The Top-10 PC Games Opening Cinematic Sequences

From the early age of Pong, games have matured into a complete art-form. Story and cinematics are often as important as graphics and gameplay. Video games are the closest we have come so far to creating a holo-deck. You can be anyone and anything you want and you can dive head-first into this myriad of imaginary worlds. We may not realize it but gaming is a major component of what is known as the invisible literature, reproducing themes, memes and emotional states that constantly remodel and reshape our collective unconscious.

The cinematic Opening Sequences are there to start the story and make you want to follow it; to set the emotional framework and, carefully, lay hooks that will lead you to the surface. Some are Computer Generated Images (CGI) while others make use of real actors, making them short movies. These are the very best.  

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10. SYBERIA: The Wound-Up Funeral 

Syberia is a wonderful Adventure game. A young professional arrives in the French Alps looking for the heir to a toy factory. However, just like life, everything is complicated. This is only the beginning. 

The dark yet playful atmosphere is set early on. Who really is this girl arriving alone in the rain? Whose is this funeral and why are automata honoring the deceased? Not only is this opening sequence artistically impeccable but it is also effective in reeling you into the world of the game.

9. RIVEN: Through the Linking Book

Riven, another first person adventure, was produced in the wake of Myst’s huge success. Although technically a superior game in every aspect, it did not duplicate the success of its prequel, mostly because a number of Riven’s puzzles were too difficult for the average gamer (in all honesty, I had to consult a walkthrough guide to get past the rotating room!). 

This however, can take little away from the hypnotic opening sequence which absorbs you into this beautiful world of magic books, steampunk islands and damsels in distress.     

8. EMPEROR - BATTLE OF DUNE: 
The History of the Houses

The only thing better than an intro with Bene Geserit witches in it, is one where they use The Voice against each other.  Emperor: Battle of Dune is a masterpiece of a real-time strategy (RTS) game (Westwood’s swan song, just before it was absorbed and homogenized by EA) is set just after the end of the 1984 movie adaptation of the original novel. The sets and the costumes are very close to David Lynch’s vision whereas the acting follows on the footsteps left on the desert sands by the cast of the movie. 

This opening sequence makes the list because it does two things and it does them well: it recaps the history of the Houses (for those unfamiliar with the Dune universe) and it creates the anticipation of the coming conflict. The conflict you are about to get involved in. Because, no matter what, the Spice Must Flow! 

7. GRIM FANTANGO: Travel Agent to the Afterlife

Grim Fantango is an adventure game set in a 1920’s noir atmosphere, about the Land of the Dead (where little is actually different from the land of the living), can hardly avoid greatness. And this greatness is more than hinted in its subtle opening sequence. Manny Calavera is a travel agent to the souls, trying to make enough profit in order to move along himself. He may be down on his luck, exploited by his boss and ridiculed by his coworkers but nothing can make Manny loose his Humphrey Bogart cool. And the opening sequence is exactly that.     

6. CALL OF DUTY 4 – MODERN WARFARE: Driving to an Execution

CoD4-MW makes the list not because of the graphics or the artwork but because of the ingenious way it was directed. It plays out like an episode out of Homeland and it manages to both set the mood and jump start your adrenaline for the first-person shooter (FPS) that is about to explode on your screen. It can be accused of emotional manipulation but that is only to be expected of games. If an FPS manages to make you angry just before the shooting begins, so much the better! And it is the details, such the authentic interior of the late 80’s Mercedes SL you are transported in to the jailer’s sweat beading on his forehead, that convince you that you are a man about to die. 

5. SHOGUN - TOTAL WAR: The Art of War

Shogun: Total War is the game that started the THQ’s Total War series and for that alone, it is monumental. Nevertheless, the game’s opening sequence is included because it is one of the most artistic. By use of a Japanese-accented voice-over the gamer is both immersed into the world of medieval Japan and offered a number of gameplay tips that he or she will need shortly. From the traditional Japanese paintings and the koto music in the background to explaining the turned-based strategy (TBS) of a game structured on bushido, this opening sequence is a masterpiece on its own. 

4. MAX PAYNE 2: The Darkness Inside

Sequels always have the not so easy task of bringing up to speed people who missed on the previous installments. Max Payne 2 does this in NYC style. The sad story of Max Payne is outlined in a noir graphic novel that unfolds one frame at a time. The leather clad, back-combed NY detective may have gone through hell but his sufferings are far from over. Because revenge is a tiger; it is easier to ride her than slide off her. And there is always a bullet, patiently waiting in its nest, your number to be called up.   

3. STARCRAFT 2 – WINGS OF LIBERTY: 
The Price of Freedom

The sequel to StarCraft, one of the most popular RTS ever, was years and years in the making. Building on this anticipation (and actually making fun at it) this opening sequence of StarCraft 2: WoL only turns this built up tension into an unbearable desire to finally play the game. The CGI sequence is immaculately made and, even if it does not explain the mechanics of the game (most of us already know them anyway) it does set the foundations of the emotional build up that is about to unfold. “It’s about time” indeed!

2. FALLOUT 3: 
War. War Never Changes.

This one is beautiful and brilliant at the same time. It is sad and nostalgic of a futuristic world on the verge of extinction. It starts off Fallout 3 with the credits in a series of slides projected on a radiation-hardened screen. Then the Ink Spots sing the 1941 jazz hit “I don’t want to set the world on fire”, the voice coming from a still functioning tube radio in a burned out public bus. The camera pulls back to reveal the world after the nuclear holocaust. That is when the famous “War, war never changes…” monologue can be heard. And, then, in a small number of story interruptions, the gamer gets to make the choices required at the beginning of every role-playing game (RPG). Pure brilliance.

1. HALF LIFE: Black Mesa Inbound

Half Life 2 may be a better game (and one of the best games ever made), however, when I started this list there was not a single doubt in my mind on who would be at the No.1 spot. The opening sequence of the original Half Life, entering the Black Mesa research facility, is, by far, the greatest cinematic opening in any PC game.

It sets the mood and the tone of the game. It allows the gamer to try out the controls of moving around in the confined environment of the train car. Brief credits flash and fade out cinematically at the corners. You are passed by different levels, rooms and environments, all hints of what awaits you in the game about to begin. And yet you are still driven further, deeper into the research facility. You learn that your name is Gordon Freeman, you are a low level scientist. And what is the purpose of such a huge facility? Well, Dr Freeman, you are about to find out.

(NOTE: the game has been recently revived by the – unbelievable! - Black Mesa MOD which is free and can be installed on STEAM).   

Top-10 Cyberpunk Novels You Must Read Before The Corporate Dystopia Is Upon Us

Cyberpunk is the cross between the genres of Science Fiction and Hardboiled Noir. Since both of its parenting vectors have always been considered marginal to canonic literature, it enjoyed more freedom to point out societal shortcomings and attack instances of collective shortsightedness.  

It had been foreshadowed for some time (mainly by the giant of SciFi literature, Philip Dick) but did not find the confidence in its step until the mid 1980’s, after Bruce Bethke coined it as the title of a short story of his, published in 1983.

There is no set recipe for cyberpunk yet there seems to be a number of requirements to be met before a novel is to be considered to belong to the genre. The story has to be set in the not too distant future. This future world must be dystopic for the masses, while hedonistic for the ruling elite. Technology has advanced asymmetrically, its abilities far outweighing its safeguards, and the computer/brain barrier has been breached. Said technology has completely different uses in the street, where hacking is a required survival trait. Said ruling elite consists not of politicians but of interconnected corporations. The Tyrells, the IOIs, the Maas BioLabs, the Ono-Sendais. The zaibatsus and the keiretsus. More often than not, cyberpunk novels come with an underlying message or a warning. Envisioning dystopias approaching in the horizon often does.

Obviously, I could not include any pure Science Fiction or Space Opera novels (such as the Dune or the Void series). I only included the novels that have the street moves down pat. The ones that come fully equipped with the hard and the soft. The ones that bring you into the near future and, there, brick up the door back to reality for you. The ones that will cut through all the Black ICE holding each and every one of us into place.  Crack open the spine of any of these books and the sound they make is the sound of a world ending. Do so at your own risk.

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10. PHILIP K. DICK: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the novel that the movie Blade Runner is based upon. And by “based” I mean loosely. Do not expect to read the movie. Regardless the differences though, the basic concept remains intact: how fragile is humanity from loosing itself amongst technological simulacra. When these imitations approximate us in both form and function, what is the remainder of the human essence that will carry our uniqueness? And, at the end, does such uniqueness actually exist?

I felt I had to include this as I consider it the most clear cyberpunk precursor.

9. PIERRE OUELLETTE: The Deus Machine

Set only ten years into the future (The Deus Machine was written in 1995) this is a unique cyberpunk novel in the sense that it relies heavily on biotechnology and the consequences of its abuses. How well do we understand the power of life? How secure is our hold over it? And just how bad can things go when the greedy wizard’s apprentice is overwhelmed by the power he unleashed? Is our ever-scheming, striving for power and instant gratification, murderous species a biological oddity about to be evolutionary corrected?

The story is set in a crumbling society where middle-class has been replaced by interchangeable drones that barely scrape a living. The novel has its rough edges but it is also unforgettable.   

8. CORY DOCTOROW: For the Win

Virtual economies within vast in-game worlds and third-world gold-farmers scrapping a living in internet cafés. Economic and political oppression in the process of merging into the Beast envisioned by the cyberpunk tradition. The author is not light-handed when it comes to slipping in his political views (with which you will probably come to agree with at the end). More importantly though, For the Win is a book that will not only make you give pause the next time you engage in any Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming, but it will also make you reexamine your structure of our global investment-bank economy.   

Congratulations! You have just completed Level 8! But are you playing the game – or is the game playing you?

7. NEAL STEPHENSON: Snow Crash

The future is this: franchises. From the pizza-delivering Mafia to the city-states (“burbclaves”) America managed to fraction itself into, everything has been turned into incorporated franchises. Including drug running. So when a new drug, called Snow Crash, kills a friend of the protagonist (and only Neal Stephenson could name his main character …Hiro Protagonist and get away with it!) while logged into the Metaverse, he decides to take action.

Some readers are put off by the juxtaposition of the futuristic story and Sumerian mythology, however, for me the worlds contrast brilliantly against one another. Also, prepare to laugh quite often. Snow Crash is a funny book.   

6. PAOLO BAGICALUPI : The Windup Girl

The world is getting smaller. Not because of a cataclysmic cosmological event but because the shortage of fossil fuels made us revert in relying on animal labor. Collapse of the economies of entire continents, chronic malnourishment, religious cleansings and an endless string of resistant terminal infections have pushed humanity to the very edge of existence. And yet, human greed and blind ambition still offer the impetus for the endless power-games that care not how many lives get trampled under its threads.

An American investor/spy after Thailand's only remaining bio-treasure; a shrewd and ruthless refugee trying to rebuilt his empire lost to murderous fundamentalism; government factions locked in a power-struggle to the death; and a seductively-designed Japanese Windup Girl that will unwillingly serve as the catalyst for the brewing explosion. I do consider The Windup Girl to be a cyberpunk novel as it depicts the aftermath of our ongoing technoeconomical binging. 

5. JAMES S.A. COREY: The Expanse Series

Even if this may be one of the rare occasions, where transferring a book to the screen actually enhances its impact, The Expanse novels are still well worth your time. An expansive adventure that perfectly blends unbridled futurism and technological meta-humanity with basic vices and familiar motivations. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (the collaborating authors behind the pseudonym James S.A. Corey) took cyberpunk and shot it to the reaches of our solar system - and beyond. While, at the same time, they managed to convey the smell of a well used spacesuit, the uncertainty of moving in freefall, the taste of cheap printed protein paste and the terminal terror of the vacuum.  

Bite down hard and let the juice carry you through the gs.

 

4. WILLIAM GIBSON: The Bridge Trilogy

The three books consisting William Gibson’s vision of a near future West Coast are: Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties. The technological futurism of the 20th century is on the cusp of emergence (even if the flavor we are getting is much more bitter than expected) and the corporate powers are elbowing for position. America has been Balkanized into numerous fractions while life tries to paint over the cracked pavement a thin coating of the normalcy people grew up in. Meanwhile, in depressingly upbeat Japan, the first crude attempt is made to treat personality simulations as real persons.    

The Trilogy gets its name from the first book, in which people have turned the earthquake-condemned Golden Bay Bridge into a makeshift habitat for the homeless. It is always creepy to realize how good Gibson is in predicting nodal points in both technology and societal progression.

3. RICHARD MORGAN: The Takeshi Covacs Trilogy

Handle with care, for the testosterone levels of these novels needle into the red. The Trilogy (so far) consists of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies - but it would be an omission not to mention Black Man (released as Thirteen in the US) as a very worthy prequel. 

Dive into Takeshi Covacs’ world and you will crave resleeving your backed-up consciousness into fresh bodies, enlisting into the Envoy Corps, dreaming of Martian Artifacts (that are not Martian after all) and you will try to find a way to book tickets to Harlan’s World. My advice: start saving for a needlecast, the only way to travel!

Morgan has meticulously created a world that feels, sounds, looks and smells real. As a result, the story only grows richer and deeper every time he revisits it. 

2. NEAL STEPHENSON: The Diamond Age (A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer)

Mid 21st century Shanghai. Imagine a nanotechnology book-shaped supercomputer designed to train and morph any upper-class privileged girl into the proper young lady the neo-Victorian microsociety of her enclave demands. Now, imagine that this very valuable piece of technology somehow ends up in the hands of an underprivileged orphan girl instead. The Diamond Age is Stephenson’s tour de force in cyberpunk that manages to grab your attention from the very beginning and never lets go. A book worked to its finest detail, an impressive body of work that is extremely entertaining to read while leaving you with a thought provoking aftertaste that lingers on for years.

1. WILLIAM GIBSON: The Sprawl Trilogy

Neuroromancer. Count Zero. Mona Lisa Overdrive. Together with the collection of short stories, Burning Chrome, these are the Four Gospels of cyberpunk. 

A bleak world of nerve/biochip integration; ICE-cutting cyberspace cowboys and jacked up razor girls; artificial intelligence entities holding citizenships and striving to be more; immortalized billionaires spread single-cell thinly over acres of support vats. The constant grey drizzle condensing under the unfinished domes of the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Area urban sprawl tries to hide a world of drugs and hustlers and players – all losers and all winners in their little games. And Freeside, the Babylon in the sky, the rotating space station that serves as off-world data heaven and money-laundering banking shelter and houses a byzantine family of clones, locked in an endless power struggle.

In a world where knowledge and abilities is the insertion of a single biosoft away and media stars share their entire fine tuned sensorium with their fans, ambition and murder is the only aura to radiate. And William Gibson’s prose is poetic and hypnotic.

Welcome to the Edge. That is the Future. And it does not get any better, the closer it gets.