OpenVMS 9.2-3 x64 now has local console on OPA0

I've never seen any DEC workstations that supported OpenVMS but I always wondered about that — judging from photos they had a graphical login screen, but how was the login manager started and what exactly would happen if the windowing system failed to start? Would the user have to connect to a serial console of a graphical workstation to get to a DCL prompt and diagnose the issue? That would be mildly absurd, to be fair. Or was it always there but the logic for VAX/Alpha graphical console was so unique to that hardware that for x86-64 it had to be reimplemented from scratch?