Happy Monday, everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread! I’m Wolfman Jew, taking over for Lovely Bones this week.
Yesterday, I restarted Fallout 3 for the first time in, well, over a decade. Of course it’s not coincidental why; my family’s watching the new Fallout TV show, and it seemed like a good idea to introduce them to the most “standard” entry of the two I own. You know, it’s about the person leaving the Vault to find a missing father and everything.
Anyhoo, Fallout 3 is memorable for having a very long, dramatic intro in which you’re born and grow up inside this giant, underground city before “circumstances” force you to leave. That’s the prototypical Fallout story. You start in Fifties-tinged safety and control before seeing the anarchic upside world. But, Fallout 3‘s is memorable partially for how long and drawn out it is. You put points into your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. by reading a baby’s picture book, you gain extra stats by taking a career test, and you learn the dialogue system at a very long birthday party. It’s in many ways not a bad system; it’s very dramatic and gives you the idea of how confining life is in these spaces. But it’s also very long, and, well, it demands that you interact with a fairly large cast that you basically never see again. I think. I remember there being a quest where you have to interact with Vault 101 again, but I can’t remember it.
Anyway, this intro is very long, somewhat cinematic, and does railroad you pretty heavily. I’m mixed on it, especially when I just want to go out in the world and listen to Galaxy News Radio. But it also made me think about long openings in games. As a student of Nintendo design I’m strongly in favor of short openings that put you in the action immediately. But ones more “sumptuous” or dramatic as this can be satisfying and exciting and emotionally stirring, when done right. So, my prompt for today is what do you think of longer openings in games, which are your favorites, which are your least favorites, and are there ways you think they could be improved or tropes they should adhere to?
And while you’re thinking of that, what did you play this weekend?