Intro animations; the good, the bad, the ugly.
 

I've noticed lately, that a lot of new games don't really have intro animations of any kind, and the few that do have crappy ones. This has gotten me thinking about intros in general. A good one can set the tone for an entire game and make one want to play it that much more. Take Chrono Cross for instance; admitably it wasn't the best of games, but man that intro alone could make playing it fun. The music, the animation, the barest of hints; I loved it. That brief flash of Lucca's picture really made fans of Chrono Trigger want to get into the game and find out what the hell happened.

So post your thoughts on good and bad animations. How did they affect the game for you? Is it good or bad that fewer and fewer games have them now?

One of the best has to be FFVI's intro...Those three hulking magitech armors walking toward the city with that music playing and the credits scrolling...It was something else.

One thing I really love about FFVI as opposed to many other FF games, or even other RPGs, is the way it stuck with the same kind of mood for the entire game. The setting was always dreary. Narshe and Vector were my favourite towns specifically because they were so dark and dank. The world just kept going from bad to worse, straight to pot. You were almost always in some form of wasteland or another.

That was one thing that really disappointed me in VII. I really think the majority of game should have taken place in a larger version of Midgar. That seemed to be the kind of setting they were going for in the beginning, but then you went out onto the world map and everything was bright and happy-like, even the music. Even when meteor was coming, it just didn't seem that unpleasant. They could have done the entire game without a world map, and just had a couple of places outside the big city. It would have made Aerith's place, and Red XIII's home seem more signifigant. It was just hard to believe that things weren't really all that well in the world, because they seemed like it.

The best ever Intro was in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. that was amazing! I still get shivers.

the prize for best intro for it's time: Ninja Gaiden 2 for the NES. that was fugging amazing for the time. lightning, dialogue, extreme close-ups, all of them incredible.

I like the intro from Armored Core 2 and I agree on the intro of Red Alert 2. With AC 2 I had to really think who the guy is in the AC, after I got the info on who Leos Klein was I got to thinking. Later I realized it was Leos in the intro.

I think Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver has a really good intro, mainly due to the music. It just suits the game perfectly. And the dialogue. The main reason I play Legacy of Kain games is for the dialogue actually. Simon Templeman and Michael Bell kick bum.

It's all about the Einhänder's opening animation. "There was a time, in the era of Great Chaos. When the Moon and the Earth were at war with each other." That line alone catches the player, then you see the Einhänder start shootin' the crap out of some weaklings and dive away from huge ass beams.

Then there's Gungrave's opening, where the music alone does the job of catching the player. But, for added effect, they throw in some snips from the game's cutscenes, and a couple of other scene made just for the intro, all in a Cowboy Bebop style.

Legend of Legaia's opening was pretty sweet, too. Shows the entire cast of heroes getting their Ra-Seru, then beating the crap out of monsters, and then bad-ass Songi shows up and laughs in their face but they kick the crap out of him.

Chrono Trigger remake's opening scene gives you a good feel of the game, and Chrono Cross' opening does, too.

And Soul Calibur II's opening with all the characters, giving some background to them with simple scenes.

And KoF always gives you a good idea of what to expect this year.

Now, for a crappy opening, I would have to go with MvC and CvS openings. Just...showing the lined up of characters not really doing anything? Weak.

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What do you mean not many recent games have opening scenes!?

Fallout 2 had a great opening animation. and i have to agree, i cant really think of any games in recent times that have had really good openings. Oh! except for BF: 1942, but i think i just liked the music in that more than the actual animation.

I actually prefer the original Chrono Trigger opening to the new one. I love the animation in the new one, but the old one just flows really nicely. They did a really good job with what they had on that one. The new one just doesn't excite me as much. It does however have an awesome picture of Magus, which automatically brings it up a few notches, as does the fact that it is animated by Toriyama.

There was this one game, the animation rocked it started out with war, and then some dude said, "Someone set up us the bomb"........Just joking, I think that the Legacy of Kain would have been better as a movie series than a game series. In relation to the amount of gameplay, there was a helluva lot of cut-scenes. It just seems like a waste of disk space to put the player into such an incredible movie. Just have a constant cut-scene and it would seem much more real, or something. And the ending of Soul Reaver II can cause some serious brain damage if you think about it for too long.