Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid 2’s first mission aboard the tanker firmly establishes Solid Snake as the ongoing hero of the series, coaxing players into a sense of familiarity. But an hour into the game, things change. There’s a fast-forward of two years and Snake is presumed dead. The rest of the game is played through the lens of Raiden, a newer recruit who, though lacks the expertise and wit of Snake, demonstrates greater agility and a good amount of skill. The biggest gameplay difference between Raiden and Snake is the quick roll between cover that can be pulled off when controlling Raiden. Besides his agility in combat, he lacks the charismatic banter and iconic gravelly voice of Snake, resulting in many frustrated and disappointed players at the time of MGS2’s release. Imagine your favorite character getting sidelined for an entire game with little confidence in his return. In hindsight, we appreciate Raiden for his future, and badass, appearance in MGS Rising Revengeance but in 2001, there was no surefire guarantee Solid Snake would take the spotlight again.

Prey (2017)

Prey’s opening is a masterclass on how to build intrigue while completely immersing the player in the game world. Arkane’s Prey builds off of 2006’s Prey with a similar slice of life intro that gets upended and warped into a sci-fi nightmare, though the two titles aren’t connected. Morgan wakes up to get ready for work in a highrise apartment in what looks like a futuristic San Francisco. The game’s physics engine allows any object to be picked up and thrown, and there’s a slew of emails and notes to read around the apartment, providing some context and lore. Players can’t be blamed for spending some time admiring the highrise views and exploring the interactable elements. After a nice helicopter ride to Morgan’s job site, a horrific Typhon creature attacks one of the scientists and Morgan blacks out. What comes next flips the status quo completely on its head. Morgan wakes up more or less like nothing ever happened, to an alarm in the same apartment building as before, but things aren’t quite right. After some exploration, it’s revealed the entire building is just a simulation aboard a space station. Nothing was as it seemed and the remainder of the game is spent trying to survive onboard the isolated and dangerous Talos I station.

The Last of Us Part 1

The core of The Last of Us’ gameplay doesn’t emerge until an hour into the game. And it’s not due to clumsy tutorials wasting the player’s time. No, the first hour is spent setting up the world state that would characterize the award-winning series. You don’t start the game busting zombies’ heads open as a hardened badass, but instead wake up in the shoes of Joel’s daughter, Sarah. The game lets the player explore Joel’s house, which contains a fair amount of mementos and bits of backstory into who these characters were before the zombie outbreak. An evacuation and car crash later and we’re playing as Joel, carrying Sarah in a desperate attempt to outrun the infected hordes. After one of the more tragic scenes in gaming, there’s a pretty substantial time skip as we finally control the hardened Joel that encapsulates the rest of the game. It’s the perfect intro to a zombie game and it didn’t even need to give the player a weapon to feel the tension and anxiety of the setting.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar Games typically lets players loose in their game world pretty early on. That’s not at all the case with Red Dead Redemption 2. It takes around an hour or so for the on-rails story missions to ease up. Players who just want to live out their wild west fantasies in an immersive open world have to wait it out and experience the story set-up first. Of course, that isn’t to say the opening hours aren’t action-packed or interesting in their own right. The game introduces the over-the-shoulder shooting mechanics and melee combat with some battles against a rival gang. But it’s true that a majority of the game’s opening hours involve slowly riding horseback along some snowy mountains listening to character banter. RDR2 has even more open-world freedom than the first game, but it takes a bit longer to reach that point this time around.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Speaking of slow burns, there’s perhaps no better example than 2006’s The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The game starts out with a Harvest Moon-esque sequence of Link talking to villagers and doing a series of chores on the farm. Ordon is a peaceful village and all is idyllic during these moments. Sure, you get a slingshot tutorial, but there’s pretty much no need for combat when things are this peaceful. Obviously, Link gets thrust onto the hero’s journey eventually, but it takes a good bit of time to reach. Twilight Princess is one of the darkest games in the series, featuring some horror elements with the villain, Zant, and the eerie ghosts within the Twilight realm. It’s also one of the more fast-paced and action-packed games in the series, but the idyllic opener wouldn’t give that impression. The greatness of Twilight Princess’s opening is just how effective it sets up the stakes at play. It establishes that a peaceful and idyllic village like Ordon can be erased at the hands of evil. In a way, Ordon fulfills a similar role as The Shire from Lord of the Rings.

Death Stranding

While Death Stranding’s opening does a good job giving players a taste of what the game’s about, nothing could prepare people for the craziness that occurs in the middle and end of the game. The game begins like a vague dream, with tons of bizarre terms and lore that still make our head spin today. The exposition-heavy prologue features roughly 40 minutes of cinematics and 20 minutes of gameplay. The precious few moments that you are given some control, you’re tasked with picking up some dropped cargo and transporting it through some mountainous terrain in the rain before getting sidelined by the threat of some BDs. It’s a nice tutorial of what you’ll be doing in the core game but with none of the open-ended freedom. It would be another hour or so until the game’s core features open up. Much of Death Stranding’s charm is in its bizarrely beautiful open-world, touting varied terrain to overcome and breathtaking vistas to admire. Players don’t truly get to experience the core ‘strand-like’ gameplay until the ability to build infrastructure such as bridges and walkways for other real-life players becomes available later. And while there’s plenty of protracted cinematics throughout the rest of the game, there’s usually large swaths of open-ended delivery gameplay to offset it, unlike the exposition-heavy opening.

Kingdom Hearts 2

Kingdom Hearts 2 really threw fans for a loop with the opening’s focus on Roxas rather than Sora. What’s more, the location of this game’s intro wasn’t explored in past games, making the whole sequence feel like some Twilight Zone episode. Roxas’ summer vacation with his friends in Twilight Town functioned more or less as a gameplay tutorial as well, though the magic system and gummi ship stuff doesn’t come into play until Sora finally enters the picture. Millions of players asked the same questions during KH2’s opening hours: “Where is Sora, Donald, and Goofy? And who the heck is Roxas?” Part of the brilliance of KH2 is how those questions get explored throughout the course of the game.

The Stanley Parable

There’s not many games that sell based on intrigue alone, but The Stanley Parable is one of them. It’s very much an experiment on what it means to be a game. As soon as players boot it up from the start menu, a charming narrator describes a typical day at the office for Stanley. This is where player agency comes into question. Should I continue following the narrator’s ques, or do I completely avert expectations? And so, one of thousands of different routes begins. The first hour of The Stanley Parable is much different from the rest of the game because of how branching the choices are. Not to mention how much more of the narrator’s own personality gets exposed the more the player disobeys.

Control

Control is another game on this list that subverts expectations with its bizarre setting and story. The entire game takes place within a fluidly changing skyscraper called ‘The Oldest House’. The interior of this building is labyrinthine, boasting an ever shifting space that is much larger than its exterior would suggest. The first hour of the game is strange enough, with its introduction of the The Oldest House and some of the abilities you’ll be engaging with. But the game doesn’t reveal its true structure until later on after you gain more supernatural abilities and unravel more of the bizarre story.

Firewatch

Firewatch is one of the more fascinating narrative games I’ve played. It follows the daily life of a fire lookout worker over the course of a month. You’d think this would get boring, but it only gets more interesting as the days progress. This is because Firewatch is a slowly unraveling mystery with little bread crumbs hinting that something isn’t quite right. From a gameplay perspective, things don’t really progress too much past the first hour. You’re walking around and doing basic tasks like using a flashlight and walkie-talkie to communicate with your distant partner Delilah from beginning to end. But where the game ends is such a change from where it began that it warrants a place on this list.

Players will be able to claim two free games next week, with Arkane Studios’ sci-fi immersive sim Prey and Thunder Lotus Games’ action-adventure title Jotun: Valhalla Edition going free on the platform.

In Prey, players awaken aboard Talos I, a space station orbiting the moon in the year 2035. A key subject of an experiment, players need to maneuver and survive the station, which is overrun by an alien species called the Typhon, all the while finding a way to escape Talos 1.

Jotun: Valhalla Edition is a hand-drawn action-adventure game set in Norse Mythology, where players control Thora, a Viking who died a dishonorable death and must prove their worth to the gods by slaying five Jotun elementals. The game features nine vast levels filled with Viking mythology and authentic Icelandic voice-overs.

Both games will be free for anyone with an Epic Games Store account starting May 12, and will be available to claim until May 19.

Following the live event’s cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bethesda Softworks confirmed that QuakeCon 2020 would be a digital-only event. A schedule for the same has since been released with the event running from August 7th to 9th. It will air live on Twitch.

The schedule includes titles like Fallout 76, DOOM Eternal, Prey (2017), The Elder Scrolls Online, Dishonored and The Evil Within 2. Oddly enough, there’s nothing on Bethesda’s upcoming releases like Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo. The latter isn’t that surprising since it doesn’t have a release date but that still doesn’t explain the former’s absence. Maybe at the next State of Play for PS5, rumored to be happening next week?

Of course, the other elephant in the room is the complete lack of any “reveal” or update on The Elder Scrolls 6 or Starfield. There might be some new details during the “Welcome to QuakeCon at Home with Pete Hines” segment. But don’t count on any gameplay, much less a release date.

Check out the full schedule below for more details.

August 7

• 12:00 p.m. – Welcome to QuakeCon at Home with Pete Hines
• 1:00 p.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online Voice-Over Chat – Featuring Jennifer Hale and Robbie Daymond
• 2:00 p.m. – Fallout 76 – A Colossal Problem Boss Event
• 3:30 P.m. – DOOM Eternal – Ultra Nightmare with Achievement Hunter
• 5:00 p.m. – Representation in Video Games
• 6:00 p.m. – Prey Tell: An interview with Actress Janina Gavankar and Lead Producer Susan Kath
• 7:30 p.m. – DOOM Eternal Panel with Hugo Martin and Marty Stratton
• 10:00 p.m. – Alienware Hour with Rxysurfchic | Final Achievements in DOOM Eternal

August 8

• 12:00 a.m. – Fallout 76 – C.A.M.P. Competition and Showcase
• 12:30 a.m. – Fallout 76 – Australia and New Zealand Community Session with Tyr, MoonlitCharlie, and Captainoob
• 2:00 a.m. – Fallout – Cooking Show with Bethesda Australia and New Zealand
• 3:00 a.m. – Fallout Cosplay – Interview with Snovcreations
• 4:00 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online Charity Stream for Unicef
• 5:00 a.m. – Prey: Mooncrash – You Decide
• 6:30 a.m. – The Secrets of DOOM Eternal
• 8:00 a.m. – Arkane 20: Dishonored with Elly the Geek and Arkane Studios
• 9:00 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online – Conquering Icereach
• 10:00 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Challenges – Team Stormcloaks vs. The Imperials
• 11:00 a.m. – Fallout 76 – Creative C.A.M.P. Building
• 12:30 p.m. – DOOM Eternal Battlemode | Friday Night Fights | Invitational Finals
• 3:00 p.m. – CHAD: A Fallout 76 Story Podcast – QuakeCon at Home Edition
• 5:00 p.m. – The Best The Elder Scrolls Online Roleplay on Twitch
• 6:00 p.m. – A Dishonored Tabletop RPG Adventure featuring Arkane Studios’ Harvey Smith
• 8:00 p.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online Gearless and Fearless Dungeon Run featuring Nicole Savoy
• 10:00 p.m. – DOOM Eternal with 3 Chubby Bastards
• 11:00 p.m. The Elder Scrolls Online Stream with Top UFC Middleweight Rob Whittaker and Pete Hines

August 9

• 12:00 a.m. – Bethesda Cosplay – Competition Showcase
• 12:30 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online – Australia Community Session with Tamriel Downunder
• 2:00 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls – Cooking Show with Bethesda Australia and New Zealand
• 3:00 a.m. – DOOM Eternal – Nightmare Blindfold Challenge with TheSpudHunter
• 4:00 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online – My World with Aeyvi
• 5:00 a.m. – Fallout 76 Sightseeing
• 6:00 a.m. – Fallout 4 – ItsJabo’s Speedrun
• 8:00 a.m. – Fallout 76 – Global Community Team Free Play:
• 9:30 a.m. – Speedrunning DOOM Eternal on Ultra Nightmare
• 11:00 a.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online – PvP Masterclass with RubenSky
• 12:00 p.m. – DOOM II | FFA Finals | Take the Crown
• 1:00 p.m. – A Dishonored Tabletop RPG Adventure (Continued)
• 5:00 p.m. – Quake World Championship – Grand Finals
• 7:00 p.m. – The Elder Scrolls Online – Live Art Creation and Chat
• 8:00 p.m. – Prey: Mooncrash with Lawrence Sonntag and Ricardo Bare
• 9:00 p.m. – The Evil Within with Poiised and TeeCup181
• 10:00 p.m. – The Evil Within 2 with John Johanas and Jonny Roses

NieR Automata – The [E]nd of YoRHa

By the time you get to Ending E, you’ve already seen plenty of messed up stuff, from the revelation of mankind’s fate to suicidal robots and the death of beloved characters. What more could the game throw at you? How about a chance to recover what was lost? How about…a fight against the credits, the game’s creators themselves? But wait, what if other players could join in and help? You could also sacrifice your own data to potentially help them. All of this just to bring back 2B, 9S and A2 to probably suffer the cycle again in the hope of things changing.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

For all the credit that Grand Theft Auto games get, it’s easy to forget some of the major bugs in early titles like Vice City. In launch copies, there was a nasty bug during the Ice Cream Factory mission. If you tried to save during the mission, the save data would become corrupted, requiring you to start from the game’s beginning. This was fixed for subsequent copies of the game but that feeling of losing progress, any kind of progress, was still a bummer.

Half-Life – Surface Tension

Surface Tension is many things. It’s perhaps the biggest level in Half-Life and a culmination of Gordon Freeman’s escape from Black Mesa. But the brilliance of its design is perhaps underscored by how chaotically controlled everything is. Marines are fighting aliens as helicopters, tanks and turrets litter the area. Freeman must battle all of this, surviving ambushes, navigating across cliffs and much more. It’s tense, exciting and highlights the stellar AI.