in r2463 the intro ads and main menu was still visible under software mode, but after trying it in r2464 and above the they're all invisible. it's completely black other than the cursor.
if you leave it running for a while to see the prologue cutscene and then press a button to skip it, it'll crash without an error message when it tries to display the movie that comes after it (it worked fine in r2463).
the movie works in hardware mode though. note, the prologue will also be invisible (or frozen/completely broken) in software mode.
edit: at the time of testing i had this set up. saving ge to textures breaks the game no matter which mode it's in, the screen will just stop updating at all.
if you leave it running for a while to see the prologue cutscene and then press a button to skip it, it'll crash without an error message when it tries to display the movie that comes after it (it worked fine in r2463).
the movie works in hardware mode though. note, the prologue will also be invisible (or frozen/completely broken) in software mode.
edit: at the time of testing i had this set up. saving ge to textures breaks the game no matter which mode it's in, the screen will just stop updating at all.