@rlier23 yeah that feeling when you start up a new game and you feel the vibes hit you immediately. squaresoft/square enix was a master at this. kingdom hearts, chrono, final fantasy, good shit.

for me it's mainly the music. ara fell did a pretty good job at it, but that game is from 2016 so not exactly "modern." it FEELS like an SNES RPG though, if it came out back then it would have been an instant classic.

more often than not, games now start off with something massively climactic and then once that is over you get put into something calm with heavy vibes. i think it is probably a result of a lot of the calm sections being pretty damn long and people would get bored or something. i think of stuff like chrono trigger or kingdom hearts where you have to go through quite a lot of that stuff to get to the action.