Tutorials: The Good, The Bad and Ugly of Videogames

Odd one from me, huh?

Tutorials are essentially one of the most important parts of games; this is the section of a game that welcomes you with all the necessary information to play the game. Today, I wanted to talk about some of the more invasive ones, so easy up, it’s not another over-analysis of 1-1 from Super Mario Bros (NES)! (Not to say it’s a bad one, just it got enough coverage that you can choose different flavours all around the web)

So why not get started with the masters of putting many different tutorials one on top of another?

Yeah, those guys from CDPR know some stuff about good tutorials, not to say their tutorials are perfect.

If we were to graph it out, it would look something like this:

• Prologue - a small chunk of the game where you get to use to mapping and how the game feels, while also giving you a look into the world from the perspective of the backstory you choose in character creation.

• Basic combat tutorial - Half of it is skippable, while the other is a tie into the last tutorialisation segment

• Open world introduction - The CDPR's special of making a region of a game as a tutorial to learn all about how the game world works and what to expect out of it

Each of these tutorial elements creates one of the most expansive tutorials that has ever come into existence. On that note, all of these parts have a clear function and have no fillers.

But all that comes with a hell of a hefty price: Replayability.

Most of these segments are unskippable; not only that, but for the first hour of a game, you will be railroaded towards very predictable and boring parts of the game until you get to the “open world” tutorial, in which you can breathe some before getting railroaded again to a very boring dungeon that at best will test your ability to rememeber to make quicksaves when playing on Very Hard.

Also, the "Phantom Liberty” DLC somewhat fixes that issue by giving you an option to start the game at level 15 with approximately 10 hours worth of gameplay skipped, not the best choice to play the game, but if you have already beaten the game a few times, you might enjoy that option.

We are in a somewhat odd arrangement, a good tutorial that has a glaring issue: it becomes extremely annoying if you want to play the game more than once. Is there a way to fix that? Well, the same people made one of the best expansive tutorials in their previous huge RPG, some of you probably know what game I am talking about…

Yep, that “Male Witch”1 game is the one with a better tutorial, how?

First off, construction:

• Prologue - Skippable part of a game with some story construction and all basics tutorials (WASD is for movement, spacebar is for jump, ETC. )

• Open World - Yes, in this game too, you get the “CDPR special” of the open world section of the game that is used as a tutorial before you can do anything else.

So we already cut down by at least 1/3 of the tutorial by just combining the “First Timer” tutorial with the prologue and allowing skipping the prologue.

Now it’s time to compare both Open World Tutorials, cause this is now the only overlapping part of both games.

Cyberpunk has 2 mandatory dungeons (each one with its own boss) and two mandatory long “sit-downs and talks”, while Witcher has… one quest line with a final boss. Yep, just one quest line that will be faster done than one of the two dungeons.

Witcher condensed the tutorial down to an optimal replay experience, whilst Cyberpunk expanded its tutorial to the point that replaying that game becomes a major commitment. Wish CDPR reverts to something like Witcher 3 when making Cyberpunk’s successor.

What do you think, did Cyberpunk overdo the tutorial, or was the Witcher’s tutorial too short, or maybe you have a tutorial that’s much more annoying? Please let me know!

Cheers from your Edgiest Man Alive™ -Karlox Dark