I have two here: one game, one tv
On the game side (and I suspect a number of people may share this sentiment), I’m picking Prey. I remember going into that game knowing very little about it, other than hearing some loose descriptions of a horror-esque Bioshock-like game in a space setting. I remember going through the few minutes of the opening and thinking it fairly straightforward, but eventually reaching a point where I started to suspect something was up. As I pressed on, I remember getting increasingly suspicious while saying to myself “wait…wait…wait…hold up…is this…?” as things began to unravel around our protagonist. Eventually it all culminated in The Big Reveal™, which I won’t spoil here
, but which left me completely in awe. I’ll just add that this was a few years ago at this point, and I haven’t replayed/re-watched that opening since (maybe out of slight fear that it won’t live up to how I remember it?), but it’s definitely stuck with me as one of the most powerful game openings I’ve played.
My other pick is the first episode of the first season of Fear the Walking Dead. I don’t watch a ton of “prestige television”, but that show has an opening that I to this day still think about. For the most part it plays out like your standard Walking Dead episode, but it’s that ending shot right before the intro credits that really sticks with me almost 6 years later. Just watching this person go through what’s undoubtedly the most terrifying experience of their life, all inside the walls of an abandoned church, then gets immediately juxtaposed with the view of the completely oblivious city (essentially world) outside, was just so powerful to me–the thought that “normal life” is so fragile and the world can be turned upside down in an instant. CW coronavirus: Fast forward a few years, and I can’t help but compare that show’s opening to this pandemic, where, one moment, we’re all going about our daily lives, and then suddenly one thing, one organism, enters the picture, and now our entire world is changed forever.
It’s funny you point this out because I didn’t end up finishing Prey or sticking with Fear the Walking Dead 