Innovation of the Week: The Advisor NPC

For this week, I'd like to shine a spotlight on a feature that I think is more commonly associated with PC and strategy games: The Advisor NPC. This is a way to personalize a game's tutorial and immerse players into the game quicker, segmenting the learning process into smaller, easier to follow steps that tend to happen as a player is exposed to a new challenge. It can also be a way to present important stats to the player in a more entertaining way. Basically, it's like having a personal mentor or assistant within the game.

The origin of the concept goes all the way back to 1968 and a game called Hamurabi (PDP8), a text-based strategy game which is a distant predecessor to much more well known and influential games such as SimCity and Civilization (which also happen to be known for featuring advisor NPCs). In this game, each round begins with an advisor stating "Hamurabi: I beg to report to you", followed by the current status of a city that the player is supposed to manage, including the prior year's harvest and change in population. This is followed by a series of questions about how many bushels of grain to spend on land, seeds, and feeding the people.

Some other well known examples from various genres:

Ski or Die (commentator)

Dune II (each faction had its own advisor, called a Mentat)

Sierra's Quest Series (the witty and often sarcastic narrator)

Command & Conquer (EVA)

Star Fox (Slippy)

Theme Park (a sort of Willy Wonka or Jiminy Cricket style character also featured in the intro to the game)

Final Fantasy VII (Bugenhagen)

System Shock 2 (Janice Polito)

What are your thoughts on this concept, and which is your fave example from retro games?