You only get one chance to make a first impression, or so they say. Some people
argue things like “if you can’t hook someone, or convey the meat of what you’re going for in the
first few minutes of a film or an album or a game, then you’ve messed up and should rethink your
approach.” Clearly this line of thinking doesn’t apply to Bethesda Game Studios, who even after
all this time, as exemplified by the recent or upcoming release of Starfield, can’t seem to craft
a compelling intro sequence to save themselves. Just to head off anyone already frothing with
anger, this is, of course, to say nothing of the quality of these games following these
sequences—that’s not the point of this piece. Rather that, these openings consistently (with
Starfield I would argue increasingly) fail to do justice to what follows,
arbitrarily holding players back from the obvious strengths of their games.
Like, look, when you think of Bethesda Game Studios title, what comes to mind? Sure,
for some it might be a cavalcade of bugs and glitches, but for me it’s all about promise,
of freedom and grandeur as these massive open worlds unfurl before you,
inviting you to go wherever, do whatever you so choose. In Elder Scrolls, if high fantasy wasn’t
already the setting in which many of gaming’s “role playing” archetypes find their roots,
Skyrim in particular is where the adage “see that mountain over there? You can climb it!” came from
(even though that’s a slight alteration on what Todd actually said if my memory serves me).
Even in Fallout, the sheer scale of these worlds (combined with the pulpy
retro-futurist aesthetic acting as part of its thematic glue) imbues the devastation
and decay of these environments with abundant exploratory potential. You know,
I need to see just how far I can clamber my way up that rusted mound of metal!
I mean hell, even using a horse to Skyrim your way up a mountain might be kind of janky,
but it’s you working with the systems of the game, intentional or otherwise, to increase your
own agency over your environment. With Bethesda games, supposedly, it’s freedom all the way down.
So why then, does Oblivion start you in a jail cell, fighting rats for half an hour
before they even let you go outside? Why does Skyrim have you spend so much time in the back
of a cart trudging down towards a punishment that, even when interrupted with such bombast,
sees you railroaded along several linear paths and underwhelming combat scenarios?
Fallout titles typically have that moment where the door opens and the blinding light reveals the
size of the landscape, the arduous journey before you. But even then, even when the bombs go off,
you’re still forced to partake in awful dialogue non-choices, you’re marched along to the vault
where you spend minutes frozen before you finally get some real control. Or worse, you’re born into
the vault. You spend upwards of thirty, forty minutes confined to the narrow corridors of the
vault, the rigidity of limited interactivity with its denizens, as you literally grow up within it.
You can make the argument that in Fallout 3’s case it’s meant to instill a shock when
that vault door opens, but nothing about the intros of these games conveys anything about
the feelings of freedom and enormity and agency that the rest of the runtime will be so focused
on. Without exception, to me anyway, they are flat out mechanically boring. They actively go against
what makes these games special to so many. And of course, none of this is anything new,
people have been talking about the shocking inflexibility of Bethesda RPG intros for as
long as I can remember, but what’s so shocking to me is that with their most recent title,
the hotly anticipated Starfield, even with the gargantuan amount of time between releases…
they’ve only gone and done it again. This space-faring adventure,
seeing the typical Bethesda scale expanded to the far flung reaches of the stars,
drawing comparisons (however inaccurate) with the functionally infinite galaxy of No Man’s Sky,
sees your journey instead begin in a dank mine. You take the lengthy elevator ride down. You
slowly follow your companion through the mine. You pick up a mining laser and are told to get to work
pointing it at rocks to gather resources—the most rudimentary, some may say uninteresting
aspect of such sci-fi exploration games, and they’re front-loading this stuff. They’re
having you do menial chores in the first five minutes, before you’ve even seen a spaceship!
You slowly follow the person again. You continue to slowly wander through the linear
mine, you touch an artefact and wake up back at base. What’s that? More slow walking and talking
you say? Starfield’s got you covered. Eventually you get the eureka moment,
the grand reveal of the environment akin to Fallout or Elder Scrolls… but even beyond the
relatively flat, beige environment that greets you, this isn’t the point at which control and
agency is suddenly heaped upon you, where you’re loosed upon the world to follow your whims.
Instead, it’s time for some fairly floaty combat. Once that’s done though, we’re in the space ship,
surely we get to go about the stars now, right? Well no, because now you’ve got to deal with the
space combat tutorial and then follow the menus to get to the research outpost and go through that
and just… man, depending on how long you spend building your character, you could be looking at
about forty minutes of relative drudgery before you even get a hint of the captivating voyage
you’re actually here for—about an hour before you get somewhat meaningful dialogue choices.
Like I say, past these intro points, think about these games what you want. I just think it’s kind
of wild that all of these openings, these supposed thesis statements, are so reticent to get you into
the action, so to speak—to tell you anything about the actual experience you’re in for, so much more
monotonous than what almost always follows. You might argue that with Starfield lacking a
lot of the inter-town travel seen in their other open worlds, segmenting and relegating a lot of
its exploration to menus and the like, that this opening is perhaps more… upfront than the other
titles, but it’s still hardly inspiring in the way these games I think should be.
And you might be thinking “well surely you need the context of a slower intro to make
being released into the world meaningful, right?” And sure, I guess, but look at something like New
Vegas, crucially developed by Obsidian rather than Bethesda, and generally the most well-regarded of
any of the first-person Fallouts. There you get a cutscene where Chandler from Friends
shoots you, a few minutes of building your character, the door opens and you are… free.
Nothing about that experience feels in any way contextually lacking compared to the other
more recent Fallouts, if anything this intro is far more efficient in its worldbuilding—as the
mechanics through which you build your character simultaneously convey the vibe of the world
you’re about to enter. It’s far more systemic storytelling, that both gets out of the players
way, while also feeling far more meaningful than simply following someone through a mine.
It’s just, this could all be so much better! As far as open worlds go,
give me more Elden Rings opening up to the splendour of Limgrave immediately,
more Baldur’s Gates giving you meaningful choices off the bat, hell New Vegases building their
worlds as efficiently as you’re plunked into them. This long-documented issue with Bethesda’s intro
sequences, on the other hand, seems to be getting worse with the release of Starfield,
not better—more protracted, more tedious, but importantly, far less confident than
these massive, impressively open-ended worlds clearly deserve. You only get one chance to make
a first impression—let’s hope Bethesda finally internalise that notion the next chance they get.
Thank you all so much for watching—be sure to hit the like button, subscribe,
all that daft YouTube stuff. It really helps the channel, and it means the world. A massive
thanks as well to my patrons who you can see on screen, and are all getting access to exclusive,
fully produced videos that aren’t available here! Your continued support is what allows me to keep
going with the work I do on this channel in a sustainable way, and I seriously cannot express
how grateful I am for that. You are all the best. Special thanks go to Mark B Writing, Artjom
Vitsjuk, Melmiik, MichaelTrit, Rickety Cricket, Cameron Ceniceros, UrbanCheese, Charles J Liu,
Alasdair Dunn, Vytautas Katarzis, Dolly Bowman, YoungCondor, David Carstens,
Tom Webster, Danas Zukauskas, Jordan Middler, Christopher Faherty, Nicholas Villeneuve,
Ruth Knapman, Yogesh Deshpande, Lea Chinelo, KaeptnKnusprig, Bryce Snyder, CPJMLT LTD,
David Bjork, Timothy Jones, Matthew Grover, Tommy Carver-Chaplin, Shardfire, Linn Browning, Dallas
Kean, Charlie Kimball and Charlie Yang. And with that, this has been another episode of Writing
on Games. Thank you all so much for watching, stay safe and I will see you all next time.