A Journey Through Early Guides and NPC Tutors In the earliest days of digital play, players were often left adrift in labyrinthine worlds with little more than a blinking cursor and a cryptic prompt. Yet even then, game designers understood the need for gentle guidance. Enter the tutorial NPC: silver-haired sages in Ultima IV, forever ready to impart cryptic advice about virtue and arcane lore. These pixelated mentors were limited—bound by canned dialogue trees and linear scripts—but they sowed the seeds for future interactive assistance. As communities of enthusiasts sprang up, player-made leveling guides emerged. Printed in fanzines or shared

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