An Introduction Regarding The Introductory Tutorial In Dark Soul 3

The reason I brought you here is because I'd like to examine the introductory tutorial found in From Software's recently released Dark Souls 3. As a level designer, I'm always appreciative of a great tutorial, especially one that's informative and fun to play. Extra bonus points are awarded if it's cleverly woven into a game's main entry point or narrative structure.



The tutorial in Dark Souls 3 does all of this, and the real elegant thing about it is if you're already familiar with the series, you can skip a lot of the tutorial content since the explicitly instructional parts of the tutorial (learning inputs and their corresponding actions and so on) are confined to narrative devices in the world that the player can choose whether or not they want to interact with. The same has been true of a lot of tutorials in the Dark Souls series, but this one is streamlined to teach the player only the necessary fundamentals. The tutorial is also expertly paced by virtue of moving the player's checkpoint through the environment as they progress through increasingly challenging encounters, thus minimizing frustration if the player eventually fails since the player isn't far away from where they died. This all culminates at a "final exam" of sorts that requires the player to prove their fluency in the core fundamentals they've just been taught. If they player fails the exam, they are forced to study the fundamentals again -- working their way through various challenges in the environment -- before they can attempt the exam again.



Upon starting the game, players awake from a slumber of indeterminate length that was rather questionably spent inside a sarcophagus that's curiously still above ground. Did they die? It doesn't matter, they probably will die soon enough and be well aware of the circumstances this time around. A name is soon put to their surroundings: the Cemetery of Ash.