Justified Tutorial: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Adventure Game]] ==

** The original ''[[The Journeyman Project]]'' was less successful, however, unless we are to believe that it is part of Agent 5's job each day to read the instruction manual for his biosuit.

*** The remake ''[[Pegasus Prime]]'' actually fixes this problem from the first game, as it transforms the review of the biosuit manual from a daily task into a small portion of Gage's punishment for being late to work for the ''fourth'' time.

** In ''[[Half-Life 2]]'', the training was seamlessly integrated into the game's opening; players had to pick up and manipulate objects with the basic controls before they were given a gun or an HEV suit.

{{quote|'''Civil Protection:''' You there, pick up that can.}}

* ''[[Halo]]'' and ''Halo 2'' both start with your character performing basic movements like walking around and using the camera controls so that the technicians can calibrate his suit. Your reactions to prompts like "look up" also allow the game to guess your control preferences.

** ''Halo 3'' had an interesting take on this trope, as the tutorial takes place out in the middle of the jungle. Having jumped from a spaceship and falled several kilometers, Master Chief's armour needs recalibration, because it is still "in partial lockdown" after having taken the brunt of his impact. A medic stands in front of you in your crater and holds up a little card, saying "look up here... now down here..."

* ''[[Call of Duty]] 2'' did the same, except without the van.

* ''[[Call of Duty]] 4'' has your character as a new SAS member; after passing Selection, it's his first day in the Regiment. As such, he has to go through some weapons familiarization (aka target practice) and a timed close quarters battle (CQB) drill... in a plywood mock-up of the beginning area of the first mission. This is not as useful as the real thing, since you're doing this solo instead of as a fire team in the real mission, where the AI teammates tend to beat you to the front of the line and thus block your fire while killing the tangos themselves... thus negating the point of that CQB drill.

** ''[[Modern Warfare]] 2'' includes a similar tutorial, justified as a demonstration for recruits in Afghanistan, with a similar drill as a test of your character's skill in preparation for a special mission.

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' featured a preposterous training area for new agents: [[He Knows About Timed Hits|"Right-click to read the book." "R key, by default."]] Fortunately it was optional.

* ''[[Geist]]'' never bothers with a how-to-shoot tutorial, but after the main character is separated from his body his spirit is immediately put into a training/brainwashing machine, where he's shown some of the basics of [[Our Souls Are Different|being a ghost]] - floating around, possessing animals, drinking plant energy. After that the machine is broken by a [[Creepy Child]] ghost girl, who shows him how to possess objects, do things with them, and then how to scare humans so ''they'' can be possessed.

* ''Chronicles Of [[Riddick]]: Escape from Butcher Bay'' has an extremely clever justification for the tutorial level and the 'Press this for that' button warnings. A daydream on the way to prison...

* A significant portion of ''[[The Conduit]]'' tells the story in a [[How We Got Here]] perspective, with the very first tutorial level starting right in the middle of the action. The player character gets up off the ground after having apparently been knocked down by an explosion, and much of the tutorial consists of the [[Voice with an Internet Connection]] telling the character to perform several actions to check if his [[Powered Armor]] is still functioning correctly.

 

== [[4X]] ==

* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' holds your hand and tells you how you're supposed do everything during the first quest, to get you started. The quest is, appropriately, given to you by the puneriffic Toot Oriole.

* ''[[The Matrix]] Online'' has a fairly well-integrated tutorial sequence, in which you, as a new Redpill, have to calibrate your in-world HUD (presented within your field of view directly by The Matrix) and are taught about combat.

** Other character classes in ''WoW'' don't get true tutorials, but they get a similar effect in two different ways. The most obvious way is, when you create a new character, every time that character is prompted to do something new (talk to an NPC, accept a quest, read the map) an exclamation mark appears. Click on it and it opens a window telling you how to do it. Experienced players or players who want to find their own way around can turn off that setting. More subtly, most classes get new abilities every other level until 40, more or less. That means you have two levels to learn to use the one you just got before you get another one.

* The MMO ''[[Fallen Earth]]'' begins with the player character freshly decanted from a cloning tube, after being [[Cloning Blues|cloned, mindwiped, and killed for hundreds if not thousands of cycles of life and death]], and thus justifiably unsure of how to walk. It goes downhill from there.

 

== [[Real Time Strategy]] ==

* In ''[[Starcraft]]'', a marine says, "Permission to speak freely, sir? I don't really think you know what you're doing." and proceeds to explain the two basic modes of movement. As one is new to the job of being the local magistrate, it's understandable. In addition, one can skip this mission.

** They integrate further minor tutorials into the first missions of the Zerg and Protoss campaigns as well (chiefly to explain the quirks of each faction).

* The tutorial for ''Medieval II: Total War'' places you as a Lieutenant in William the Conqueror's army, in the battle of Hastings in which William invaded England and later became its king. The game itself begins in 1087, upon William's death, and the "suggested" campaign for new players is the English Faction campaign, which naturally continues that story if you've just played the tutorial. Whichever faction you choose though, the game will likely be heavily influenced by this new dynasty on the rise in the Island Kingdom.

** Except if you are playing Scotland, in which case you are going to destroy them within the first 10 turns, or if you play Russia/Byzantine (Maybe Sicily) and thus are sufficiently far away (And sufficiently not a crusade target) for England to not really care.

 

== [[Role Playing Game]] ==

** ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' has a rather odd example - a school full of professors offering advice located at the outskirts of the town the main characters are trying to flee at the start of the game. {{spoiler|And in the world of Ruin, their school is the only building unscathed on the planet.}}

{{quote|{{spoiler|'''Professor''': "We'll be here for you even if the world should crumble."}}}}

*** There's even a second tutorial room found later in the game {{spoiler|because [[Doomed Hometown|the town the first one is in gets destroyed]], and you'll find the ghosts of the people from the first room still available to provide game advice!}}

** ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' notably averts the dangers of making the player's character look like a rookie when being taught by an NPC because Vaan ''is'' a rookie at the start of the game. Even before that, a lot of the game's tutorial is given to Vaan's brother Reks, who is himself a rookie soldier, taught by his more experienced commander. Quite the [[Player Punch]] when Reks is murdered at the end of the tutorial.

* ''[[Fallout 3]]'' handles this in an unusual fashion. Your character's formative years are used as the framing device for both the tutorial and character creation. The character's gender, name, and appearance are determined during your character's birth, the last by the protagonist's father looking at a computer simulation of his child's growth. The movement tutorial and stat assignment portion involves you sneaking out of your crib as a toddler and reading a children's book called "You're SPECIAL" (SPECIAL being the game's stats system). The menu, dialogue, and combat tutorials involve you getting a BB gun and a Pip-Boy 3000 wrist computer at your tenth birthday party. At the age of sixteen, you take [[Inept Aptitude Test|an aptitude test]] to help determine your three tag skills. Finally, stealth, hacking and lockpicking are learned when {{spoiler|you have to sneak out of the vault at age 19.}}

** Or, if that's still too much for you (or if you've made a bunch of [[Alt-Itis|alternate characters]] and are tired of the tutorial), you can make a save file {{spoiler|just before you exit the vault, at which point you can remake your whole character from top to bottom in about five minutes}}.

** While the original ''[[Fallout]]'' didn't have a tutorial, the sequel did. "The Temple of Trials" was a tediously uninteresting, empty, brown temple that the game forced you to go through every single time. It was supposedly added due to [[Executive Meddling]], and it shows.

** ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' has your character just recently recover from a headshot, prompting Doc Mitchell to direct you to Sunny Smiles to set you up to be able to actually survive the Mojave. It's pretty useful to go through the tutorial for a few free items, but it's not necessary to actually do.

* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'', there is a tutorial adventure when you have to win a competition in your starting village. Unusual in that you can opt to do this level without the tutorial.

* The optional tutorial in the first game of ''[[Thief]]'' is a flashback to Garrett's training as a child just taken from the street, and in it he's given simple tasks to do the way he chooses. The third game's first level is a heavy-handed, mandatory tutorial where Garrett has to follow the blue footsteps on a routine job. The drop in tutorial justification subtlety is staggering.

* Averting this (in the ruined atmosphere due to suspension of disbelief case) was the reason for the infamous ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' player character switcheroo.

* In ''[[Syphon Filter]]: Dark Mirror'' the player character (Logan) is stated as giving the new training a test run to give his opinion of it. He even tells the trainer to treat him like a new recruit and several times during the training has to remind the trainer, who says things like, "But, you know all this already." that he needs to be treated like a new recruit if he is to properly test the training.

* Not quite this, but strongly related - in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', if you attempt to start the online game without having a PSN account, it "connects" you to a fake Tech Support chat program supposedly written by Otacon, who remains completely in character while talking you through the process of registering you and checking connection problems. If you repeatedly bring him in a loop or deliberately provide him with false answers, he'll even complain. Obviously, it [[Celebrity Paradox|can't be canon]], because although the [[Excuse Plot]] of ''Metal Gear Online'' is that it's all a VR simulation, [[PlayStation 3]] accounts certainly wouldn't be involved. But [[He Knows About Timed Hits|in that series, that's normal]].

* Played with in ''[[Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard]]''. The tutorial is optional in the first level, and Matt, whose [[Medium Awareness]] and [[Genre Savvy]] are his defining traits, will actually comment on the tutorial, from mocking the very basics found in every third-person shooter to complimenting new wrinkles that will help him survive.

* In ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'', the enemies don't bat an eye at head shots or even outright decapitations like in most shooters; they're vulnerable to "strategic dismemberment" instead. In the opening phase of the game, expect no less than five direct messages, from blood-scrawled advice on the walls left by victims who learned it too late, to [[He Knows About Timed Hits|your own suit's holographic info display,]] to audiologs left by the crew, telling you in no uncertain terms to ''cut off their limbs.''

* Inverted in ''[[Star Wars Battlefront]]: Elite Squadron'', as the optional tutorial level in campaign mode consists of X2, the protagonist, retraining existing clones.

 

== [[Turn-Based Strategy]] ==

** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2]]'' doesn't have Luso learn how to fight in his world. When he gets thrown into the Final Fantasy Ivalice, he lands in front of a huge Cockatrice and has to join Cid's clan in order to not die. Since Luso never used weapons nor does he know how battles work, Cid teaches Luso how to attack, but strangely enough, also tells him how to "move" and end his turn. Even the Black Mage and White Mage tells Luso about other factors such as how to use magick (which is odd since only they can use magick at this point and Luso knows no abilities) and how speedier units generally go first.

*** The original ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' has an interesting variation. There is no integrated tutorial and the game itself leaves you to figure out the basics mostly by yourself. However, there is an optional tutorial mode. The reason that's a variation of this trope is because, despite being optional and acanon, it features an actual character who is referenced several times in the main game, but who only appears in this mode--the instructor Darlavon, who teaches new military recruits all of the basics. The academy he teaches at is also the one the main character went to, so it stands to reason that Ramza received his lectures off-screen.

** ''[[Disgaea|Hour of Darkness]]'' has Laharl waking up after oversleeping for 720 days, so his mind and body need a bit of a workout.

** ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories|Cursed Memories]]'' has Rozalin, who is a princess and obviously has no battle training at all, being given a crash course in fighting by Adell.

 

== [[Visual Novel]] ==