As the text window appeared in front of her, Ryou couldn't help but smile a little as the welcome felt quite peaceful and somewhat nostalgic. The past year that she has spent alone inside her room gave her plenty of time to replay old games, so it was to be expected that this sort of thing felt quite familiar to her.
"Of course."
She responded to the text and audio that was presented to her and thus three new windows appeared in front of her. One with a blank avatar standing up similar to the portrait of a fictional character, the next was a status window that seemed to also be currently blank, and the third one simply had a long list of races to choose from.
[Please, scroll through the list of races and choose one to your liking. The information regarding it will be displayed and read out loud for you. Take your time, as your character will not be allowed to respect during your playtime.]
"As expected. The list is very long."
That was one of the game's main selling points. The fact that the customization was quite detailed, and in fact your character was able to choose from a grand list of races and backgrounds that would change your starting equipment and location as well as a sort of storyline that you were able to play alone or in company.
In many ways it took inspiration from classic RPGs while also incorporating the Roleplay quite heavily into the world, as the AI engine was incredibly advanced and the game was also seen as a testing ground for these sort of inventions.
Ryou decided to go with a Human Noble - Knight. She wasn't much of a fancy player herself and she had gotten a reserved spot for this much looked after background due to certain circumstances that included herself helping with some advertisement posts on the internet.
It was mainly gained by luck since the one that gave her the job was the advertisement manager and he was very respected by the devs so a single spot for a solo player wasn't something he couldn't get by asking.
As of this time Ryou gave a silent praise of gratitude to this unknown person before continuing to the stat window and proper character customization.
First came the stat window, and as expected it was rather simplistic and easy to understand. It goes as follows:
< S t a t u s >
STR 16
DEX 14
RES 14
WILL 14
INT 12
CHA 10
HP 160
STM 120
XP 0/100
It was a simple system of numbers. 10 was considered average for every race and it was the main value that was seen as the minimum for everything. The limits were unknown as the devs had not revealed a max level cap as of yet.
Once the stats were decided, she proceeded to the proper customization of appearance. There were a few choices of attires and weapons, so she scrolled through them with ease until she found what she thought would be more interesting to use. A Longsword and medium armor of padded clothes with bits of chainmail spread through vital spots.
The game had an easy to understand body damage thresholds controlled by the materials of the armor that was worn over the player's body, so it creates a trinity of damage. Cutting - Bludgeoning - Piercing. Each weapon is divided amongst these categories and they are very easy to understand at first.
The Armor types are also divided in Light - Medium - Heavy, and as such the balance is mostly kept through a self-sustaining system. During the Development updates, Ryou noticed that a few weapons were capable of dealing multiple types of damage depending on their use. And since the Longsword is mainly used for stabbing and cutting, it fills two of the three damage types, which would come very handy for someone that is planning on playing solo most of the time.
Plus, Ryou really liked the idea of a proper Knight aesthetic for her character, so it really complied to both mechanics and appearances. Next, her body. The game did advice to keep it relatively close to real life standards since otherwise it could physically harm your brain and sense of orientation for real.
She decided to keep her height as it was and merely change her hair and face, as to keep it easily concealed from her true person. Ryou chose long black hair, a darker tone of her own green eyes and a simple fair complexion that certainly gave her a sense of beauty, but at the same time a feeling of simpleness.
Once it was done, only the name was left. Due to her being one of the first players, she had quite the free space to chose from, so she went with something most people wouldn't probably do: Her own name. She wrote down Ryou with english letters and sent it to confirm.
"Nice."
She commented with the faintest glint of a smirk on her face as she noticed that the name wasn't taken, and so she proceeded onto the rest of the game. Ryou blinked and her body was transported from the lobby onto her starting location.
Nobody was around her, which seemed a little odd since the spots on the background were quite contested on the forums. She shrugged and thought nothing much of it, and thus she took a glance around her. It was just as described on the info pages of the game's website.
She was currently standing in the middle of some sort of training ground, a few knight NPCs walking here and there, training with their weapons and such.
Ryou rexplored her senses to make sure the helmet was working properly, and once she caught a good sense of direction, she approached a tall middle aged man that was meant to be her trainer for a good first half of the game.
With words building up in her mind, she thought that she should be a little more social since she wanted to be friendly with people and all since she still has to catch up with society, so she smiled a little and rested her hand on her sword's pommel.
"Good afternoon, my Lord."
It was a rather firm and somewhat stiff greeting, her nerves had gathered the best of her and now she was sweating cold. Her expression was even worse than normal, and her usual frowning resting face became more noticeable.
Certainly she would need some great amount of work to pull this off.