Grabbing atention

[GarageGothic]

I think if you have characters and a game world you need to flesh out before launching into the story proper, at least give the player a taste of what's to come - preferably in an interactive form. Indeed start off with a bang. Let me feel what the game will be like at it's best, then you've got my attention and can take all the time in the world to return to that level of excitement.
It's almost become a cliche in modern games to start you out with a bunch of equipment/weapons/abilities only to lose them early on (e.g. Assassin's Creed), but if you do it with style this can be a pretty efficient way of kicking off the game. Anian mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark (though it's true for all the Indy movies), which in turn borrowed the idea of a pre-credit teaser sequence from the James Bond movies. And I think this can easily be transferred to an interactive form. Fate of Atlantis does it pretty well, although Indy doesn't do much except fall through holes in the floor, and the simplified interface in the intro (single click interactions) means that you don't have to bother with a drawn out tutorial.

The intro can be a flashforward to a later point of the game, it can be the character's previous mission/case (imagine the intro to Sam & Max was interactive), it could be a dream sequence. I remember an old text adventure called Demon's Tomb where you start out playing an archeologist accidentally starting a fire inside the archeological dig. You know you're gonna die, but have to make sure that your research isn't consumed by the fire too. Then, when the archeologist succumbs to the flames, you take on the role of his son investigating his father's death and carrying on his work.

To me, this is good storytelling: Get the audience hooked, then go deep. Has nothing to do with "young people today" or whatever argument you can come up with. It's as simple as this - you have something invested in this, you care about the characters, the story, the location, because you've spent years developing the game, whereas the audience, for them it's just another game until you prove otherwise. So you'd better do that as soon as possible or you risk losing them.