Originally Posted by
Wolf Kanno
The difference is that the tutorial school in earlier games is just a place where random people tell you the basics of the game. In VII, its played in reverse with people asking Cloud how to do stuff so Cloud is in effect the teacher instead of the other way around. That's why I said not to confuse it with some of the later tutorial schools cause its a bit different from a story standpoint cause you can skip the tutorial schools in earlier games cause they only serve as a gameplay reference but in VII, they help to establish Cloud's false identity and later games simply weave it into pauses in the story.