Matrix Games Forums

I agree with Wade. An opening cinematic (at launch, at game start, at campaign start, whatever) is important to set the atmosphere. You must not forget that many of us are core players that don't care that much about details, however for the less core players or casual players its important to have some features to smooth your way into the game and help set the mood and right atmosphere.

Agreed. A good game should have a good and atmospheric into.

P.S.: Does Half Life actually has any intro? I remember only being thrown directly into game to conduct an experiment. No videos explaining what`s going on.

ORIGINAL: Okim
P.S.: Does Half Life actually has any intro? I remember only being thrown directly into game to conduct an experiment. No videos explaining what`s going on.

In Half Life (and 2) they were creative and clever. They used the game engine itself to create the intro. So the intro is an introduction to the environment with no need for interaction. After this intro you are set to go ..

The game is made by a small team on a tight budget.I do not see a great intro as a priority.

I understand what you are trying to say, but its just wrong / not true
The quality of an opening cinematic has no correlation to how well the game does, or how fond people are of it.
The Starcraft 2 beta has no opening cinematic, yet its hugely popular already (say what you want, i'm trying to stay true to YOUR concept, and it has no opening cinematic now )
Warhammer Online had an AMAZING intro, yet the game fell into the shadows (sad cuz i really liked it).
EVE Online had no intro what so ever, yet its still alive and growing.
Mass Effect 1 and 2 had no intro either (the ingame cinematic after creating a character isnt an introduction cinematic, its part of the gameplay), yet see how well that did.

When i look at an intro the first time i boot up a game, i honestly dont care. If its CGI, it serves as a few minutes of "meh, that was kinda cool" moments, and if its ingame it usually serves as a few minutes of "hm, why didnt they turn on anti-aliasing?" moments.
Then i always skip it, i dont care. Why would i want to repeat a mediocre introduction trailer, when i own and can play the actual game?
As for conveying the story, if a game focuses on conveying the majority of the story through an introduction movie, they are mistaken. Most people wont watch it, and that usually just means that the game has no story.
This can apply to Sword of The Stars + expansions, who pretty much only have a story in their intros, not in the actual gameplay.
Horrible horribly intros, yet those games did very well.

There is no correlation.

The game has an intro...[;)]

A small start-up takes potential investors out for a big expensive dinner. But, they will decide to invest based on the viability of the business plan - regardless of how impressed they are with the menu.

I think best intro ever was in Syndicate (not Syndicate Wars, the original one). A masterpiece and it jumped sometimes like a frog on good old 386DX but it was great - still have it.

In all honestly over past hmm some... years I only watched 4 or 5 intros more than once. In overwhelming majority of cases I renaming/deleting intro so it won't load again. Looking forward to DW as a game not mega-buck$ intro. [:)]

The intros on most AAA games referenced here probably cost more than the entire budget of DW. DW has an intro movie, but I also disagree that intro movies have any real correlation with game quality _for independent / small publisher games_ where the limited budget is better used in other areas.

For some reason one of the best intro movies I ever enjoyed was MoO3. I don't know why, it just made me uneasy! I also really enjoyed the back story for MoO3 which is still available through the Quicksilver website here:  http://moo3.quicksilver.com/game/background.html 
It's a shame I didn't enjoy the actual game much.

ORIGINAL: Justascratch

A small start-up takes potential investors out for a big expensive dinner. But, they will decide to invest based on the viability of the business plan - regardless of how impressed they are with the menu.

Well said.

ORIGINAL: drillerman

For some reason one of the best intro movies I ever enjoyed was MoO3. I don't know why, it just made me uneasy! I also really enjoyed the back story for MoO3 which is still available through the Quicksilver website here:  http://moo3.quicksilver.com/game/background.html 
It's a shame I didn't enjoy the actual game much.

Agreed. I enjoyed Master of Orion 3's intro and back story. THEY were well done.

MoO3 has big but bad backstory. I mean some race from previus parts was removed  and new look bad. really bad. And story. Bleh Was bad too.

It's pretty bad when the best part of a game is the intro. Like movies that didn't live up to the trailers.

I had a flight sim for the Amiga many years ago. The intro was fantastic. It really showed what the machine was capable of. The game itself...... I took a B-52 up to 300,000 feet.

I still think the Kill Zone 2 Intro is my favorite one.

But i don't think the Intro has anything to do with a games success.

I actually thought the backstory was very well written and thought out. I particularly enjoyed how the at the beginning the orions and antarans were one race but over a period of many thousands of years they grew into two races. One thing though, it is better to read the back story from the website rather than from the manual. The story in the manual is essentially the same but heavily edited.

As popular as the beautiful, race, portrait, art is showing to be with forum comments that might imply that an opening cinematic trailor for Distant Worlds would be popular in various forums, websites(like gametrailers.com), and YouTube.com view and comments...if the cinematic is well done also.

That seems like such a grand payoff for any time used on creating the cinematic.

Again, it might be simpler but still grand to do a good version of still pictures panned and zoomed with a narrative.
I stated this previously.
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Thankyou, Adamsolo. I just watched the YouTube, Sins of a Solar Empire intro. I will watch the sequals and Sword of the Stars and Homeworld intros also.
It's very good. It's not even a motion picture but instead the stylish form of still artwork pictures that are slowly zoomed in or out or panned sideways during a narative story and music. Maybe that is easier and faster to do and maybe some thing the developers of Distant Worlds can consider.
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I think that style of narative story with slowly zoomed and panned pictures was made popular by Ken Burns, the American director and producer and cinematographer of documentary films. Among his most notable productions are The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), and The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009).

I saw some parts of them. 'The War' is most notable to me.
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I was thinking, people watching game intro cinematics on YouTube and commenting on them there and other forums and linking them is a one of many great ways to promote a game. Of course, the game needs the Intro/opening cimematic.

*Points to the above member*

As you say with still pictures and simple motions or animations,  in other terms Homeworld Style,  even the game continued the story in the 3D game but it had its black and white pictures and a good narrator as it made it a nice and simple story.