doesn’t hurt that the graphics and especially the music were next level, especially for this era. I can’t imagine a better start to Crono’s journey.
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
This is probably the weirdest one on the list, as it isn’t gameplay related. Hell, it’s not even an actual in game cutscene.
Simply, when you boot up Ocarina of Time, before you even see a start screen, a video plays of Link riding a horse in a giant open field with the moon in the background. From there, the intro theme hits, and Link continues to ride around.
At the time, a world like the one in Ocarina of Time was one of the most amazing things ever created. Somehow, this quick one minute video perfectly captured the serene and epic nature of Zelda games. It sets up the exact mood that this game would evoke within seconds. The awesome song really helps too.
Whenever I see this on to this day, I can’t help but sit back and watch it once or twice. I think it’s probably the greatest start screen of all time.
8. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
There are a lot of potential candidates from the Metal Gear Solid series. Kojima generally knew how to kick these games off (though I was an MGS5 intro hater). But nothing ever quite hit like 2 for me.
The game starts with an excellent cinematic cutscene, with tons of exciting setup, and then transitions to Snake arriving onto a tanker on a stormy night, as Ocelot also lingers. Seeing the iconic Snake with new and fancier PS2 fidelity was amazing. Also, that tanker mission is one of my favorite bits of Metal Gear Solid gameplay ever, which plays into this ranking.
7. Halo: Combat Evolved
This might be the intro that I have experienced the most in my life. I have played this campaign countless times between all of the different difficulties, co-op with friends, and playing the remastered version years later.
I just feel like this intro accomplishes a lot in not much time. It very quickly introduces the biggest characters in the game. There are several awesome one liners from both Sgt. Johnson and Master Chief, and then it’s a fast-paced introduction to the combat before an escape to the Halo. Landing on Halo and looking around its world for the first time was also an awe inspiring moment. And obviously, the core gameplay was excellent right from moment one. This one has it all.
6. Persona 5
In my view, the biggest reason why Persona 5 surpasses every other Persona game by a lot is its tremendous level design. The game shows off how hard it’s going to go from its first minutes, as it takes you to its casino level, which you then won’t see for quite a long time after. From there, you get an awesome cutscene in which our hero is caught. This then transitions into an interrogation, where the game also sets up a lot of interesting mysteries that will slowly be revealed throughout the game.
The mix of glitz, intrigue, and the fact that the rest of the game is mostly a flashback from this point makes things really exciting. You spend the whole game wondering how you will get to that point. The intro sets up the plot for success in so many ways, and it’s just a lot of fun.
5. God of War (2018)
We enter God of War with preconceived notions of who Kratos is after spending many hours with him in past games. God of War quickly shatters those expectations. We witness Kratos mourning (in his own way), and we see him as a father. It’s jarring and also emotional.
And then, right as we are settling in with this new version of Kratos, a stranger shows up, and one of the most epic boss fights you could ask for ensues, with one insane set piece moment after another.
I’m counting a long stretch here as an intro, but this entire sequence managed to constantly surprise me from a storytelling perspective, and it brought some badass gameplay as well. I knew I was going to be all in on this game from the second that boss fight was over, and sure enough, I think it’s an all-timer.
4. Nier Automata
This is the only game on this list that I’ve never beaten. I’ve attempted Automata twice, and I always burn out on it by the 15 hour mark. But god damn, that first hour (really, the first five hours) are just incredible.
Nier Automata kicks off with a bang and then some. The game throws you into the fire immediately, with one crazy sequence after another. You get some more “standard” gameplay, tons of shmup combat, constant perspective shifts, and a boss fight, all in a row. It is balls to the wall in the best possible way. It was probably almost impossible to do so, but I really wish the game could have kept this pace up.
Even though I’ve abandoned it twice, this intro is so good that I think I will end up giving it a third shot one day. It deserves that much.
3. Bioshock
Bioshock isn’t the first game to slowly unveil its world without a single cutscene. Half Life is probably the original game that did this effectively, as the game slowly shows off Black Mesa before shit hits the fan. But to this day, I’d still say no one has done this style of opening better than Bioshock. After a plane crash, you enter a nearby lighthouse and are quickly greeted with a banner inside that says, “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.”
Then, you slowly make the descent into Rapture. I’ll never forget when I finally saw all of the underwater buildings for the first time. The reveal was so well done. Not long after, you quickly see how this society has been decimated, and that helps kick off more plot events. This is considered the best intro of all time by many, and I certainly can’t fault anyone for feeling that way.
2. The Last of Us
I talk a lot about fatherhood on this blog, but well before I even had an inkling that I might be one, The Last of Us intro still cut me to my core. We’ve all seen plenty of zombie media where devastating things happen in the opening act, but the way The Last of Us does it is truly next level.
They do such a good job of quickly developing Sarah as a character. Then, after a very tense escape, you finally feel like the characters are safe for a split second before everything gets shattered. Having a human kill off Sarah instead of a zombie is another great touch that makes it both surprising and even more devastating. It really set the tone that this was going to be a different kind of zombie story.
Like many, I watched The Last of Us HBO show, and seeing my wife experience this moment for the first time brought me right back to where I was in 2013. This is one that I will never forget.
1. Final Fantasy 7
While I have one of the standard JRPG openings on this list, I once again can’t emphasize enough how dull most JRPG openings were in the 16-bit era (and frankly, plenty of developers still do these types of openings). As I said before, there can be magic there, but it’s amazing how little creativity many JRPG developers had with their openings for a long time. Final Fantasy had at times tried to buck this a little bit, but still hadn’t really wowed me with anything, outside of some elements of Final Fantasy 6.
Enter Final Fantasy 7. This intro impressed me like nothing else before. The game kicks off with a literal bang, as you are on a mission to blow up a reactor in Midgar. It’s fast paced and has lots of great moments, from Barret in particular. The music is awesome. There’s also some mystery as you wonder what exactly is going on, and then of course, the highlight is when a timer hits your screen and you have to get out of the reactor before it blows up. No JRPG was using a mechanic like this back then. I think the first time I saw that timer I was in complete disbelief. This is just non-stop awesomeness.
I had to put the original Final Fantasy 7 here, as that was the one that truly blew me away, but being able to replay this in Final Fantasy 7 Remake was a literal dream come true. Every aspect of it felt just as good as the first time. This intro is part of why I’ve played the Midgar sequence of Final Fantasy 7 like five times, despite only ever beating the game once. This one will be a hard one to ever top for me, because we so rarely had openings this good back then. It will always live rent free inside of my head.
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