A more explicit tutorial may be "normal" now, but it hasn't always been in games and, frankly, needn't be.
...
no.
Just.... UGH.
There is a reason, a very good reason, why games have switched from the game manual to putting tutorials (or even the manual itself) within the game.
Firstly, tutorials within the game are good design. Tutorials not in the game are bad design. The end. Finite. To argue that not teaching the player to play your game without having to read something THAT IS NOT IN YOUR GAME is asinine. It is the stupid, "It's better because older games did it," argument, and it's one of the stupidest arguments I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing the birth of.
I remember the release of Fallout, of Baldur's Gate, of Planescape Torment. I remember wishing that all of the insane amount of information held within the Baldur's Gate 2 manual was in the game so that I didn't need to whip out my BRICK SIZED GAME MANUAL and look it up.
The Baldur's Gate 2 manual is 241 pages, not including the credits and index. OVER TWO HUNDRED PAGES. THAT IS THE SIZE OF A SMALL NOVEL. That's only 79 pages less than the rulebook of the PnP game that it is based upon! THAT'S INSANE.
Now granted, I loved having a manual that large that had so much information. But I HATED that the majority of that information WAS NOT IN THE GAME.
Back in YE OLDEN DAYS, there was only so much space you had to work with. This is the reason why games relied upon manuals as their tutorials. They wanted to make the game the best it could be, but only so many megabytes to do it with. As such, they relegated tutorial and nonessential information to the manual, so that they could devote more of those megabytes to the game itself.
Nowadays, however, we do not have such a space limit. Sure, you can't release a game that's 250GB without looking like a bunch of weirdos, but for the most part you don't have a set cap on how big your game can be. Tutorials are put in the game in order to make the experience between learning the game and actually playing the game a fluid experience.
So I'm sorry, but no. There is no reasonable excuse for them not including a better tutorial.
