Talk:List of characters in Suikoden III

[Untitled]

There may still be some errors from the merged content, so feel free to proofread this.

As a comment, please consider carefully before changing any of the header names. There are redirects heading there from the "main" article (for example, Duke (Suikoden)), so you may need to change around several redirects and links as well in order not to break them. You may want to warn and ask for comment on the talk page before doing so. SnowFire 03:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

CVG assessment

The good: Oh my god someone finally started working on the Suikoden mess. I love you. The bad: Zero references. I have difficulty B-classing anything without any refs. The good: It's well-organized and well-written, and knows well enough to put several minor characters in a single sentence when it can. The bad: It has a very in-universe bent, and is a little image-heavy.

I'm impressed, but at the same time it's a kind of corner case, and seems rather borderline. Ultimately I don't feel comfortable giving it B-class. Nifboy 03:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

(Completely unnecessary double assessment) - I completely agree. Pop some out-of-universe info in these characters, ref it up, and it's a B. From, there, I dunno. I don't think that there's a Featured List that's a list of characters, and I don't know how one should be set up. --PresN 04:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, List of Metal Gear Solid characters is in fact a featured list of characters. Something to aim for! Yay! SnowFire 05:35, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Fair enough, I suppose; I guess I just disagree over what the rankings mean. I suppose I should go to the main assessment page for that.

As for the content complaints, fair enough. Believe it or not, I did try and add more of an out-of-universe perspective as I merged; it was basically not there at all before. Unfortunately, out-of-universe facts aren't as easy to come along. As for references, eh, the reference is the game, basically. As I'm certain you are well aware from working on other fictional articles, it can be difficult to "directly source" even plainly obvious facts. For instance, sourcing "Bob is a nice guy" with a single nice statement Bob says is sophistry, because it's possible Bob was lying, or being sarcastic, or that was his only nice statement in a sea of meanness. Maybe non-primary sources like strategy guides might say that, but from the primary source, there isn't much source aside from "the entirety of the game/play/book plainly constructed." I'd call that a valid source, but that's not really an inline ref. Also, I don't trust the various Suikoden fan sites all that much as sources- they combine information from the games and from other, secondary sources that may turn out not to be canonical, and don't tell you when they're doing this. I suppose I'll look into adding at least one or two refs just to get started, and perhaps encourage others. SnowFire 05:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

To 142.58.79.7.

Could you please slow down? I don't want to have to mass revert your changes, but there's already a list of characters at 108 Stars of Destiny (Suikoden). Ideally, this article should eventually be "Suikoden III characters" and not merely be a list; I for one prefer prose for sensibly grouped characters. SnowFire 20:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting a Format Change

This would be a pretty time-consuming rewrite which I'm nowhere near capable of performing right now, but I thought it would be interesting to toss the idea around for when I have the time, or some other sucker actually takes the task.

While the general outlook of the page is very acceptable, I think there are sections in which it gets a bit messy, particularly when it mentions several characters in rapid succession. This can be both a nuisance at the time of redaction, since it forces the writer to maintain a constant tense and prose, and a hindrance when it comes to mentioning details, which although not fundamental, could simply enrich certain sections without requiring a significant amount of space. Unlike nifboy above, I do not think squashing seven or so characters in one sentence is productive at all, because if you are going to only provide a name and a single, usually non-descriptive tidbit of information, you are not really providing anything of interest and might as well not mention them at all. While these characters are obviously not vital, two or three lines for each does not seem like that much of a waste, especially when Suikoden games usually do manage to give a bare minimum of personality or notability to a large amount of it's stock cast.

What I'm thinking of is something along the lines of List of Gundam SEED characters, it's neat, it's organized, it does not require any heavy image input and provides enough information without going overboard with useless stuff. Obviously the sections given to major characters here have no problem in this area and I see no reason to alter them, but I think it would be beneficial to do so for the minor guys, if only to make things more thorough without going too far. Ephyon 00:17, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Well, I've already stated above I generally prefer prose because it can tell a story. I think that the format used for the Gundam article you linked works fine when either there's a bunch of very disconnected characters, or a set of characters with a similar setup (crewmates on a ship, members of a mercenary band, etc.) and then some notable individual quirks. So, I think that would work for something like the Knights of Zexen (same intro, with details on each knight in a bullet) or the minor characters in "Other" that are totally unconnected to anyone else (Kenji, Hortez). However, where that doesn't work so well is with small groups of similarly related people. Take, say, Rhett and Wilder for example. I'm sure you COULD find differences between them (glasses, do investigations with Kidd), but they're basically trivial. As far as the plot is concerned, they serve the same role. There's just not much to say in a separate bullet for each one, short of repeating the general story for both. The same is true of lots of other groups of 2-3 characters (Samus and Reed, Melville/Alanis/Elliot), where the group has something interesting to say about them, but not a whole lot for each one. In these cases, prose works best, because you can say things like "A and B work for C and travel with them." And once you start doing it that style, it looks weird and inconsistent to use bullets for those where it might be appropriate.

Well, that's my take on it, at least. SnowFire 21:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Sergeantjoe.jpg

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