9 Terrible Openings That Almost Killed Great Video Games

2. Mass Effect

The original Mass Effect is considered as being something of a flawed classic in comparison to the games that followed it, and its meandering opening section is probably one of the main reasons why.

Introducing you to a fresh-faced Commander Shepard after a quick dose of exposition aboard the Normandy, the first tutorial section on Eden Prime is enjoyable enough, but it's a bit too straight-forward and features fewer RPG elements when compared to the rest of the main quests.

While Eden Prime is a wobbly introduction however, it's the following sequence exploring The Citadel that really brings the game's opening hours down. Letting you immerse yourself in side quests while you move from one end of the eerily sterile hub world to the next, the game should have spent less time piling on this busywork and instead put the focus on getting you in charge of your own ship, then letting you freely explore solar systems.

After all that sense of wonder at the vastness of space is what the original Mass Effect was all about, so to spend so much time delaying access to this exploration crippled an otherwise seminal title.