Talk:BioShock Infinite/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 17:12, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, this is a pretty exhaustive article. My concern is that it needs a serious rewrite. A lot of the article is inaccurate or out of date due to being developed and written long before the game actually came out. For most games, this isn't an issue… but for Infinite, it most definitely is.

To wit, the comments about Columbia being a dystopia, or fueled by Nazism, are almost entirely sourced to the initial announcement of the game, informed by things like trinkets given to the reporters that don't actually make it into the game. Likewise, there's nothing in the game that describes multiple factions beyond the Vox Populi and Founders. A lot of the backstory seems not to necessarily apply to the game as it shipped (for example, the assertion that Elizabeth is the reason for the civil war.) Some of the info is now flat-out wrong: for instance, the tears don't affect people as described. The Boys of Silence don't appear to be blind at all anymore, considering you can run by them loudly and are only caught if within their beam.

Along with the accuracy issues are the fact that previews and development content crops up inappropriately and borders on the irrelevant. Frankly, it doesn't matter that the Revenge of the Jedi scene was originally in a 2012 media preview event and that it changed scenarios.

Finally, tenses are plain wrong throughout the article, i.e., The player will not directly control Elizabeth, Irrational Games has considered options for a multiplayer element.

Some other things:


 * Not counting the setting section, the plot and character section are 2,200 words, which seems pretty excessive. I don't think you need a full paragraph on every character to understand the plot.


 * The development section is a bit long-winded, but I think that would be helped by addressing the issues above (i.e., cutting the scenarios that didn't actually wind up in the game.)


 * I feel like the reception section is still a work in progress, especially regarding how a lot of what I would simply consider more negative commentary on the game is put into a "controversy" section; I think it would be better to include it with the other commentary. My gut reaction was also to suggest organizing the reception section by element rather than reviewer, although given that there are weighty chunks given over to more philosophical elements of the game, regarding the religious messages or the role of violence in the game, that might not be the best option either.


 * In terms of adding content to it, I noticed there have been a bunch of more recent articles that could add more support for the discussions about the role of violence in the game. Extra Credits, and Ars Technica (Actually I think this is a case where the discussion about the game is far more interesting and thought-provoking than the initial hype and reviews, but unless someone quotes me on that in IGN or whatever I suppose that shouldn't matter :P)


 * On the image front, I think there could be better use of non-free images than what's there. For one thing, there's no image of what gameplay actually looks like, as opposed to a lot of prerelease stuff that could probably go (I'm also not entirely sure that File:Bioshock-infinite-propaganda.jpg is actually non-free as it looks to me like a redraw of public domain work without enough changes to actually qualify for copyright. On the other hand, I'm not even sure that piece of work ended up in the final game so I think we can do without it either way.)

Given that a lot of the above issues are deeply structural, I'm failing the article as it stands. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk ) 23:24, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Regarding the Controversy section, I think a lot of that content would find a better place in a "Themes" section, worded slightly differently. I don't believe any VG FAs have this section, to my knowledge (Spec Ops: The Line has a rather well written one, though not a FA), so you'll have to base it on sections from film and book articles (e.g. Fight Club). Axem Titanium (talk) 19:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)