I'm in the process of making an interactive tutorial, it just didn't make it in for this build. I also intend to make a help directory, and break up the walls of text into manageable reading bits, delivering a specific piece of information. The intent is that with the interactive tutorial, is to teach all of the basics of gameplay, and the help directory is used to refresh oneself on a particular topic, or learn about a more advanced mechanic. Also, most of the initial text can be skipped and read again later, either with the Help/Tutorial menus, or accessing it via the Pause Menu (esc).
Never played a final fantasy game. Most of the RPGs that I played always asked you up front to design your characters. However, they never really bothered to explain what different things will do. I tried to make the user informed about what each choice does... maybe I failed to provide enough instruction.
In most games, the name of a character is irrelevant. Even in story driven games like Mass Effect, your name is irrelevant except for your last name, which is Shepard. The reason I mention that the name has no relevance is that all the previous choices HAVE relevance. Thus, the player can name their character as they so please, and have no concern for the consequences.
The issue is that the characters are basically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Well, at least the "bodies" are. What I mean is that the Chaos God has trapped your soul in the Cataclysm of Chaos, and whenever you go insane, the Chaos God destroys your body, creates a new one, and sticks your soul into the new body. So, in a lot of ways your body is simply a temporary vessel, being used to accomplish goals until it's usefulness runs out, and the cycle repeats. Every time you go insane, you generate a brand new character, and are told that you entered the Cataclysm of Chaos as that person, when in reality, it is just something created with certain memories applied to the body. At least, that is how I was thinking of doing the lore. ... However, giving each character more backstory could be beneficial, so I'll look into doing that and add more character to the characters.
The secondary purpose of the interactive tutorial is to help the player figure out what kind of character they want to play as. However, with that said, you can always change your playstyle by putting the effort into whatever way you want to play. As an example, you might want to play as a powerful spellsword. You might choose choices to give your Physique a large starter advantage and then focus on building up Intelligence, and thus be able to build both attributes reasonably well. But, that is more for advanced players. The game gets a lot of inspiration from Elder Scrolls games, in that you can be whatever you want to be, but your starter choices make certain things easier and others harder. But, with enough diligence, you can take that berserker nord, and turn into an exemplary thief.
The last point is Attribute Training in a nutshell. If you focus on melee/martial, you train Physique. If you focus on ranged/stealth stuff, you train Dexterity. Etc... It is just that your starter choices impact how easily it is to train different Attributes.
Thanks for the feedback, and I'll see about integrating some changes into the next build.
