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The wise guide who teaches you the ropes, shapes your journey, and often dies so you can surpass them.
The mentor figure is a character who serves as the protagonist's teacher, guide, and moral compass -- often temporarily. In games, mentors serve practical narrative functions: they justify tutorials (someone is literally teaching you), establish world rules through in-character explanation, and create emotional stakes when they inevitably depart (through death, betrayal, or sacrifice). The mentor's departure is usually a pivotal moment that forces the player-character to stand on their own, mirroring the player's own growing mastery of game mechanics. The best mentors are complex characters in their own right, not just exposition dispensers who conveniently die at the act break.
Example
In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Great Deku Tree serves as Link's first mentor, dying after the tutorial dungeon and setting the entire quest in motion. In God of War: Ragnarok, Kratos himself becomes the mentor figure to Atreus, and the tension between protecting his son and letting him grow up drives the entire emotional narrative.
Why it matters
The mentor figure is one of storytelling's oldest archetypes because it mirrors the universal human experience of learning from elders and eventually surpassing them. In games, it does double duty by solving the tutorial problem while establishing one of the first emotional bonds the player forms.
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