I liked the Mortuary. If there's a problem with the opening of PS:T, it isn't the early text. It's that new players take a while to adapt to one of the game's great strengths - that the setting and backstory are doled out in many snippets of information from a massive number of sources. This is good writing - one of the reasons why PS:T is so great is that every one of this massive number of NPC backstories, regions, in-game folk tales and dialogues is part of a thematically and narratively cohesive whole. But for a new player, it takes some time before their mind adjusts to the fact that these aren't all random info dumps, even if they've been told what to expect. It's like reading a large but high quality pulp novel, like a Stephen King, where it takes 50 or so pages before you just 'enter the zone' and lose yourself.
I don't think that developers should avoid that style of writing, if anything it should be emulated more often. But it may help to consciously introduce the player to how the writing style works. This runs contrary to the instinct that many developers have, to add more early combat in an attempt to liven things up - instead, they should make the starting area more dialogue-focussed, but also self-contained. Flavour text from different NPCs and items should add up to tell a series of short overlapping stories, that add up to the story/theme of that starting area, like a miniature model of the writing method for the rest of the game. That way, players only have to make it through the first 10-15 minutes before that 'ahh...I get it' moment arrives. Then by the time they leave the starting area, their minds will have shifted out of the 'scan flavour text for quest relevant info, dump the rest' mode, and they'll be able to process the world's overlapping narratives.
I think the problem that MCA used to raise regarding the Mortuary, and which crpg developers have often raised regarding starting areas generally, is a case of right diagnosis, wrong treatment. Developers think 'more combat', because film design, not game design, has taught them to equate combat with action. What they overlook is that in crpg gaming, the opposite is true. Filler/standard-mob combat isn't action, it's the bit between the moments of action. Unless you're going to hit the player with a challenging boss fight straight off the bat (in which case, I salute your bravery and will remember to donate when I see you destitute and begging on the street corner), increasing the amount of combat in the starting area has the exact opposite effect of that which the developer is trying to achieve.
An excellent case example is Irenicus' Dungeon, in BG2. This was specifically inserted to give the game a fast action beginning. And it was nearly universally reviled, for doing the exact opposite - all that context-less combat just added up to a plod that players had to drag themselves through in order to start the 'real game'. And developers have kept repeating that same mistake ever since - the starter zones for both KoTOR games, NWN2, MotB, and many many more. And on every occasion, the game was saved by the sheer relief at encountering a far better designed 'starting area' when the player gets to the 1st planet/town, which invariably does everything a starting area should. The few I can think of that get it right are VtmB (brief tutorial with plenty of narrative context throughout, then a well-designed starting hub), WL2 (by skipping the whole idea of a walled-off tutorial, and then making the battles in the first area relatively short and tactical), and FO:NV.
