Talk:Exdeath/GA1

GA Review
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Nominator: 03:54, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: SnowFire (talk · contribs) 05:46, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this one. (Wouldn't normally have a bunch of GA reviews open simultaneously, but given that the other two are waiting on feedback and short anyway...) SnowFire (talk) 05:46, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Overall, looks good. Images are appropriately tagged, no copyvio, etc. Usual disclaimer goes here that any prose suggestions are just that, suggestions, and you should feel free to push back or revise if you prefer the wording as is, unless something's really wrong.

This strikes me as overly defensive writing, as if we need to reassure the reader that no, Exdeath is taken seriously. I'm pretty doubtful - the subject of commentary, sure, but I'm sure people have written more commentary on, say, most FF7 characters. And we can also presume that there wasn't commentary before he debuted! "Commentary on Exdeath has generally been mixed" perhaps? I don't think the source used on this in the body is strong enough to support this as lede-relevant. Nit: WP:DUPLINK has always had it okay and expected to repeat links in both the lede & the body, and it was revised a year or so ago to even allow a link-per-section if desired. FF5 is an extremely relevant link, so I'd definitely link it here, too. I understand that this is a brief summary not a full FF5 plot breakdown, but I feel like there was at least some distance here. Galuf dies substantially earlier in World 2 while Our Heroes take out... crystal seals or something? Their world's crystals? Beats me. Then the other set of crystals randomly breaks at the end of World 2. But these sentences make it sound like two separate crystal incidents in Book 2 are the same incident. Maybe "After Exdeath's defeat, the other world's set of crystals cause the two worlds to recombine"? It sure would be nice if World 2 had a real name! (side chatter) I guess this is fine given that the character originated in gaming, but I'm a bit skeptical of such appearances as Wikipedia-worthy. Certainly you don't see every Star Trek character have a sentence saying "they appear in the Star Trek Customizable Card Game". This is not a request to remove it, but I also don't think it's necessarily good practice. Something like Sephiroth having a cameo in Kingdom Hearts is fine, but Sephiroth (like everything else FF) appearing in the FF card game, eh whatever. (side chatter) Same thought here - this is a sufficiently minor cameo it gets a shrug. On one hand, this is what the source says. On the other hand, the source is Screen Rant, and it seems like he's purely going off Amano's initial artwork rather than some knowledge of FF5 development. But all of Amano's designs got heavily changed? I wouldn't treat this as particular evidence that Square was going to exactly mimic Amano's initial guesses given that they clearly didn't do that very often. I would suggest rephrasing to something safer as "Early concept art showed Exdeath as a large horned black centaur with a cape and a sword" and not make any claims about development, unless the Boss Fight books book covered it (I seem to recall it including lots of juicy development details, so if any source would be trustworthy, it'd be that one). I think this sentence needs some reworking. "Posterity" is used unusually here (I get that he means "long-term impact" but it reads more literally as "no real-world children"), and wouldn't Exdeath not be present after being defeated? I'd suggest something like "Removille wrote that as Exdeath was unambiguously evil and nihilistic, defeating him made little impact on the player, and reduced the emotional impact of the game as a whole." This is a really long sentence, and don't you mean "his presence at"? I'd suggest chopping this into two sentences. Nit: Bezna is misspelled. But also, I don't really get the impression Bezna is a journal. https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/58171/ says "It was also the name of a zine published between 2011 and 2014" and it's being sold as an ebook on Amazon for $10. Rather, it's one of those groups that publishes short story / essay collections. A good friend was in that scene for awhile, and while there's certainly some good stuff there, it's much closer to "blog post in printed form with an editing pass" than "published journal article." (And also usually extremely, extremely weak sales - we're talking "all the friends & family the authors in the collection can convince to buy the book.") So going back to the lede, I wouldn't necessarily play this off as serious literary criticism that shows how respected Exdeath is...  but I'm judging from afar, and presumably you read the source, so maybe I'm off? Anyway, it's certainly still usable, but I would cite it like a magazine article with just "Author Deanna Khamis praised Exdeath as an example..." Looking good! SnowFire (talk) 06:30, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Since Exdeath's debut, he has been the subject of significant commentary
 * Fixed.
 * and the use of horror within the franchise.
 * It's unique enough as a statement though I feel it helps offer a little more to the reader to help grasp at a glance discussion around the character instead of strictly "he did or didn't suck as a villain".
 * As introduced in the 1992 role playing game Final Fantasy V
 * Fixed.
 * They manage to escape, but through his machinations Exdeath tricks them into destroying his world's crystals, and he kills Galuf in the process. The crystal's destruction causes his world and the parallel world to recombine
 * Tried rewriting this to be a little smoother. And yes the multiple worlds does make it complex.
 * Outside of video games, cards for Exdeath and Neo Exdeath have also been made for the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game
 * A "minion" companion character of Exdeath that follows players around was also released as an in-game item for Final Fantasy XIV.
 * These two are standard for these articles to illustrate outside usage and promotion. It helps give the reader a broader sense of how a company uses or references something, even if in some cases like the card game one would assume it's standard (as compared to, say, citing actual cameo appearances in stuff like fighting game backgrounds, which doesn't really tell the reader anything)
 * Neo Exdeath's design went through a significant change during development, originally created as a large horned black centaur with a cape and a sword
 * Fixed.
 * However because he was just an "unambiguous character, stupidly evil, totally nihilistic", Exdeath's presence invoked no questions or emotion from the player upon defeating him, and not only gave him no posterity but impacted response to the game itself.
 * Fixed
 * He added that though the character lacked personality, at the same time his presence as almost every major event in the game pushing the world closer to destruction made him work "wonderfully as a villain simply by being competent and threatening", and helped him set apart from other characters in the same "dark lord" archetype common to such games.
 * I kept it as one but rewrote and simplified it a ltitle, does this flow better?
 * Author Deanna Khamis in a paper examining the horror of time for the journal Benza
 * Fixed

I think I addressed everything, take a gander. I did add a small fix because I realized at the end I mention Bartz in the reception but didn't actually say *who* he was in the body, so that should be fixed also in the first paragraph of appearances.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks, looks better.

The new phrasing on the Galuf plot point is definitely better, but I still think the sentence structure implies incorrectly that this is the same incident. If nothing else, perhaps just add the word "later" to add some distance, i.e. "The destruction of the crystals later causes his world and the parallel world to recombine."
 * destroying his world's own elemental crystals and kills Galuf in the ensuing battle. The crystal's destruction causes his world and the parallel world to recombine.

Hmm, this might be an interesting larger question for the VG Characters project. For what it's worth, there's an upcoming Magic: The Gathering "Universes Beyond" set that's Final Fantasy themed (link) where I imagine it's quite likely most FF characters will get another cameo there...  albeit in the form of being 1/300 of the product. This strikes me as relevant for the Final Fantasy series article but a tough sell for each individual character in the MTG-FF set, unless something major is up (e.g. if hypothetically a minor Star Wars character had an entire Star Wars minis / Star Wars CCG / etc. expansion themed after them and expanded their personal story, then sure.). Anyway, maybe this is standard for VG characters, but I suspect it might not be standard for characters-in-general. I checked Naruto Uzumaki and don't see a mention of his appearance in the Naruto CCG, for example. Appearing as a fighter in a fighting game like Dissidia (Exdeath) or the Nartuo fighting games (Naruto) makes sense as relevant because that's like 1/20-1/30 of the cast, but just a card or three in a card game with hundreds of cards is less relevant IMO. Or for another example, FA Tasha Yar doesn't mention what I'm sure are numerous appearances in random side Star Trek novels, or stuff like cards in the Star Trek CCGs. Maybe that's a gap, but still.
 * Cameos in FF14 / TCG

Anyway per above this is definitely more a borderline "editor's choice" matter not a "reject GA over it", but I could see a hypothetical FAC of a character expecting secondary coverage rather than a primary source to prove such a cameo experience "mattered". SnowFire (talk) 18:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it's enough of a fringe case to mention because it's something tangible, and to be fair being a character in a series doesn't always guarantee it. I think this is actually the first objection I've ever had to this material in articles, and looking at stuff like Lulu (Final Fantasy) or similar ones I do feel there's a consensus this doesn't fall outside the scope of inclusion. I mean with Naruto it makes sense not to include it there simply because...there's so much Naruto merch already. Listing everything would be impossible. Something like Exdeath has a much smaller pool by comparison.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 18:20, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me now. As mentioned before, passes the other GA criteria on neutrality, stability, etc. As one proviso, I'm AGFing some of the off-line references as I don't have access to e.g. Ultimania to verify those references, but the Kohler reference checks out, as do some of the web references I checked. Nice work! SnowFire (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2024 (UTC)