The official site's "prologue" section carried the words initially played during Final Fantasy Tactics title music:
'A warrior takes sword in hand,
Clasping a gem to his heart.
Engraving vanishing memories into the sword,
He places finely honed skills into the stone.
Spoken from the sword, handed down from the stone...
Now the story can be told...'
Now for the characters:
- Ashe, 19 years old, heir to the throne of Dalmasca, leader of the resistance.
- Vaan, 17 years old, orphan, member of the resitance, wants to become a sky pirate later on.
- Fran, age unknown, a Viera also member of your party, particuliarly gifted with weapons.
- Balthier (alt. romanization Balflear), 22 years old, apparently one of those sky pirates Vaan wants to become, wields guns, loves the freedom not to belong to any specific country.
- Penelo (alt. romanization Pannero), 16 years old, an energic youth, a skilled dancer and singer. Whether this translates into her battle abilities remains to be seen.
- Reks, Vaan's elder brother and only sibling, whom you play during the tutorial battles and who's 17 at that time (remember, this takes place 2 years before the actual story).
- Basch, 36 years old, a senior knight of Dalmasca, involved in the dramatic events around Dalmasca's fall, who leads you through the tutorial battles.
- Penelo has a close relationship with Vaan.
- Penelo lost her parents in a previous war. Aside from her artistic skills, she is also a gifted martial artist, but still lacks practical battle experience.
- Penelo was taught by her elder brother (she apparenly had several), a member of the order of knights, who might possibly be deceased as well.
- Fran and Balthier are supposed to be equal partners from way back.
- It appears now quite clearly that Ashe has been to her wedding. Whether it was completed or interrupted by an invasion, or she's a widow, or her husband ran away or whatever is not known. We only know that he's that sliver-haired unknown character in the trailers, that they seem to share the same sword at different times and that they were about to get married together. It might become clearer later on.
- The staff has hinted that there were several more key characters still about to be revealed, several of them playable ones.
- From the E3 shots and videos, it looks like the party will have up to 8 playable members, which can be switched freely around as long as you're not fighting.
- Matsuno mentioned in mag interviews that the story would focus on Vaan and Penelo, and added that the stories of Balthier and others may become the stuff for other games. This latter comment was made tongue-in-cheek, because the interviewer mentioned that Balthier was Sakaguchi's favourite char.
- While Basch and Ashe bear the burden of the kingdom and of politics on their shoulders, Balthier and Fran live a freer life, one which Vaan and Penelo aspire to. During the course of the game, though, they will eventually come to realize that this apparent freedom has its own share of sacrifices, and that true freedom may be harder to achieve than they expect.
- There are also male Viera in Ivalice, but they stay mostly out of sight.
- Apparently, Balthier and Fran are wanted for a hefty reward.
- From the latest Famitsu issue (Vol 20/2004), some new background on Ashe, translated by ffxiionline's Khalalahey: Ashe is the youngest of nine children the King of Dalmasca had. Eight of them were male and had died in war or disease when the King was around 49 years old. This is the case that she is the only child left to take the throne. She has a serious personality but acts calmly and knows and understands what is happening around her. The people of Dalmasca look up to her to bring the peace to the kingdom again. She doesn't always speak her mind, but deep within her, she feels the need to escape from the pressure.
As for the Races of Ivalice:
- Humes are the dominant race in Ivalice, representing about 40% of the population. Obviously, Humes have a great cultural diversity depending on their origins. They tend to get along fine with races of equal intelligence like Viera, but extend domination on the less bright species, which are often used for menial labour, like the Bangaa and the Seeq.
- The slender Viera have a longer life expectancy than humes, and can be either dark-skinned (Rava Viera) or light-skinned (Veena Viera). Viera tended to stick to their woods until the hume wars threatened their homelands about 25 years ago. Since then, the Viera have more or less reluctantly started getting involved in hume affairs. The offspring of mixed Rava and Veena origins were the fastest to adapt, while the pure-blood have tried to retire to more remote forests.
- The Bangaa come in four major varieties depending on their scales' colours. The live a bit longer than Humes, and their overall lizard-evolved toughness makes them fit for soldiering roles. Humes, however, tend to limit their advancement opportunities. Finally, the race isn't really fit for magic except the most basic spells - there are exceptions, though: a handful of Bangaa have mastered advanced and Bangaa-specific spells.
- The nimble Moogles are also among the smarter races. They are well integrated into the Hume society, while still having their own capitol. Their small size gave them advantages working on machinery, a task the race excells in. Of course, not all of them are techies, and they hold a variety of professions. They also tend to make excellent mages.
- The barbaric, pig-faced Seeq are a tough and brutal race, mostly used as cannon-fodder, prison wardens or any other position where agressive strength is required. Severely lacking intelligence, they barely speak the Hume language, and are generally considered as the scum of society.
Continued on the next page.
. I spent $80 on a game that had less options than a PS1 game. 
Meow! (='.'=)
