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What game has the longest intro cutscene?

Evil Monkey DTT said:
God I really want to say xenosaga but they give you a tutorial before years of cutscenes begin.
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I remember the cutscene length for Episode 1 being talked about a lot when it was about to come out, but I honestly don't remember much about the intro.

The Okami one did stick out to me as being too long. The language doesn't help with that, it sorta drones on and makes it hard to focus. It would be easier to get through if it was just text and background music
 
I was gonna say Okami. I'm not too bothered by it, but I can see why it'd give people a bad first impression and they could have definitely given an abridged version of legend of Orochi considering NPCs end up giving you the bulk of the story along the way anyway.

Griss said:
I'll never forgive Okami for that opening. A huge reason I disliked a game that should have been made for a Zelda fan like me.
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It may have like 15 minutes of cutscenes before you gain control, but you still get into the meat of the game faster than the last two 3D Zeldas.
 
First one that comes to my mind is Primal, a PS2 game made by the same people behind the MediEvil series. The opening cutscene is about 15 minutes long.
 
I can't check now, but I'd say the intro to xenosaga is probably around 10 min before you enter the simulation. I don't consider this to be long for an rpg, but others might disagree?

However, this is followed by a lengthy woglinde portion before the hilbert effect is used. Which is probably why it starts with the simulation, rather than wandering the ship.
 
this thread made me realize that I really like long intros, world setups that bring me into the world before even doing anything. Never really thought of it before, guess I treated it as a given
 
I was gonna say Sonic 06. Not only is it long, but you have to do the first level without saving. If you die during that level, you have to go through the entire opening again.
 
The Shining Force games on Genesis had ridiculously long opening cutscenes. If I am remembering correctly, one of them has an 18 minute intro before you even press Start!
 
Salsa said:
yeah cause 3D Zelda games get into the meat of it right away
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It's been whats kept me away from replaying Twilight Princess again. The opening "tutorial section" with wolf link is just extremely long and painful. Not to mention the random hour or more of irrelevant story and mini games before that :\
 
Xenosaga..... It's a fricken movie

Edit: just checked..... It's 13 minutes till you even get to the first dialogue box/tutorial lol
 
I recall Valkyrie Profile having a long intro, though come to think of it there were technically a couple places in the opening where they have you move your character like 4 feet to trigger a scene so I guess that would disqualify it.
 
I think I once clocked Alundra at being 48 minutes before you can actively start playing.
 
Can you ignore Okamis intro and come back half hour later and start playing or is there important stuff in the intro that you need to pay attention to? I like a good cut scene, but there are the odd ones that well overstay their welcome.
 
Not the absolute longest, but I-War had 15 minutes long intro. It took the whole first CD :D After watching it you put CD 2 for gameplay and from that moment you never had to use CD1 again :D
 
I was genuinely curious so I looked up some let's plays to see how long some game cutscene intros are.

Persona 4 - 20m 10s
Okami - 17m 30s
Super Paper Mario - 17m 15s
MGS3 - 16m 15s
Xenosaga I - 13m 15s
MGS2 - 11m 55s
Kingdom Hearts 2 - 11m 00s
MGS4 - 07m 05s

I'm sure there's longer games, most of these, especially Okami, are shorter than I thought they were.

I don't know if I want to count P4 though, like someone said reading dialogue is like half of that game, going by those rules 999 or VLR would have it easily. And lets not even mention visual novels.
 
The opening to Xenosaga (also Xenosaga II and III) was more than an hour if I remember correct. This was not about the opening cut scene, it was about how long it took before you could actually play the thing.
 
MGSV, the whole intro is one giant cutscene where you press forwards and nothing else. Goes on for about 30-40 mins until you get to a point where you can move snake freely, but only for a minute or two then you are back to an on rails section followed by another cutscene.

In short by the time you actually get to play the game for more than a minute you've been at it for more than an hour.



And of course Okami, what a terrible opening.
 
I remember yelling "START!!" at my tv while waiting for that guy to die at the beginning of Final Fantasy Type-0.
 
glaurung said:
The opening to Xenosaga (also Xenosaga II and III) was more than an hour if I remember correct. This was not about the opening cut scene, it was about how long it took before you could actually play the thing.
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I mean cutscene is literally in the title...
Also I didn't measure the cutscenes, I measured how long before the player gains control, in Xenosaga 1 you start the tutorial around 13 minutes in, if you want to argue whether a tutorial counts that's different.

E:can't read
 
Yakuza 5's intro is pretty long, if you roll the sequence with Nakajima into it which is basically a cutscene you're looking at about 30 minutes.
 
glaurung said:
The opening to Xenosaga (also Xenosaga II and III) was more than an hour if I remember correct. This was not about the opening cut scene, it was about how long it took before you could actually play the thing.
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The game drops you into a dungeon at the beginning. It's after that that you wander the Woglinde and watch various cutscenes before the Gnosis attack.
 
While not as long as others in this thread, the intro for Pocket Card Jockey (well in the demo at least, but I assume it's the same for the full game) is way too long for a game that really shouldn't need much story to begin with.
 
FarFromAnyGame said:
Not a cutscene but I think Assassin's Creed 3 has the longest intro! that shit takes 5+ hours to get to the core game.
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If we're expanding to intros, Kingdom Hearts 2, in a huge way. Still, it's not really in the spirit of the thread because it's very interactive, but it's very much prologue to the main story.
 
I actually love some story right off the bat.

Yesterday I watched the Zone of Enders HD collection opening. It's like five minutes of pure NGE magic.

I didn't end up playing the game, but I was impressed by the length of that intro sequence before you even pick a game.
 
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