12 Greatest Opening Video Game Sequences Since 2000

9. Bioshock

One for mystery and thriller fans, providing you were one of the lucky few who didn't watch any pre-release footage, gameplay demos or trailers going into Bioshock and were only going off reputation alone, the minimalist use of cutscene before letting you control how fast the story unravels is a work of genius. Your character remains mute apart from a couple lines of dialogue at the very beginning that allude to your purpose being something hugely influential, and the title card-pop that appears as you hear your character's plane crash into the ocean is superbly haunting, before we cut back to you amongst a sea of flaming wreckage. Watching the tail-end of the plane slowly sink into the ocean as you remain alone on a solitary lighthouse is a great metaphor for your character's increasing isolation in itself, but it's when you dive into the bathysphere and descend into the underwater should-be utopia of Rapture that things start coming together. You hear the voice of one Andrew Ryan as he talks of societal woes and the real-world quibbles we all have with just how much fruit we see for our labours, before the cityscape itself unfurls underneath and you realise following a grisly murder right in front of your windowed chamber, that all is not what it seems in this dreamlike city gone sour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3RHenh8vJ8