Scenic-Tour Level

Any form of scene setting in a game that allows you to explore a very limited area of the setting while getting a tour of the level. Often gives you a small chance to get familiar with the controls and shows off the scenery. Sometimes throws the player right through an area of combat, or even drops them right into it. This section of the game generally helps to build the atmosphere and set the tone that the player can expect from the game in the hours to come.

Usually laden with Scenery Porn, or in contrast Scenery Gorn, and Video Game Set Pieces, and can be used as part of a Justified Tutorial. Occasionally overlaps with Developing Doomed Characters. Expect to be given Noncombatant Immunity during this section. See also Expository Gameplay Limitation, which this is sometimes used in conjunction with. Contrast Action Prologue, which immediately throws you straight into the middle of things.

---

Examples

Action

• Batman: Arkham Asylum opens with Batman escorting The Joker through the halls of Arkham, following the guards through the halls, broken up with an encounter with Killer Croc.
• Its sequel, Batman: Arkham City, has a similar sequence where you must control Bruce Wayne being brought into Arkham City itself as a prisoner. Add in the opening cutscene at the beginning of the game and you get a pretty good introduction to how completely messed up the situation has become.
• The tutorial levels in Star Wars: Rebel Assault later become action levels when The Empire attacks Tatooine.
• inFAMOUS has a short sequence of Cole McGrath walking through the crater created by the Ray Sphere.
• The Amazing Spider-Man: The game's opening, doubling as a Shout-Out to Deus Ex: Human Revolution thanks to very similar art styles and presentation.
• Crackdown 2 gives you a brief aerial tour of Pacific City after the tutorial, demonstrating the effects of the decade-long war between the Agency, Cell, and the Freaks.

Adventure Game

• Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist: The prologue of the game has Freddy walking through the town of Coarsegold to open his pharmacy for the day — and it's completely interactive. The game makes fun of itself by awarding half of the available 1000 points in the game to the player for (finally) unlocking the pharmacy door. "Ta-dah! Five hundred points. You're halfway through the game!"
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The opening sequence has Indy appear to be breaking into a secret stash of artifacts... only for it to be gradually revealed that he's in Barnett College and only swung through the window because the door was blocked. He then falls through multiple floors slapstick-style.
• Life Is Strange has an interesting variant that happens at the end of the game. Inside the Nightmare Sequence, Max walks through a dark corridor littered with previous scenes from the game involving her and Chloe, frozen in time. As you approach these scenes, they light up, and snippets from the dialogues from those scenes are heard.

First-Person Shooter

• Half-Life:
  • The game begins with a slow tram ride through Black Mesa. The player can move freely inside the tram and look in all directions, but the tram itself moves independently. Additionally, the opening is split into the uncontrolled tram sequence and the controlled "get yourself to the lab" sequence. Both help introduce you to the controls, specific characters, and the current situation, and if you pay attention, certain plot points.
  • The Fan Remake Black Mesa hung a rather humorous Lampshade on the whole thing: one of the ads within Black Mesa reads: "Our tram system is really cool!" That and they did their best to turn the whole thing into Scenery Porn.
• Half-Life: Opposing Force was somewhat related, in that the player was introduced to the military's insertion and situation (even if Adrian awakes hours after his chopper crashes). Half-Life: Blue Shift starts in the same way, and, amusingly enough, once the ride is over it inverts the original game's opening sequence, as the player plays the role of the security guard who gets stuck just outside a door at the start, and can watch from the side as Freeman passes him by in another car.
• Half-Life 2:
  • The scene in the Citadel, where an immobile Gordon is transported through the Citadel and up to the top floor for several minutes and giving the player some of the only glimpses of the inner workings of their adversary.
  • The intro also fits this, where you are introduced to City 17 by walking around in the train station and then the surrounding city. Admittedly, the cops provide a semi-enemy (they will attack you if you get too close), but you can't really be killed in this, so it still counts.
  • The mod Heart of Evil: Percy flies to the site of mission in a helicopter, while The Ride of The Valkyries play. Familiar?
  • The Portal 2 mod Portal Stories: Mel similarly begins with the protagonist riding a train through Aperture Science's Company Town in 1952.
• BioShock: When you're in the bathysphere looking at the underwater city of Rapture through the window.
• Bioshock Infinite: Not only is Columbia entered via rocket, but afterwards you spend a good deal of time walking around trying to get your bearings. Even if you're rushing, it'll take about 20 minutes for you to get to the first combat stage.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution Begins with a walk through the R&D Department of Sarif Industries. Everything and everyone you see (with the exception of the Department of Defense representative) is important to the story.
• In System Shock 2 character creation and tutorial, which to some extent also introduce you to the AFGNCAAP you are, are done this way.
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay: The opening of the game after the tutorial with you are being led into the prison, but can look around on your own. The developers said it was their tribute to Half-Life.
• Halo:
  • Halo 2's opening level has Sgt. Johnson taking you on a short tram-ride tour of the Cairo space station after your Justified Tutorial. The level design and Johnson's dialogue draws your attention to the Human fleet sitting at anchor and the view of Earth from orbit.
  • The original Halo: Combat Evolved also had this with the Master Chief waking up out of stasis before rushing off to the bridge to meet up with Captain Keyes and picking up his first weapons. He passes by several firefights with the Covenant en route.
  • Halo: Reach also has this while Noble Team is traveling by helicopter in "Winter Contingency" and "Tip of the Spear".
• Call of Duty:
  • The Russian boot camp in 2 (which ends in an actual attack by Germans) and, in Modern Warfare, Soap going through the basics with Gaz at an SAS station, both of which are justified tutorials. Many of the levels also start with a quick helicopter ride to the starting area. It's possible to shoot, but doing so is a waste of ammo so you're pretty clearly just supposed to kick back and hum The Ride Of The Valkyries.
  • Also in Modern Warfare's 'The Coup', when Al-Fulani is driven through the streets of the city to his execution. And you're watching through his eyes.
  • Continues in Modern Warfare 2, when the game opens with the player at an American base in Afghanistan, where he trains some local militia, runs an obstacle course, and can walk around and observe the other soldiers.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops has a level where Mason is met at the Washington D.C. airport by Secretary of State Robert McNamara, who then take a motorcade to the Pentagon - where McNamara escorts Mason through the Pentagon and into the War Room, where Mason is given an assignment from JFK himself. And due to both being brainwashed at the time as well as tortured into recalling it later, Mason hallucinates that the briefing isn't quite right and pulling a gun on the President.
• Prey (2006):
  • The game starts you off at a bar owned by the main character's girlfriend, where you can talk to people, gamble on poker machines and headbang to Judas Priest until the inevitable Alien Abduction occurs.
  • Also when you are first abducted, you are restrained and taken by some automated system on a brief tour of a part of the alien vessel.
• Doom³ does this with the player character's arrival to the Mars base, up until all Hell literally breaks loose. It's one of the few versions of this trope that lets you slaughter your co-workers without consequence, before the big crisis even occurs.
• Red Faction, the tutorial, and the early part in the mines just before the rebellion starts.
• Clive Barker's Undying: The short segment where a maiden guides you from the manor entrance to Jeremiah's bedroom, which allows you to have a glimpse of the manor.
• Far Cry 2 begins with the protagonist being driven to his hotel from the airfield, with his driver giving some background exposition about the country he's just entered.
• The Darkness follows the Half-Life tradition by starting in first person, while riding a vehicle you are not controlling.
• The third and fourth Myst games have something similar. Until the inciting action that kicks off the plot, you're present at Atrus' home as his guest.
• The first actual level of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is Pearl Harbor. It involves a guided tour of the island by jeep by a friendly officer, before you are to report to the USS Arizona. You can guess what happens next.
• Portal 2 has many segments seemingly designed to show off just how big Aperture Laboratories is:
  • The game begins with Wheatley moving your room, with a crane, from the Relaxation Vault to an old testing track, allowing you to observe the dilapidation of the facility.
  • Just before the fight against GLaDOS, you crawl into a pneumatic transportation tube that pumps you through a whole series of tubes, to show how massive the testing facilities are, and how elaborate the transportation system is.
  • After Wheatley takes over Aperture Science, you fall down an elevator shaft in a sequence that is a minute or two long, just to indicate how far down the labs go.
• The second and third levels of Duke Nukem Forever take place at Duke's Vegas hotel, and allow the player to walk around Duke's highrise condo (and see his awards and magazine covers) before going down the elevator to the bottom floor for a TV show appearance, allowing you to walk through the halls and talk show set. Interestingly, these levels occur after the Game Within a Game Justified Tutorial where you wield the Devastator and face off against a boss. Also notable because Duke gains a permanent health bonus for doing things like winning at pool or admiring himself in the mirror, meaning that skipping straight to the action is inadvisable.
• Homefront begins with Robert Jacobs being arrested by North Korean forces in his apartment and forced onto a bus that travels through a warzone (complete with images of families being gunned down on the street in front of their children and prisoners being marched into other buses).
• In Soldier of Fortune II, the first level after the prologue mission in Prague takes you on a tour of the Shop headquarters, which becomes a battleground in the game's final mission.
• Perfect Dark features the Carrington Institute. It houses the game's tutorials, as well as a shooting range, and is accessible at any time from the main menu. Later in the game, it must be defended from dataDyne.
• Dishonored starts you off on a boat... all you can do is look around and listen to exposition, until you get to your destination. Once you have control, you meet the characters (The Spymaster, the Leader of the army, the Empress, and her daughter Emily), get a mini stealth tutorial, a fighting tutorial, and then the game begins.
• Quake IV
  • In the first mission, Matthew Kane takes a short stroll through a Strogg building before the actual combat begins.
  • A Drop Pod assault at the start of Data Storage Terminal, kicking off the final act of the game: The player character Kane has a rough landing when another pod catches fire from Anti-Air and clips his pod, leading to the pod crashing through multiple rooms in the tower landing zone.
• Star Wars: Republic Commando: Your arrival on Geonosis, as well as Kashyyyk.

Horror

• Slender: The Arrival begins with Lauren walking through the autumn woods to meet Kate, the protagonist of the first game. It'd be quite relaxing if it weren't for the eerie music and unnaturally-fast nightfall.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

• RF Online: If you're going to Ether, you have to get on a flight. You can move around but it takes five minutes before you can get off.
• The Overrealm zones in Everquest II have flying tours that you can access near the zone-in points. Unlike taxi flights, you're not able to jump off these flights, which are designed to show the player the various islands of each zone before beginning quests.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena

• Awesomenauts: A more interactive variant. The tutorial begins with a brief cutscene, but quickly allows the players to take control of Sheriff Lonestar, as he is instructed by his employer to complete various objectives around a slightly modified level of Ribbit IV, the first map the player will have access to.

Platformer

• Dynamite Headdy sort of has this. The first level is a fast forced-scroller where your character runs at the same speed as the screen, so you can get used to the basic controls and get a feel for the Mercy Invincibility that enemies get without having any impact on how quickly you finish the level.

Role Playing Game

• Persona:
  • The first several days of Persona 3 gradually introduce the different areas the protagonist can visit. The effect is more obvious in FES, where the Player Character automatically walks with a friend through different parts of town, giving the player a good look in the process.
  • Persona 4 does something similar, introducing the player to the city of Inaba and some of the characters therein. The plot gets started much faster than Persona 3, but the characters are understandably more cautious about getting involved in it, and it ends up taking about the same amount of time to get the game properly started.
  • Persona 5 also does this, but is even faster about getting to the plot than 4 was. The first school day of the game has you navigate the Tokyo subway system to get to school, which introduces you to the central hub of the town, lets you hear bits of plot and game themes from various NPCs, and establishes just how confused and lost the main character is at the start of the game (it can take a long time for players to find the Ginza line).
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim starts the player in chains on a cart where they are given some scene setting by fellow prisoners. The scene is notable for letting you know just enough of the setting to get by (there's a rebellion, these guys against these other guys), but telling you nothing about the history between the last game and this one (a span of two hundred years) aside from the fact that the Nine Divines are now the Eight Divines. You have to find out out the rest for yourself.
• Final Fantasy VII 's opening in Midgar, and your explorations of it in Crisis Core. For all the very interesting and visually appealing scenery, the party never explores more than a small percentage of it.
• Fallout 3 tours various areas of Vault 101 during the Justified Tutorial, some of which are otherwise inaccessable.
• Fallout 4 starts with you being given a small tour of your house in the Pre-War era and of Vault 111 before the main action begins. Later on in the game, if you join the Brotherhood of Steel, you're given an aerial sightseeing tour of the Commonwealth while riding a Vertibird to the Brotherhood of Steel's Cool Airship, the Prydwen. You also get a brief but representative tour aboard a fishing boat or a monorail when you first enter the separate maps of the Far Harbor or Nukaworld DLCs, respectively.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Dr. Mephesto's lab begins with you taking a tour via a tram. Mephesto even namedrops Half-Life itself before the ride begins.

Third-Person Shooter

• Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2, up until the first boss. And, to a lesser extent, before the planetary shield is destroyed.
• In Dead Space, you start off just cruisin' through space in your little ship, approaching the big mining-ship, having a bit of excitement on the landing, and then getting your first look around inside, while surrounded by friendly, heavily-armed Marines. Which is how you know that everything is going to go to hell in short order.
• Dead Rising starts with a helicopter ride into the city. You can see the first signs of the zombie infection, along with taking some pictures of it. Nailing all the pictures and doing the first escort mission (right outside the start) ad nauseum is actually good way to grind the first few levels.
• Dark Void starts you off as a random Resistance member flying around in your jetpack, in a quick Justified Tutorial of the flight controls, followed by a short aerial battle before you even see the actual protagonist.
• Scarface: The World Is Yours has much gameplay before the opening credits/theme song. Then you get Tony taking a somewhat leisurely drive to his lawyer's office.
• Duke's base in Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, which gets overrun in the post-apocalyptic future.

---