Wikipedia:Peer review/Halo: Reach/archive2

Halo: Reach

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Looking for more comments on all aspects, especially IRT line edits. Provide a solid edit and suggestions and you're more than welcome to badger me in the future for one :)

Thanks, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:25, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• Sources are not consistent, ex: Retrieved 7/27/2011, May 30, 2011, 2010-02-24 and IGN, IGN, IGN.com. If you're going with "IGN", I think ".com" would only be used if the source address themselves with that, like 1UP.com.
• Should MTV.com be in italics?
• Remember, you can set |deadurl=no for archived urls that are still active.
• Not sure about "US$" in prose. Is the first instance suppose to be wiki-linked? If so, I'm assuming after that only the dollar sign will be needed for the rest of the article. « ₣M₣ » 18:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I'll get working on those tech things. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:03, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Doing a hardcopy copyedit. As usual, feel free to revert or modify any copyedited text. I'll try to target things that have gotten my FACs in trouble recently. ZeaLitY [ Talk - Activity ] 22:44, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Only notes:

• "Every interacting object in Reach produces two sounds"...something to clarify this statement. Readers might be expecting two sounds in the example, but there's only just the crunching metal one.
• Apparently, there's a title update coming soon, with a lot of changes (like armor lock getting nerfed). Definitely needs to be written into the article once it comes out.
• At this point, I would just recommend my "paragraph" approach, which means working on presentability in terms of paragraph aesthetics. If a sentence or trivium about something is hanging out there, find a paragraph to absorb it. If a paragraph in a certain section is looking small, see if it can be absorbed, or see if it can be beefed up. And then see if overly large paragraphs might be split, and so on. For me, this process always makes me look for more information to round out the subject, and also ensure the paragraphs follow logical orders and flow smoothly. (A lot of Reach looks good already, of course).
• Oh, as a final thing, I know Wikipedia isn't a game guide, but some more on Reach's many multiplayer game modes might be warranted. There's a lot of extra stuff out there, like Living Dead or SWAT. Seasoned Halo players will know that these are in Reach or assume they're included, but non-initiates probably need to be exposed to this info in the article. Good luck. Tell me if it gets nominated for FAC. ZeaLitY [ Talk - Activity ] 03:20, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I definitely need to add info about the title update, and you're right about the stubby sentences; I think it needs a little more expansion rather than cutting, but I do need to address that. I'm unsure about adding more about Reach's modes considering there's lots of opinion to the sense that it does fall under GUIDE, but I'll look into it. I tried reworking the audio part to make it clearer; how does it look? Thanks again. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:52, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks great. Too bad there are no official critical sources for how horrible Reach's netcode is. The bulltrue medal is utterly meaningless these days. ZeaLitY [ Talk - Activity ] 03:04, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Comments from Jappalang

Infobox

• Why is the release date in bold-face?

Lede

• "As the Covenant begin their assault on the planet, the UNSC begin their ultimately futile effort to repel the alien invaders."

  They begin and we begin... This sentence can be discarded without loss to the lede.

Gameplay

• Although a substantial population has an inkling of how Halo is played, there should still be a brief detail of the basic gameplay in Reach. Five or six years later, there might be a bunch of new gamers who never played FPS (or the genre has moved beyond what is seen in Halo).

• The use of "in-universe" terminology reminds me of the admonishments I received (from Laser brain or Ling.Nut?) in my earlier video game articles. I can easily picture their criticisms on reading "players could wield one-use equipment power-ups" and "'armor lock', which immobilizes the player". Such language are also present in later sections, e.g. "players drop skulls upon death".

• Watch the noun plus gerunds. "Reach features new weapons fulfilling various combat roles, as well as updated versions of old weapons" in particular, is very ambiguous in that it can be read as "Reach features new weapons and therefore fulfills various combat roles".

Multiplayer

• "'Generator Defense' pits three Spartans against three Elites (A type of Covenant soldier)."

  There is a misplaced capitalization. Furthermore, what is a Spartan (imagine that I never played Halo or read anything about the series; "This is not 300 (film)SPARTA!!!")?

• "'Invasion' is a six versus six mode with three squads of two on each team. The gametype pits Spartans against Elites; Elites vie for control of territories to disable a shield guarding a navigation core. Once the shield is disabled, they must transfer the core to a dropship; the Spartans must prevent this. As the game progresses, new vehicles and areas of the map become open."
• "In 'Invasion', twelve players are organized into two opposing teams—Elites versus Spartans. The Elites' goal is to conquer territories to approach a navigation core and steal the object back to their dropship; the Spartans' is to stop their opponents from doing so. The playing field expands and new vehicles are introduced as the game progresses."

• "Alongside other multiplayer options is 'Firefight', a version of which appeared in Halo 3: ODST."

  Why not just "Another multiplayer mode is 'Firefight'."? A layman reader could care less when it first appeared; the main concern should be what is this mode of the game.

• "In Firefight players take on increasingly difficult waves of foes in a game of survival. Players can customize Firefight options, including the number and types of enemies. Firefight versus allows a player-controlled Elite team to try and stop the Spartan team from scoring points. Game modes like Generator Defense are also playable in Firefight."

  Neither http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1098584p1.html nor http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6265966/halo-reach-firefight-mode-hands-on has information about Firefight Versus. I have to go and find it in http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/110/1106753p1.html.

  In Firefight, players control Spartans to fight increasingly difficult waves of foes, scoring points for each enemy killed and for each wave they survived. Firefight has variant modes of play: some incorporate the standard multiplayer modes such as Generator Defense and the others are originals such as Versus. Another player-controlled team is introduced in Versus; this team is composed of Elites and its goal is to kill the Spartans, interfering with the other team's scoring. The teams swap sides and objectives at the end of each round."

• "Firefight games in Reach can be played locally or online with random players. ODST contrarily only supported matches among players that were on each others' friend lists."

  Unsourced (and what is the point of bringing in ODST here?)

• "Forge, a level editor that first appeared with Halo 3, was updated for Reach."

  Same as with Firefight, I see no need to state Forge's first publication.

• "Forge World itself is home to several Bungie-created Forge maps that shipped on-disc."

  Unsourced and I do not understand the sentence ("a large blank map is home to several maps").

Setting and characters

• "Reach takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting during the year 2552, shortly before the events of the 2001 video game Halo: Combat Evolved, and during the events of the 2001 novel Halo: The Fall of Reach."

  The dates make this sentence messy. "Reach takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting; the year is 2552, and the game's events take place during those of the novel Halo:The Fall of Reach and before those of the first Halo game."

• "... a UNSC special operations unit composed of elite supersoldiers known as Spartans."

  Only now are we introduced to the Spartans (see above)?

• "Players assume the role of an unnamed new addition to the team, identified by the call sign Noble Six."

  There should be "and are" between "team" and "identified" instead of that comma; otherwise Noble Six can be misidentified as the team.

• "together, Carter and Kat are the only two remaining original members of Noble Team."

  "Together" and "only two" are redundant/superfluous.

• "The other members include ..."

  Since this follows "original members of Noble Team", this can be miscontrued as the other original members. I suggest "Other members of the current Noble Team are ...".

Story

• "Soon after, the team is deployed to 'Sword Base', an installation belonging to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), to defend it from a Covenant vessel. The team meets the scientist Catherine Halsey, the mastermind behind the Spartan program and their MJOLNIR powered armor."

  "The team's next mission is to defend 'Sword Base', an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) installation, from a Covenant vessel. They meet Catherine Halsey, a scientist and the mastermind behind the Spartan program."

• "Jun and Six are dispatched on a covert overnight mission to assess the Covenant's strength and discover an invasion force."

  The enemies are already attacking and the scouts "discover an invasion force"?

• "Noble Team leads UNSC forces in assaulting a Covenant ground base and removes fortified defenses at the base."

  The second part seems superfluous/pointless.

• "... take part in a plan to destroy the carrier using a makeshift bomb."

  "... take part in a plan to destroy the carrier with a makeshift bomb" or "... take part in a plan to destroy the carrier and use a makeshift bomb to do so"? Or can we go with "... destroy the carrier with a makeshift bomb"?

• "After defending a space station orbiting Reach until its defenses come back online, Jorge and Six use starfighters to infiltrate a smaller Covenant ship, prepare the bomb and set the ship on a docking course with the carrier."

  This sentence is quite messed up. "The pair defend an orbiting space station until its defenses come back online...." hold on... see below...

• "When a massive Covenant super-carrier joins the fight, Jorge and Six take part in a plan to destroy the carrier using a makeshift bomb. ... Its timer malfunctions, so Jorge stays behind and sacrifices himself to destroy the carrier."
• I believe all this can be summarised as follows (without getting into the confusing story above; furthermore, it seems some bits are not in line with the game's account): "A Covenant supercarrier joins the fight. Jorge and Six defend a spaceship research facility from enemy attack and use the facility's starfighters to infiltrate an enemy corvette. They plant a bomb onboard and set the ship to dock with the supercarrier. The bomb's timer malfunctions, so Jorge stays behind and sacrifices himself to destroy the carrier."

• "Moments later, Covenant ships start arriving at Reach in huge numbers and begin a full-scale invasion of the planet."

  "Moments later, large numbers of Covenant ships arrive at Reach and begin a full-scale invasion."

• "He or she aids ..."

  "The Spartan aids ..."

• "However, they are forced ... sniper before they reach it."

  "However, the team is forced ... sniper along the way." (otherwise "they" would refer to the local military as well).

• "Later recalled to Sword Base, Halsey ..."

  Halsey is recalled to Sword Base?

• "... an ancient Forerunner artifact ..."

  I do not think it wise to introduce the Forerunner idea here (just "ancient artifact" will do), when it is not mentioned elsewhere or important to the plot. It just introduces more questions into the reader's mind than clarifies anything.

• "En route to the Autumn's dry dock, Carter is critically wounded. He rams his ship into a Covenant mobile assault platform, allowing Six and Emile to safely reach the shipyard where the Autumn is located."

  The end is redundant (note the beginning).

• "... ensuring the Autumn's escape. The Autumn flees from Reach and discovers a Halo ringworld, leading straight into the events of Halo: Combat Evolved."

  "... ensuring the Autumn's escape. In its flight from Reach, the Autumn discovers a ringworld, thereby starting the events chronicled in Halo: Combat Evolved."

Design

• "... development studio Bungie broke into two teams."

  I think it is better to say "split" rather than "broke"... hold on... see below

• "One began working on ... while another ... began work on what would become Reach."

  Similarly, "One of them started work on ... while the other ... was assigned to start a new project."

• "After finishing Halo 3 in 2007, development studio Bungie broke into two teams. One began working on a standalone expansion project—Halo 3: ODST—while another, led by Creative Director Marcus Lehto and Design Lead Christian Allen, began work on what would become Reach."

  Okay, there is something wrong with these statements. Neither http://www.1up.com/previews/halo-reach nor http://kotaku.com/5354944/how-and-why-halo-3-odst-was-made-in-14-months suggests that Bungie "broke/split" into two. What happened was that two teams were created (the studio also has executives, managers, sales, etc): one was tasked to handle a movie project (that eventually switched focus to making ODST when the project was nixed) and the other took on Reach. Neither states that the other (Reach) team was working on an "unnamed" project that became Reach. The two sources also do not pinpoint the exact startup of the team for Reach, hence "After finishing Halo 3 in 2007" can be misleading (what if development on Reach, e.g. concept and design, began during the last stages of Halo 3?).

• "Bungie focused on making sure players still felt a sense of accomplishment and success."

  That is an assertion unproven; the sentence implies that Bungie accomplished the objective.

• "Community manager Brian Jarrard pushed for greater customization of the player character, including the ability to choose a female Noble Six and have the cinematics and dialogue change accordingly."

  You know... that is the only change (in my opinion) in the category, so "including" is not correct (what would the other changes be that would have "greater customization" in the single player campaign. I think the entire sentence needs to be rephrased.

• "... redesign key enemies, weapons, and elements of the series, though 3D Art Lead Scott Shepard stressed that they remain true to the spirit of the original designs."

  I do not think "stressed" would follow the spirit of encyclopaedic content here, and "though" makes it seem like this sentence is a defence for the game's developer (in remaining true to the spirit of Halo). I think the last part can be dropped entirely.

• "The final gameplay sequence at the end of the game ..."

  Final of an end (pretty redundant in my view)? Why not "The post-credit game sequence ..."?

• "Executive producer Joe Tung ultimately noted, ..."

  Ultimately ("finally; in the end", "at the most basic level") does not fit in here; his comments is to the interviewer, not to the team during the decision making.

Technology

• "For Halo 3, the first Halo game on the Xbox 360, Bungie had been forced to shrink parts of the game to fit the game engine's constraints. Bungie strove to capitalize on the Xbox 360 hardware to make Reach look better than its predecessors. The original plan for Reach was to port existing Halo 3 assets and update them, , but as Shepard noted, 'The more we started looking into this, the more we found that realistically we could rebuild each asset from scratch with a huge increase in quality without significantly investing more time.'"

  This reads a bit weird to me (especially the "Bungie strove to ..." bit); the jump to Halo 3 was jarring. I suggest a bit of rearranging and rephrasing.

  "Originally, the team decided to port components of Halo 3 to Reach and update them. During the older game's development, Bungie was forced to compromise on the quality of its graphics because the software for the graphics could not handle the amount of data needed to be displayed. Shepard noted that while working on Reach, 'The more we started looking into this, the more we found that realistically we could rebuild each asset from scratch with a huge increase in quality without significantly investing more time.'"

• "Developers redesigned much of the engine."

  In line with the above suggestion, "The developers redesigned the game engine, the software that handles most of the game's algorithms."

• "Rather than scripting enemy encounters, the developers focused on a more open world or sandbox approach to battles."

  "Open world/sandbox" (a game mode) does not tally with "scripting enemy encounters" (even sandbox games can have scripted events and encounters); furthermore, "sandbox/open world" strikes me as jargon, confusing to the layman. "Instead of programming enemies to operate fixed sequences, the developers adopted a more open approach; these computer-controlled characters would react to the actions of the player characters and situations with a variety of pre-programmed responses."

• "Bungie completed Reach near the end of July/beginning of August 2010."

  Completed the entire game, or are we just talking about the software programming?

Audio

• "Composing team Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori returned to score Reach."

  When did they leave the Reach team?

• "The music piece shown in the world premiere of Halo: Reach was the first music he wrote for the game, which he hoped he could use as a starting point for developing further themes."

  "The first music he wrote for Reach was played in the game's world premiere, and he used it as a starting piece to develop further themes.

• "O'Donnell began work on Reach while ODST was still in production, ..."

  What does ODST have to do with this?

• "O'Donnell was assisted by past Halo collaborators Salvatori, C. Paul Johnson, and Stan LePard, although with Reach he did not give them strictly divided responsibilities."

  "O'Donnell was assisted by Salvatori, C. Paul Johnson, and Stan LePard—previous collaborators on Halo. He did not assign them specific responsibilities."

• "The works-in-progress they came up with were either touched up by O'Donnell or sent back to be finished by their composer."

  This left me a bit nonplussed. The way I read this, it means "O'Donnell touched up some of their works", but I am not entirely sure (due to the phrasing) if that is the intent.

• "... was demoed in an in-game ..."

  "Demo" is informal, please use the full form.

• "... due to the bands of colors differentiating materials."

  "... due to the bands of different/alternating colors on the objects and environment."

Announcements

• I suggest changing the image's caption to "Reach's announcement at E3".

• "... announced ... through a trailer ..."

  They just broadcast a trailer without saying it was about Reach?

• "An accompanying press release announced that an invitation to the open multiplayer beta of the game would appear in spring 2010, later specified as May 3."

  I do not think the details of the date are that crucial. "An accompanying press release announced that the multiplayer beta would be open to certain people."

• "Reach is the last Halo game developed by original Halo developer Bungie. Future Halo games will be overseen by Microsoft subsidiary 343 Industries."

  "Reach is Bungie's last game development for the Halo series. Responsibility for developing future Halo games fell to Microsoft subsidiary 343 Industries."

• "... complete list of achievements ..."

  Assume that I never played Xbox 360: what are "achievements", why does a game have a list of "things done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill"?

Multiplayer beta

• "... causing back-end servers to struggle to handle the traffic. While the engineering team overestimated server load, bugs in server clusters caused game uploads to become backed up, slowing matchmaking to a crawl until the underlying issues could be fixed."

  I fail to comprehend the first part.... If "the engineering team overestimated server load", then why would their "back-end servers [...] struggle to handle the traffic"? What does "game uploads" mean here, why would they slow matchmaking?

• "... large-scale rollout of the game ..."

  Is "beta" meant instead of "game" (which could confuse into thinking of Reach the final product).

• "On Bungie's community site, Bungie.net, the Reach beta generated over 360,000 forum posts alone."

  "More than 360,000 posts on Bungie.net, the developer's community site, were about the Reach beta."

• "Some player responses did not align with datasets from the game; multiplayer design lead Chris Carney ..."

  "Certain feedback from the players did not correlate with the statistical data obtained from the matches during the beta. Chris Carney, lead designer for the multiplayer mode, ..."

• "By the end of the beta it generated the most kills in all games"

  "By the end of the beta, the weapon was used for most of the kills in all games."

• What are "lurking variables"?

Release

• "Reach was released in three retail editions on September 14, 2010."

  "Retail" is redundant here.

• "Four days later, hackers managed to access, download, and distribute the game online;"

  "The game was, however, distributed online by hackers who illegally accessed and downloaded the material."

• "Microsoft claimed to be actively investigating the matter. Halo 2, Halo 3, and ODST were similarly leaked ahead of release."

  I find this to be pointless in this article. There is no conclusion or purpose that pertains to Reach, and talk of previous leaks would be coatracks.

Marketing

• "Brian Jarrard told The Seattle Times that the developers were planning a much more "grandiose" marketing effort than had been done for ODST."

  "According to Brian Jarrard, the team decided to have a much more "grandoise" marketing for Reach than that for ODST."

• "Microsoft gave Reach its largest marketing budget, ..."

  Larger than those for Windows 7? The source states "biggest game campaign from Microsoft".

  "Microsoft's marketing budget for Reach was its largest for a video game at that time, ..."

• "Reach was released Tuesday, September 14 in 25 countries."

  What is so special about Tuesday (aside from the fact that using it here means there is a missing comma after 14)?

• "... could reverse 2010's sluggish video game sales."

  "... could reverse sluggish video game sales in 2010."

• "... making it third in its console generation to surpass three million units its first month (alongside Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2)."

  "... making it the third game for its console generation (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) to sell more than three million units during the first month since release (alongside Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2)."

• "In the United Kingdom, Reach's opening week ... dropped out of the top 20 best selling titles entirely its second week."

  All this seems a tad nitpicky to me. Why not just summed each region with "Reach was xxx position for yy weeks / Reach was the top 20 best selling title for yy weeks" or such.

Downloadable content

• "Reach supports additional downloadable content (DLC). Bungie released their first DLC (dubbed the Noble Map Pack) on November 30, 2010."

  Since "DLC" is only used once, immediately in the sentence after the abbreviation and nowhere else, it might be preferable to simply not use the abbreviation at all.

• "The Noble Map Pack contains three maps, unique in that they are not based on Reach campaign levels."

  "The Noble Map Pack contains three maps that are not based on any campaign levels in Reach."

• "Microsoft partnered with Certain Affinity, who had worked on Halo 2 maps, to produce the second "Defiant Map Pack", made available for download on March 15, 2011."

  There were two "Defiant Map Packs"? The sentence is also a bit clumsy.

  "The second map pack was released on March 15, 2011. Titled 'Defiant', the contents were created by Microsoft and Certain Affinity, who was involved in making the maps for Halo 2. "

• "The update also allows playlists for multiplayer through Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary."

  [[Halo: Combat Evolved#Anniversary|Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary]] directs to the article, not a section there.

  I also do not understand what this sentence is trying to say.

Reception

• If you are going to use {{Video game reviews}}, then why are GameRankings and Metacritics's scores and number of reviews in prose and table?

• Cut down the number of reviews in the table; the scores are pretty much consistent among the reviewers and having 18 entries is excessive (especially when a big white space is introduced beneath the prose). As such, the prose looks incredibly skimpy when compared with that long list.

Awards

• Why are these here in a table, especially when {{Video game reviews}} provides entries for awards? I also think in the grand scheme of things, some of those awards are not noteworthy... (I would readily exclude the one from Drunk Tank).

External links

• Why are there three "official" websites (the first three links)?

Request completed... It has been a long time since I looked closely at a video games article. Jappalang (talk) 06:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)