Talk:Halo 3: ODST/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: MuZemike 03:29, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Most the most part, pretty good. A few issues I have seen in the article:

Grammar/style/MOS issues

• Gameplay section

• • Since the player does not possess Master Chief's advanced armor and reflexes, he cannot jump as high or move as fast. Kind of ambiguous. You start with the "player" and then end with "he" which I'm assuming is the Rookie character.

• • It also includes an open world environment. What is "it" referring to? Having "it" in there makes it look like that sentence is misplaced or something. I'd clarify a bit more there as to what you mean.
    • The "it" part is corrected. I tried moving that sentence to the first paragraph as I think it fits better up there than in the 2nd paragraph. Feel free to move it around or perhaps expand on the concept if there are better options available. MuZemike 19:07, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
      • I expanded a bit on the open-world, so it now reads "The game features an open world environment in the fictional African city of New Mombasa." Anakinjmt (talk) 19:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
  • The team has a collective pool of lives, which is added to after set rounds,... do the number of lives increase after a set number of rounds? That could also be clarified a bit more there (I'm assuming a "set number" of rounds, BTW).

• • As players progress inside Firefight, they will get more and more characters to unlock. The second part of the sentence needs to be rewritten to better reflect what happens in the game as players progress.

• Synopsis section
  • I believe "Covenant", being a collective noun, is supposed to be used in the singular form, as already done in the other Halo articles. The sentences would need to be changed to reflect that.

• • It had downloaded the Superintendent's data into itself and Dare's mission is to escort it to safety. This needs a rewrite. Again, "it" seems ambiguous while the sentence quickly jumps to Dare's mission, which I don't think is written correctly or complements with the first part of the sentence (if what I said makes any sense).

• Release section
  • Alongside extensive promotions through Xbox Live, online, print, and television advertising. Sentence fragment. I'm not quite sure what's supposed to be said, so I have to leave it to you to insert whatever missing words needed there.

• Reception section
  • The contrast between the Rookie's nighttime segments and the more fast-paced vignettes was praised; Passive voice. Recommend making that active voice, including the reviewer who made said statement.

Verifiability issues

• In the Audio subsection, Because the game tells a "human story, not a cyborg story", O'Donnell said, the score was more "intimate and personal". The sentence needs a citation as we are dealing with a quote.

• In the Release section, This code is included only by certain retailers I am not seeing where this is verified.

Other things to remember

• Watch out for the 2nd-person "you". Should be third-person.

• Don't forget WP:ALT text in the images, which are required when this article approaches FA. (I'm saying "when" as opposed to "if" because I don't think it needs too much more to meet FA standards, apart from better sourcing in the Plot section.)

Otherwise, everything else looks pretty good. I'll put it on hold pending corrections to the issues noted above. MuZemike 03:29, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review! A couple of questions: What sentences in "Synopsis" aren't written in the proper form re: Covenant? As for "you", the only times I see it are for developer quotes... it would be kind of awkward to recast all those. Other than that, I think I've addressed your concerns. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

For the first question, I believe "Covenant" is a singular noun in this case, so the verb would need to also be singular. For example, During the events of the 2004 video game Halo 2, the Covenant discover the location of Earth and launch an assault on the city of New Mombasa in Africa. → should be discovers and launches, which I also believe is consistent with the other Halo articles that involve the Covenant.

For the second question, I meant more specifically in the Gameplay section where they were unquoted (I already went ahead and fixed those). MuZemike 16:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Concerning O'Donnell mentioning that the score was more intimate and personal, I'm pretty sure that was in either the most recent ViDoc or that behind-the-scenes video released shortly before ODST came out. I'll watch them again to verify, but I'm unsure how those would be cited. Any ideas? Anakinjmt (talk) 18:12, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a {{cite video}} template for stuff like that. MuZemike 18:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

David already added the source in there, and I verified it, so that's good. MuZemike 19:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

See my comment/query above with regards to the "open world environment" sentence. Unless there are better suggestions at the moment, I think that's it. Also, don't forget on citations #59 and #60 to use the {{cite web}} templates. MuZemike 19:16, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

• One more suggestion that I'd make is a bit more consistency with regards to the Rookie. I'm seeing the Rookie, "the Rookie", and just the Rookie so we need to pick one and go with it. Slightly related, but do we need to include "the" in italics/quotes? Wouldn't just "Rookie" or Rookie be best? It's not like his official name or title is "the Rookie", just like Master Chief isn't "the Master Chief." Anakinjmt (talk) 19:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I've made it uniform, save for the first mention where Rookie is put in quotes; I feel that makes it clearer that it's a moniker, not his real name. The citations are all formatted (I cut one because it wouldn't stand up to RS scrutiny at FAC, and its covered in the Bungie.net ref anyhow.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:39, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Right. If you look at WP:MoS#Use of "The" mid-sentence, the word "the" in this case would be lowercase while the actual title "Rookie" is obviously capitalized. MuZemike 23:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

All right. I'm guessing that settles the "Rookie" consistency issue. Passed. MuZemike 23:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)