I find it hard to believe that this sort of game introduction is really new to you.
Oh come on.
Tutorial dungeons are as old the hills. They too can be done in different degrees of dumbness.
Take one that's pretty far towards the dumbfuck end of the scale -- the Mass Effect Eden Prime mission. It introduces you to all the mechanics and gameplay elements. The only way it differs from the "real" missions is in that it's shorter, even more linear, and it has tutorial pop-up messages you can disable. It gives you a glimpse of the main antagonist. It communicates that it's scary as fuck. And you get to play space Jesus or renegade in a few unimportant encounters.
Things it doesn't do:
- have an NPC explain to you who the Protheans are, what that artefact is, and why exactly it's so bloody important
- give you a clear look of the main antagonist and have an NPC explain to you that it's named 'Sovereign' and is a machine intelligence from a race of beings called 'Reapers' that wipes out all sentient life every 50,000 years
- have an NPC explain that Because Reasons you're extra-special and the only one who can save the galaxy from the threat of these 'Reapers'
The T:ToN intro does the equivalent of all that, and more. When I'm out of the dungeon,
there is no mystery left. I know I'm a Castoff, who are born when an individual called the Changing God moves zir consciousness out of one body and into another, that there is a scary thing called The Sorrow who wants to destroy the Changing God and all castoffs, that it's invaded my mind palace, that I return to that mind palace when I 'die', that I'm really fucking hard to kill, but not impossible, that the key to defeating the Sorrow is to restore the Resonance Chamber, and that to do that my next steps should be contacting the Cult of the Changing God or the Aeon Priests (my choice).
It's all spelled out for me in excruciating detail, and it's listed that way in my journal in case I was so stoned that I didn't notice when the Spectre rubbed my eyeballs in it.
The thing that hooked me from the first instant in PS:T was the mystery: who, and what, is this floating skull, and why is he following me? Did I really tattoo instructions for myself in SCARY CAPS on my back? Who the fuck is Pharod and where do I find him? Where's my journal? How is it that all these people seem to know who I am, and I even left things for myself for later? Etcetera etcetera. It's just a mountain of questions and mysteries and just subtle hints on how I should go about unraveling them.
Also, the Mortuary was one hell of a tutorial dungeon. All they'd have needed to do to 'modernise' something like that would have been to add optional tooltips explaining mechanics where appropriate; how Effort works and so on.
Once more: this is Tumblr: Tides of Numenera, not Torment.
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