I remember playing Halo Reach and knowing nothing about it as i'm not a religious Halo fan and as it begins you explore a deserted looking farm, things rattle through the vents and it appears to be set up for a spookfest.
Then you just get to a balcony and one of your team goes all "weeelp, covvies confirmed lets nuke the fuckers".
I was looking forward to a great 'what the fuck is this? what the fuck is that?' story about humanities first run in with a malicious alien force and it was just a 'a few days earlier' prequel to Combat Evolved.
Remember the opening to Starcraft? Two hillbilly podunk no name grunts are driving across the desert of some backwater world and then a zergling runs across the road and they see it in the headlights for a second. They screech to a halt and go, naturally "what the fuck was that?" and its just the start of a Zerg infestation that will spread over half the galaxy.
So where are other games doing this?
>Dead Space: The necromorphs were on earth centuries ago after a marker fell on mexico and the gubment made copies and the ishimura was directed by unitologists to find it. The game is not first contact, a fucking tie in novel is.
>Resistance: The Tunguska Event in Russia/Siberia was an alien incursion that lead to a nightmare plague scenario in soviet russia that lead to an alternate WW2, but by the time the first game happens you are a US grunt dropped in Manchester as these now advanced aliens have colonised all of europe and those first outbreaks are a single text file namedrop at best.
>lost Planet: At some point this colony world disturbed a subterranian, hibernating insectoid lifeform that absorbs thermal energy for food, plunging the planet into an ice age. 21st century level cities poke out of snowdrifts and ruined locales suggest a once earthlike world gone to shit. By the time the game starts the akrid are just a normal inconvenience to snow pirates.
Its a common thought that the most interesting part of a zombie apocalypse story is the first few hours when everything goes to shit. I feel the same about these kinds of stories. The panic and confusion as something horrible descends on a world and the people have no frame of reference is such a cool idea but its so rarely utilised. The only real example outside of the Zerg i can think of is the husks in Mass Effect but even then thats an extension of an attack by the Geth which are also a reclusive but still known quantity in the universe its set in.
Lately i've been rereading the 40k Horus Heresy novels set right when the unbeatable demi gods of the adeptus astartes, staunch atheists and realists that live to crush out all spiritual and pagan beliefs in their crusade to unify the galaxy, run into the demonic bullshit of the warp for the first time. They have everything from suicides to a crisis of athiesm to base idea of "no matter how much i shoot this bloated, rotten imperial guards corpse it wont stop walking, am i feeling fear?" and thats fucking great.
So why is it so uncommon in videogames?