Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Final Fantasy XIII/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Laser brain 22:17, 22 February 2011 [1].

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Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy XIII (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Final Fantasy XIII/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Final Fantasy XIII/archive2

Nominator(s): Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:33, 27 January 2011 (UTC), PresN 20:05, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• I am nominating this for featured article because it is currently a GA and after undergoing an extensive copyediting today, I am nominating this for FA status to see whether it would become a Featured Article. I believe this article is of high quality and well-suited for FA status. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:33, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
• I am co-nominating this with Sjones; we've both spent a long time on this article and are ready to deal with any concerns that arise. We are also both in the wikicup; while that had no bearing on our work on this article courtesy demands that I let everyone know. --PresN 20:05, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
• Dab/EL check- There's no dab links, but there are two no dead links in the article. GamerPro64 (talk) 15:25, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• Which ones are those? Nothing's showing up for me in the tool. --PresN 20:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Hm. Guess I was wrong. My mistake. GamerPro64 (talk) 21:35, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - I think there are better sources of opinion to use than Electronic Theatre. I think you could pick a better screenshot, one that shows an enemy clearly, and maybe shows an attack. - hahnchen 22:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• The screenshot has been replaced. --PresN 02:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Pulled the Electronic Theatre review as well, by the way. --PresN 01:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose as per criterion 1.(b) and 1.(c); there are several essential sources that haven't been exploited to make the article truely comprehensive. See Talk:Final Fantasy XIII#Ultimania development information. Jonathan Hardin' (talk) 15:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

We would have to provide a translation for the Ultimania sources. We'll probably see what we can do. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 15:12, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that not using those sources means that the article fails 1b and 1c. For one, the sources are unusable- none of us read Japanese, and as magazine scans they aren't google-translatable. That said, regardless of that, can you prove that they contain information that should be but is not included in the article? --PresN 20:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how these sources being "unusable" for us mean they're useless for the readers. As I said before, this topic is about a Japanese game; it's perfectly normal that such a topic would require dealing with Japanese sources. Don't get me wrong, I know it's unfortunate, it's frustrating, but it can't really be helped. As for the information they contain, I don't exactly know what information there is in those books, but that's precisely why they should be translated. We won't know until we do. For one, there is 21 pages about the voice actors' performance in those books, whereas there is literally not a single word about it in the article. Overall the talk page I linked to has about 70 pages of development information -- it is highly improbable that the article already contains even half of this information. The Ultimania guides are not "magazines"; they are the game's official companion books containing extensive and precious development information straight from the developers' mouths -- most of which (as the rare few translations of other Ultimania guides have shown) is never found anywhere else. Jonathan Hardin' (talk) 10:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I am working on this, but you're going to have to accept that I won't be able to get it all. For example- in the Ultimania Omega, which is a bit over 500 pages, the first 200 is a reprint of the story with some notes- can't really use that, seeing as we're already cutting the story down quite a bit in the summary. The next 100 pages is tons of artwork- really interesting, but not useful for the article. 400-500 is a transcription of the side lines npcs say, the above mentioned discussions with the voice actors, and a reprint of the story from the pal special edition. Pages 508—511 are an interview with Toriyama. Of this, I've been able to find bits of descriptions about the characters and fal'Cie (too detailed for this article, but great for the character subarticle) and most of the Toriyama interview, of which a lot has been made irrelevant by the announcement of the sequel and much of the rest was in the article already. I put in what I could, but Ultimania's aren't the holy grail you think they are- they flip back and forth between super-detailed backstory information that's too much for an encyclopedia article, and fluff. People don't buy these, and they are not produced, for their in-depth analysis of the development process of the game. They buy them because they have hundreds of pages of artwork. I'm going to keep going, but I think opposing because we're not using a specific source that we don't have real access to is a bit much. As long as there isn't a translation available I'm not going to be able to read most of it, and getting a translation without actual text, not scans, is pretty much impossible. --PresN 19:54, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I've gotten a bit out of the Scenario Ultimania, but I've hit the bottom of the barrel. If the books ever get translated officially or unofficially, I'll revisit the issue, but for now there's nothing more to be added from those sources. --PresN 01:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

• Support - Read through the article. I have played the game, and this is a very detailed and comprehensive article. It reads really well; Nicely done guys--CallMeNathan • Talk2Me 04:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Comments: I'm a big fan of the FF series, so I'll have a go. Here are my comments:

• "Starting development in 2005 and first announced at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2006, Final Fantasy XIII is..." — Something's wrong with this sentence structure. The way it's worded, FFXIII started its own development in 2005.

• Reworded, though I personally don't have a problem with a little personification in this case. --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• The amount of non-free media seems a bit high compared to what I'm used to seeing when dealing with book articles, where we're usually restricted to just one. The box art is good for the infobox, and the screenshot is good for illustrating gameplay. I'm not sure if the cast image can be justified if the number of these images has to be minimized. But I'm sure this will be addressed when a more experienced reviewer does an image review.

• Well, in a book article there's nothing you can show besides the cover. Here, we spend a good amount of time talking about characters that have a defined, visual appearance, so it is helpful to the reader to show that appearance. --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• However, it's not clear who is who in the image, except for Lightning. But I will reserve judgment until someone who is more knowledgeable about images does an image review. – VisionHolder « talk » 04:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• File:FF13battle.png is a little too small to be useful at 250px. Personally, I would bump it up a bit... but other reviewers may disagree.

• I'm worried that any bigger would overwhelm the text on most monitors. --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• The concepts of fal'Cie and l'Cie are very hard to follow in the lead. I don't know what to suggest, though. It might help to avoid as many game terms as possible and just try to tell the story in more general terms so that the readers get a general picture of what the storyline is about.

• That's always been a problem with the game- the terms are odd and slow down the reading, especially in limited spaces. I reworked it to not use the terms l'Cie and fal'Cie- does it work better now? --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• It's a lot better now, and I'm sure as other reviewers swing by, it will only get better. – VisionHolder « talk » 04:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• The "Story" section appears to be lacking some citations. Also the second paragraph of "Release and post-release" appears to lack a citation at the end.

• That's normal for the story section of video game articles- it's implicitly sourced to the game itself. I prefer to source it explicitly to specific quotes whenever possible, as a bonus, but in cases like the ending where things are shown on screen without the characters talking about them, that's not possible. Not sure what happened there with the Release citation, I'll fix that. --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
• Done- could have sworn that I had one for that, not sure where it went. --PresN 01:40, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• If that's how it works on these kinds of articles, then so be it. Thanks for the fix. – VisionHolder « talk » 04:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• You cite a bunch of game reviews which I can guarantee will not be there a few years from now. Please consider archiving them through one of the archiving services, such as WebCite and Archive.org. There are "archiveurl" and "archivedate" parameters you can use in the cite templates.

• A good idea, though linkrot isn't as much of a problem for AAA title reviews on big-name websites. I got everything I could get a webarchive for; I'll go back with webcite in a bit. --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Otherwise, the article looks pretty good. I'll reserve my final judgment until the concern mentioned by Jonathan Hardin' is resolved. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for reviewing, replied inline. --PresN 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• No problem. Nice article. I can't wait 'til I can afford to buy a PS3 and the game so I can play. – VisionHolder « talk » 04:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Support I've enjoyed reading the article more than the game. Also, I saw Category:Video game controversies and since the "Controvery" section was removed, it doesn't need it anymore. GamerPro64 (talk) 01:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I've removed that. --PresN 02:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Getting there .... Some good things. I did a random check in the middle. No doubt the rest of the text needs careful scrutiny too:

• The development of. This caught my eye. Increasingly, telegram language is creeping into English, among professionals too.
• Is there a smoother order? "Square Enix believed that developing a new engine, though it would initially cause a delay in the game's development, would speed up development time later in the project." -> "Square Enix believed that developing a new engine would speed up development time later in the project, though it would initially cause a delay in the game's development." Do think of ordering when you review commas with lots of commas in them.
• longer delay? "The delay was larger than originally anticipated, however, as the engine had to accommodate the requirements of several other games in addition to XIII." And "however" could go first ... "However, the delay ...".
• Again I'm having trouble with the order: "as at the time there was no playable form of the game" -> "since there was no playable form of the game at the time". "As" is often better as "since" or "because", when causal rather than expressing a temporal parallelism.
• Commas: perhaps the first two could go, to make it smoother? "The party infiltrates Cocoon, with the goal of preventing its destruction. They head towards Orphan, only to find that the Calvary have been turned into Cie'th. The party encounters Dysley and overpowers him, but Orphan awakens and merges with Dysley, then compels Fang to finish her Focus as Ragnarok while the others (except Vanille) are seemingly transformed into Cie'th."
• "Art director Isamu Kamikokuryou revealed that many additional scenarios that were functioning in an unreleased build during development, such as Lightning's home, were left out of the final version due to concerns about the game's length and volume." Careful of "that ... that". No easy solution, though. And the order? "Art director Isamu Kamikokuryou revealed that many additional scenarios such as Lightning's home, which were functioning in an unreleased build during development, were left out of the final version due to concerns about the game's length and volume." Maybe.
• Reported speech tags: "said" is the default, and is not too repetition-sensitive. "Stated" I always find a bit stilted. "Kamikokuryou stated that the content [said the content ...?] they cut was, in itself, enough to make another game.[59] Toriyama stated that [According to Toriyama, the cuts?] the cuts were made in "various stages of [the game's] development"; some of the content was removed just prior to before the game's completion.[53] The game, unlike previous titles in the series, does not include any explorable town areas; Toriyama stated in an interview ...". One more thing: after the semicolon is still Toriyama's reported speech? Or is it WP's intercession? If the former, consider: ... development", and that some of .... Tony (talk) 10:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC) PS and "not ... any" is usually better as "no": "includes no explorable". Tony (talk) 10:14, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• I've gone through and fixed these; I'll make another pass through the rest of the article as well. Apparently the copy-editor we got was more tolerant of my general overuse of commas and reversed clauses than would be ideal. --PresN 19:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• Ran through the rest of the article with your comments in mind. Thank you for the review! --PresN 19:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

• Since I've commented on the gameplay and plot sections in past informal reviews, I'll recuse myself from those sections specifically.
• As for the rest, Jonathan Hardin' for failing 1b and 1c. Lack of ability to translate it no excuse. There are machine translators out there and you can ask around for help at some wikiprojects or outside Wikipedia if you need help translating.

• If you know of any machine translators that can translate non-OCR'd scans of pages, let me know. I've used everything that I can find that has been translated into English. --PresN 01:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• Abby Finereader (newer versions, like 13+)陣内_Jinnai 01:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• That...uh...wow. I admit that I was being a bit sarcastic, but that does actually seem to work. It's by no means perfect, but looks like I can get semi-readable chunks out of the images. Right, should have more info added after work today. --PresN 17:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• • Toriyama wanted the game to be "the ultimate single player RPG [role-playing game]. -any reason you don't just link to role-playing game#single player rather than have the brackets?
    • Changed; it's because I thought you weren't supposed to link things inside of quotes. --PresN 00:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
  • The sentance For much of the game's development, every asset or model in the game was developed to be viewable from every angle, regardless of how it was to be used in the game in terms of viewing angle or duration. seems out-of-place and feels tacked on to the paragraph which talks about how content was removed.
    • Cut; at one point the section was leaning towards how much they had done that they didn't need to, but further sources bent it towards how much they made that they had cut. --PresN 00:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
  • The third paragraph, the shortest of them, is the most heavily laden with quotes. While they are nice additions, I feel that one could be better written.
    • Paraphrased a quote, so that the paragraph wasn't so unbalanced.--PresN 00:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
• Release and post-release
  • The game includes an "Easy" mode option, and features the English voices. I know i said i wasn't going to talk about gameplay, but why isn't the "easy" mode mentioned in the gameplay section? Even if its only for select versions I find it strange the first time its mentioned is in the release section.
    • Easy mode didn't materially change gameplay. The gameplay section discusses the gameplay mechanics and how things work; it does not give a value judgement as to how difficult the game is. There is no reference point to discuss what the difference is for easy mode- all of the gameplay elements are the same. --PresN 00:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
      • I would still expect there to be a sentance saying an Easy mode was added in X version and nothing more. That is not a value judgement. It's a declaritatory statement. The reader can make their own value judgement as to why. Sticking at the end just raises the question why it wasn't mentioned earlier when it was so important to mention it there.陣内_Jinnai 01:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
• Reception
  • Since there was obviously both positive and negative views on this, there seems to be probably some unintended positive bias here. FE: the remarks about reviews that are more negative are also followed up by how they liked something in the game while the reverse ins't true for those that generally praised it, ie the article does not mention what aspects they took issue with (and looking at some of the reviews they do take some things to task). As mentioned, I don't think this was intentional, but it does skirt WP:NPOV as FF13's reception has been mixed.
    • Mucked with it a bit- the main offender was Edge, where I said the reason they gave the game a 5/10 and then immediately said something about what they liked. Overall, though, the section is divided up into aspects of the game, not by reviewer- do recall that no matter what the loud public perception was on the internet, these reviewers gave it an average of an 83/100- a fairly respectable score, if low for an Final Fantasy game. Most reviewers liked most aspects of the game, they just didn't like the linear part of it. --PresN 01:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
      • • Given the amount of reception on the game's linear plotline, i'd consider seperating that into another subsection as it takes up most of the game's reception which indicates its relative importance.陣内_Jinnai 01:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
• I'm not sure if the sequal should be placed at the bottom. IMO is should be closer to development and release sections, but its not a big issue.陣内_Jinnai 18:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Responded to most of your comments in-line; I'll do the Review section one soon. --PresN 00:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Responded to all of them. --PresN 01:10, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• • • • Okay, most of the stuff I have issue with was taken care of, but as long as the first issue is outstanding, I cannot support this nomination. FAs are suppose to be exhaustive and use every known source. It's pretty clear that there is more info not in use that could very likely greatly improve this article. To be fair, I'm not applying a standard to you I would not apply to myself; it is part of the reason I haven't nominated Popotan here as I know of a source (and have access to it) that gives more development/creation info, but translating it is time difficult.陣内_Jinnai 01:50, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
• Comment on 1(b) and 1(c) I think it is valid to expect that high quality foreign sources are used, if superior to what is available in English. But by the same token, I think there is an onus on opposers to demonstrate how an article is incomplete as a result of not using them (b), or why a particular foreign language source should be assumed superior to presently used English ones (c). —WFC— 07:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
  • For example, the Ultimania pages mentioned include 21 pages of the voice actors talking about their performance in the game, whereas there is literally not a single word about this subject in the article. This is an example; as said above, there are 70 pages of extensive developer interviews available in total. Jonathan Hardin' (talk) 10:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
    • That alone makes is enough.陣内_Jinnai 17:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.