Nowadays, games include all their information in codex sections within the menu. This wasn’t the case years ago, space was precious. Manuals were vital to understanding how the game worked, how the world interacted, and who you were dealing with, not to mention the copyright protection methods.

Manuals were also a vital source of information on background lore that may not show up in the game itself, but helps explain some logic and behavior otherwise, so it becomes critical for this series to get the manual in one form or another.