Tutorials are an integral part of any great video game. Not only do they give players a chance to learn the ropes and understand some basic mechanics, but they also introduce them to a brand-new world that may be entirely original. However, as informative and important as they are, in some games, the tutorial and early sections exist more as misdirection or an intentional informational void, guiding players down one specific path only to flip things on their head hours into the story.
10 Action Games Where You Don't Realize You're The Villain
These games provide players with unforgettable experiences that involve action, betrayal, and secret villain twists!
By playing with the player's expectations, these games can get quite creative from a narrative perspective, concealing the truth until the time is right to finally reveal the twist. The early learning areas can also act as training wheels rather than explicit guides, forcing players to take the reins themselves and figure out both the mechanics and the story with no actual guidance from the game itself, creating a much more organic experience that feels far more rewarding overall.
Dark Souls
The Absence Of Details Is The Real Lesson
- Many core systems are never explained.
- The narrative mirrors this mechanical obscurity.
Dark Souls is one of the purest examples of a game that conceals information from the player. Much like many other games in the Soulslike genre, a lot of details are kept hidden from the player from the start through to the end. Some of these are mechanical, like Hollowing and its effects, while others are more related to the narrative and the origin of the world itself. This lack of guidance turns every bit of exploration into a leap of faith into the unknown, as without clear markers or safety nets, success is very much in the player's own hands.
This philosophy is by design. The developers believe in a more natural gameplay approach that forces players to explore and confront the unknown head-on, rather than being guided every step of the way. It can take significantly longer to grasp the fundamentals, as the tutorial seems to make the gameplay and story feel quite surface-level, but once they have mastered the fundamentals and have grasped the weight of their journey, players will feel ignited with a new sense of meaning that fuels their fight against the darkness within the world.
The Stanley Parable
Manipulation Right From The Start
- Direct instructions exist to be defied.
- Player agency becomes the main tool for progress.
The Stanley Parable opens with a soothing narrator who claims to be guiding the experience, framing the act of obeying orders as the only way forward. The game's tutorial-like structure suggests that following directions leads to meaning, clarity, and an eventual narrative payoff. In reality, it is simply deliberate misdirection that hides the game’s true purpose, which is revealed only when those instructions are ignored.
10 Most Iconic Tutorials In Games, Ranked
Tutorial sections can often feel more annoying than they are useful, but the tutorials in these games are fondly remembered.
By toying with the player's perception of trust, The Stanley Parable manages to lure them in and control them early on without ever doing so explicitly. In a sense, the tutorial lies by pretending there is a correct path to take, when, in reality, the only way to succeed is to do the exact opposite of what the narrator suggests.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
Training For The Wrong War
- Expectations are intentionally misaligned, right down to who the protagonist is.
- This trains players to obey orders.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’s opening acts serve as an extended tutorial, teaching the game's stealth mechanics, mission structure, and narrative expectations, which were established by its predecessor. Players are trained to believe they are reliving a familiar hero’s journey, yet as they will come to realize later on, this is anything but the truth.
As the story progresses, those expectations collapse, as after conditioning players to obey orders and pursue objectives without question, the game then actively condemns others for doing so. The mechanics never change, but their meaning does, and by the time the truth is revealed, the player will realize that they are being set up not for success, but to be manipulated.
Spec Ops: The Line
Hiding Lies Behind Heroism
- Familiar gameplay loops obscure the truth.
- Complicity becomes the central theme.
Spec Ops: The Line presents itself like a standard military shooter, reinforcing familiar genre tropes that don't make it stand out at first glance. Early encounters teach players that aggression is justified and success is measured by efficiency, suggesting that it is acceptable to shoot on sight and without hesitation.
Yet as the narrative tone darkens, those same actions start to feel far more gray and sinister than they initially appeared. Spec Ops: The Line never changes how it plays, but it radically reframes why those acts matter, and while players are never explicitly told they are wrong, they are instead forced to come to that conclusion themselves, even if that realization comes far too late to do anything about it.
Prey
Simulating An Entire Reality
- Artificial early safety belies a challenging open world.
- Later revelations play into the early ideas of simulation.
Prey’s tutorial carefully constructs a sense of normalcy, teaching basic gameplay interaction through mundane tasks and clean environments. Everything about the opening sequence suggests safety, structure, and control, but before they know it, players will find themselves deceived by the very people they trusted.
Multiple revelations come at pivotal points during the narrative, all of which dramatically alter how players view the world around them and the story that ties it all together. At its core, Prey is a game about lies and control, and the inability to fight against either, no matter how hard the player tries.
BioShock
Obedience Disguised As Choice
- Narrative intentions are revealed only late into the game.
- The tutorial becomes recontextualized by the end.
BioShock’s opening teaches players how to survive Rapture through subtle guidance and objective markers that make it feel like a standard linear shooter. The tutorial reinforces the illusion of agency, encouraging exploration while quietly funneling decisions through scripted events and intentional blockades that force players down specific paths that they may have otherwise avoided. The story later reveals that this guidance was never optional.
37 Games With The Saddest Storylines, Ranked
Games have, over the decades, evolved to place greater emphasis on their narratives, and here are some which deliver stunningly emotional stories.
The tutorial’s biggest lie is not mechanical, but philosophical. The idea that player choice exists at all is simply a fabrication, and by teaching players that following orders and sticking to a set path is the best way to progress, they become narratively trapped with no way to fight back or undo their past actions.
Portal
Teaching Without Revealing The Truth
- The neutral tone masks the actual experimentation at play.
- Mechanics remain the same, but the tone shifts completely.
Portal's tutorial is infamous for being elegant, witty, and memorable. Not only does it teach some pretty complex mechanics through a series of basic puzzles, but it also concisely introduces the game's world in a way that doesn't require exposition or additional dialogue. This initial perception blinds the player with trust, as there is no reason to believe that there are any darker intentions hidden beneath the calm and relaxing exterior.
As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that the tutorial was never about helping the player and showing them how to move between puzzles; it was about observing them as a test subject rather than a free-thinking individual. When the environment turns hostile, the same mechanics that were previously used to transport objects and aid the player become tools of escape, turning a tutorial that once served as a simple introduction into a method of survival.
Braid
Innocence With A Dark Secret
- Early sections are intentionally misleading.
- The final twist rewrites the entire narrative.
Braid’s tutorial is a lot like any other, teaching players how to use the core mechanic of time manipulation in various puzzles and showing them that mistakes can easily be undone with little to no consequences. This encourages experimentation and removes a lot of the fear of failure, presenting the game as whimsical and forgiving without much worry at all.
However, late in the story, those same mechanics take on darker implications. Time reversal becomes an act of control rather than correction, reframing the player's actions and motivations and encouraging them to question the true reality of the world around them. By teaching players that time is simply a toy to be used at will, the truth of Braid's narrative is hidden behind naivety and innocence, right up until the final revelation, which forces a complete reinterpretation of the entire experience.
10 Best Tutorial Bosses In History, Ranked
The best tutorial bosses go beyond teaching a game's basic controls and introduce players to the scale of the game they're embarking on.