Hate this take. This lead us down the path of the first 1-2 hours of every AAA game these days having unskippable tutorials, aimed seemingly at a person who has never played a videogame before. I remember games like King's Field because they didn't tell you anything. Here's an island to explore, there's a bad thing happening here, good luck! 30 seconds later you're getting one shot by an 8ft-tall land squid. Fuck me - that sticks with you.
If a developer is adamant about explaining everything to you, why not put it in the manual? Read the manual if you want every mechanic explained in detail, otherwise, let me people get straight to the good stuff.
Unskippable tutorials are a plague.
And you are right that many games are plastered with them.
Especially AAA, because AAA aims at casuals, and apparently casuals have never played games before (idk devs' reasoning, either, it's weird).
But the solution here is not to go back to the times of the Ancients with external manuals.
The solution is skippable tutorials and other in-game means.
Some games like Civilization do this exceptionally well by having what is essentially an in-game wiki as well as in-game advisors (optional and unintrusive) to guide you.
Now, you could say that an in-game wiki isn't really much different from a manual...