20 Best Video Game Opening Levels Of The Last 10 Years

2. Welcome To Rapture - Bioshock

To say Bioshock shook the gaming industry to its core would be an understatement. It completely revamped it, challenging the very notion of player agency and making every player from then on ask "Why?"

All that came after though, after we'd been prepped for some suitably mind-blowing revelations - all thanks to descending into Rapture and walking its sodden walkways. That initial plunge into the depths feels like you're gearing up for one of the most unique stories in gaming, and it's a sensation director Ken Levine delivers on at every turn.

Seeing a whale swim past the windows of a dilapidated office block, watching a gargantuan squid weave through the city streets themselves or having your first encounter with a Big Daddy, only to come away wondering what the hell it was. All of these and more set the tone that you were in a bizarrely alien world, yet one that existed deep underneath our own.

Here's to Bioshock, the game that showed the whole world how to execute on escapism better than almost anybody else.