Your Future Staring At You [Quantum Break]
Quantum Break adds time-travel to developer Remedy’s repertoire, and the creators of Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Control have fun playing around with alternate timelines and a twisty story. You even get a hint at the incoming story right at the start of the game — if you turn around at the start of the game, outside the university, you’ll find a mysterious character under a streetlight.
This is Martin Hatch, the time-travelling man that’s many thousands of years old — and the CEO of the future Monarch Solutions company that has a monopoly on time-travel technology — is there to greet you before the story even begins. This is your first clue that there’s something strange about Martin Hatch. After speaking to him, if you look away, Hatch mysteriously disappears. Spooky!
The Big Puzzle [Myst]
One of the most infamous secrets right at the start of the game is hidden in Myst. Your entire adventure is leading up to this point, and as it turns out, you can beat the game in minutes. The ending is right there on the starting island, but only if you can solve the puzzle — and you’ll only know how to do that by completing everything else. All of Myst is about gathering the information required to solve this final step — which just so happens to be the first thing you see.
To solve it, you need to flip all the switches on the starting island in a very specific way. Doing that unlocks a hidden compartment with the final page you need. Then you need to input a very specific code in the chimney area of the main building. There’s no way you would know any of this at the start, but if you beat the game and replay it, you can speedrun this sucker in minutes.
That’s 11 of our favorite secrets you can find right at the start of video games. There’s a whole lot more to go around — you can get hidden 1-Up Mushrooms in Mario 64, get 1-Ups in Streets of Rage 2, or grab any Cop Ability you want in hidden Kirby rooms. There’s a ton more stuff out there!
