LOST ODYSSEY! Amazing way to introduce the epic war protagonist, Kaim
this is such a jarring intro. apart from its tangential relationship to kaim's backstory, it really has no relevance to the game whatsoever. what happens here appears to be a pretty big deal, particularly in relation to how boring the rest of the game is, yet all this stuff happens and there is seemingly no mention of it again in the game, or any after-effects shown, save for a few whining widows wondering aloud when their husbands were coming back. it happens in the most ludicrous way possible, with kaim appearing more like ultra bruce lee than the disinterested, brooding grandpa that would spend the rest of the game either crying or slowly trotting around the gameworld. i can imagine a lot of people saw this and went into the game expecting stuff like this to happen regularly, which isn't the case at any point through the remainder of the game. it didn't even happen in the dream sequences, which were basically 1,000 years of kaim slowly sipping liquor in bars around the world thinking about all the ways that war sucks. this intro is really completely at odds with the fact that kaim is really a pacifist, but that was because sakaguchi pulled the same memory loss bullshit that he pulled with final fantasy 8, so i guess it can be internally justified even if it's pretty misleading and shallow.
the scene after it where he is just wandering the scorched wasteland, on the other hand, is pretty good and one of the best in the game(which isn't really saying much). i guess i can forgive it on the whole for being a way to catch people's attention and set up a pertinent scene afterward, but i think this ten minute chunk is generally a pretty poor introduction for what the game is actually about. props for being interesting, i guess, particularly in light of the fact that the rest of the slow game endeavors(and mostly fails) to be introspective. don't think it's a good intro for lost odyssey though, even if it is pretty fairly interesting otherwise. it felt like the intro for a completely different game.
in unrelated news, i was going to suggest half life 2 as one of the better intros, but it really falls in the same category as lost odyssey as being totally misleading. the intro to half life 2 is extremely well done, with some interesting and poignant moments, and then the game completely stops being about the experiences of that sort of society. i've rambled about this before on the forum, but in my mind this kinda cheapens their whole attempt to tell some pertinent story about an orwellian society. it shows they didn't really care about that premise outside of it just being the game's premise, and it becomes this backstory that they felt obligated to attach to the game to justify all the running around the player does. from the standpoint of story, you really experience the vast majority of the worthwhile story moments in the entire game in the first hour, and the game slides into being a pretty dumb(albeit well-designed) shooter the rest of the way. clever, though, because that minuscule chunk makes the game as a whole seem a lot more intelligent than it really is, even though they were completely uncommitted to work for it in the way something like deus ex did.
i would otherwise call half life 2's intro the best in the history of videogames, but this kinda deadens the effort. i'd probably have to go the conventional route and say final fantasy 7's intro is the best otherwise. i played it recently and, even though the game itself is pretty outdated, the intro does rock pretty hard and cuts out all the bullshit. ecoterrorism is pretty awesome anyway, and to just throw you into that without any sort of explanation is pretty effective. very accurately sets the tone for the rest of the game without being too wordy, impertinent, or even particularly flashy. it's extremely light on bullshit cutscenes too, which makes the opening section a lot more impressive.
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