The Game That Needs No Introduction
This post is inspired by some thoughts I had in response to Charley’s post about cut-scenes and ‘non-game’ moments. It occured to me that I could not think of one videogame that had no introduction of any kind. In other words, no starting tutorial or beginning cinematic, not even a start screen. Can anyone think of a video game that begins in media res? A game that you install, or load into the disc drive, or shove in the cart, and it just starts without any warning whatsoever?
Hmmm…Right now the closest that I can think of is the old LucasArts adventure game “Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine,” which blended its opening titles and animations with easy point-and-click rooms for players to get the jist of controling Indy. There were no actual tutorials or anything, only situations simple enough for almost anybody to learn the interface of the game. Between transitions there were the credits, etc., but I’m sure there are better examples out there.
Wait– no, it’s “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.” It’s still not a good example, though.
i like the idea of a video game where part of the game is figuring out what the game even is. and you’d begin such a game by doing exactly what charles described: you pop the disc into the system and boom: you’re a person in a world and that’s all you know. I’d personally go with the Quantum Leap theme for such a game if could design it.
I’m still trying to think of some better examples, though I can’t help but question if this idea– in medias res gameplay– is very practical when you get down to the technicalities. Most games as far back as the 16-bit era, and a few during the 8-bit generation, needed a screen for players to choose which save-file to play from, which is still an issue today. If you put a scene of automatic gameplay right at the beginning, without that kind of screen, how will somebody who’s halfway through the game already feel? Will they be able to skip through it, or have to play it all over again?
Don’t get me wrong– if I had the chance to design a real game right now, and not just glitchy pixels on a screen, this is definitely an idea I’d want to experiment with. I’m not entirely sure how well it would work, though, if for no other reason than there aren’t very many examples to think of that establish a precedent for it.
I don’t think that it would be too hard to have a game that would know whether or not you were playing it for the first time. You would only get the start screen when you turn the game on a second time, where you could choose to continue your game or start over.
Maybe, and this is a really radical thought, games are too long? Why do we even need a save feature? One of my fondest video game memories is of playing through Resident Evil, start to finish, without saving or dying. That, though, took me five or six hours. Can’t really do that more than once.
That’s an idea that might work for episodic games– ones where sequels might come out months apart or so. They’d have to be cheaper, though. Are people willing to pay 40 bucks for a six hour experience?
I think the first Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (i think it might even be a text adventure, not sure) starts off with a black screen and you have to type “open eyes” to start the game. I always thought that was funny.
Yeah, it was a text game. Written by Douglas Adams himself, I believe.
I love that game. Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky. Brilliant. You do start pretty much with zero intro. You don’t start with “open eyes”, however.
Play for yourself.
One time I played half of Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance, one of those beautiful games in which you can actually skip all the cut scenes even if you’ve never seen it at all.
It was a diablo game, basically, but multiplayer on a console.
but there was this big thrill as our graphical context for fighting kept changing from chapter to chapter – to sort of infer the story from the pieces we were placed in.
I haven’t thought of a game that played on that experience yet but I’m racking my brain.
Dear Bob – Sam n Max comes out for about 10 – 20 bucks an episode.
Strangely, althoguh its a 5 hour game, I’m still playing the first one, from two months ago or three.