From Skyrim to Mass Effect: 11 great games with a really tough start

The beginning of a game is particularly important. Then you decide whether you really devour the game or put it down immediately. In this photo series, we show you 11 examples of really great games that start out incredibly boring.

11 Great Games That Start Really Bad

Some games masterfully manage to convey their appeal within the first few minutes. Cleaning up your own ranks as Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, for example, is the perfect foretaste of the path to the dark side that you will face for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, not all games manage to present their full potential so impressively right from the start. On the contrary, many a fantastic game seems to put obstacles in its own way with a bumpy start and thus risks that some players may not hold out until the game reveals its true strengths.

With The Witcher, the Polish developer CD Project laid the foundation for one of the most influential game series of recent years. Measured by the prologue of the first part, this success is quite surprising. Before the role-playing game really picks up speed, you have to fight your way through an agonizingly slow tutorial in which you have to defend a fortress from attackers, carry out dialogues, get to know the alchemy and skill system and the diverse open world that comes from The Witcher made the popular cult role-playing game completely left out. After a good hour, Geralt’s adventure slowly picks up speed.

A huge game world, endless adventures, countless quests, unlimited freedom — The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim stands for all of this. In the prologue of the game you hardly notice anything. In the old series tradition, you start as a convict, but instead of being trapped in a prison, you are trapped in a linear script sequence. After an uneventful carriage ride and the beheading of a fellow prisoner, you create your character moments before your execution(!). The subsequent dragon attack and linear dungeon also has little to do with freedom.

Aside from the initially controversial ending of the third part, the Mass Effect trilogy has a deserved place in the hearts of so many gamers. And that although the journey through space can’t keep up with the high level of the second and third part right from the start. Who doesn’t remember the endlessly long Mako journeys on the most diverse planetary surfaces? Luckily, the time-consuming hard work was replaced in the sequel by the much more pleasant scanning of planets.

And another open-world game that tries to hide its strengths in the prologue as much as possible. Instead of an open game world, smartphone apps and threats, Watch Dogs 2 only offers you a non-optional, linear tutorial. This is followed by a cutscene, a city tour, another cutscene and finally the briefing of your fellow hackers before the adventure really begins. Why does it seem like all open world games start with linear tutorials instead of introducing players to the possibilities of the open world?

Not a bad word about the train scene that kicks off Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in a spectacular way. However, it is unclear why the action-adventure imposes a stealth level on the player as one of the first missions, which is so fundamentally different from the rest of the gameplay. A break in the game mechanics may not be wrong per se, but it is extremely badly placed at the beginning of a game.

In Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain you can listen to a doctor’s diagnosis for a full ten minutes while lying motionless in bed and unable to influence what is happening. When you finally get out of bed, you torment yourself through the corridors of a hospital at a miserably slow speed, because you cannot walk due to your state of health at the beginning of the game.

Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy is quite possibly one of the best Star Wars games of all time. Above all, the diverse power abilities inspire the players to this day. So it’s a shame that you first have to make your way to Luke’s Jedi Temple in a less spectacular way, where you’re at the mercy of the exposition cutscenes, then complete another Jedi tutorial and only then can you enjoy the game in all its glory.

Undertale has lost none of its fascination and uniqueness to this day. However, many players will have lost patience before the role-playing game really took off and the excellent texts really struck a chord. So you have to go through a tutorial again, solve various puzzles and marvel at the game’s peculiar style until the brilliance actually reveals itself. Did all the players stay tuned for that long?

Driver was one of the first games ever that could convince with an open 3D world. However, before you could explore them, you had to complete a “shopping list” full of requirements — within 60 seconds! A lap through the underground car park, testing the handbrake, driving a slalom, turning 360 degrees… If the time limit was exceeded, it started all over again. Anyone who finally mastered the unnecessary tutorial after an hour of frustration was finally allowed to start the actual game.

The story about the assassin Ezio is now without a doubt cult. However, before you could really make Renaissance Italy unsafe as an acrobatic assassin, you had to get to know Ezio’s entire family history. Visits to the mother, conversations with the sister, conflicts with snooty noblemen – you can only put on the legendary assassin hood after a full hour of playing time. Sure, the long prologue brings you closer to Ezio as a character, but getting into Assassin’s Creed 2 should have been a little quicker.

With its beautiful graphic style and creative gameplay ideas that go into Okami, it’s a pity that the game regularly throws you in the way at the beginning. As soon as you get into the flow of the game, the fun is interrupted by an uninterruptible cutscene. After that, the fun slowly picks up speed again, but don’t worry, the next red fun traffic light disguised as a cutscene is only a few moments away.