Talk:Kratos (God of War)

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Contents

[edit] Suggest: revamp history

I know it seems to make sense to break apart Kratos' story by his game appearances, but this basically makes these a repeat of the plot summaries already in the separate game articles. I would pick up the high points of his life and summarize those, referring back to game articles as needed, and make sure the article focuses more on Kratos as the lead character of the series and the influence of that. --MASEM 02:36, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that would make the text bigger, inadvertently pushing the article to a more in-universe perspective. Right now I am following Master Chief (Halo) and Cortana, only including the key plot points in the summaries. But there are some events that may need to be included if we summarize all of the "highlights" of his life, particulary the fact that he killed several mythologic figures that only serve as bosses but hold no particular importance to the plot, like a Argonaut and several Greek heroes. - Caribbean~H.Q.

[edit] Bigger Pic

I think the article looks better when the pic is bigger. King Rock Go 'Skins! 12:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Pictures used in infoboxes should only be about 250-256px; remember that the user can click on the image to see it full size, and pictures are not just decoration, but need to be a critical component of the article. --MASEM 14:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Certainly, 550px is way too big, outside of the MoS issues noted by Masem there is also the fact that an image that big breaks the flow of the lead and the entire article's format, particulary in lower resolutions. - Caribbean~H.Q. 15:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GAN

All the references seem from reliable sources, the pictures are properly sourced and have fair use rationales, and there is a good amount of out of universe info; you've kept the appearances down to a paragraph each, although maybe these could be shortened a little. The issue is mostly that the grammar and flow is pretty poor throughout. When I have time, I'll try and give it a thorough copyedit. Other than that, good job so far. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 22:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, could you find a full-body shot of Kratos which meshes better with the infobox? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 00:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I looked for one, but the official sites use flash and most of the ones found on reliable sources have watermarks on them (IGN) or complete bodyshots are just missing (GameSpot). I will search in more detail but am not sure where to begin. - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:30, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Having browsed the web for a while I think the best full-body image is this, found on the artist's webpage, what do you think? - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Eh, I dunno. You can always screencapture the image and then create a png in an image editor for the flash sites. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 01:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
That could take a few days, this computer doesn't have any image editing programs and I don't want to know what my girlfriend would say if I told her that I'm going to install a program in her PC to take screencaps of a semi-naked man :-) Anyway, that could be done in mine but it won't be posible until Friday. - Caribbean~H.Q. 01:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, it's no big deal if you can't do it. I just like pics which blend in with the infobox, like Cortana, but that's personal preference and not at all needed for the article to pass :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 01:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Check Jeux France, which generally puts out screenshots w/o logobugs. this one of Kratos may work. --MASEM 01:46, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I still like Charlie Wen's image due to the clarity in the detail, it shows the complexion of his body while providing a good mugshot. However of the images found during my search my personal favorite is Mog of War. :-) - Caribbean~H.Q. 04:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, sorry Carib, I totally forgot I was reviewing this... anyway, continuing:

  • The quotes in the lead need citations.
  • "traditional Greek armors" is it armor or armors?

Like I said previously, it just needs a light copyedit which hopefully I will remember to do within the next day. Sorry to keep you waiting, --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 21:53, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I have been quite busy myself. I placed the footnotes in the lead, now the creative team designed several armors for the character so I think it should be "armors". - Caribbean~H.Q. 01:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok, getting around to pass this, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 14:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the review, now onwards to Olympus. - Caribbean~H.Q. 16:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Series article

It really seems that this would better serve as a series article rather than a character article. Just change the lead, add a gameplay section, and mix in some general creation and reception information, and you have a pretty good article. As I imagine a series article is inevitable, it seems like it would be best to kill two birds with one stone by creating it and allowing it to become featured pretty easily. TTN (talk) 22:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The point of view in the "Appearances" is not going to work with a series article. A article on the series as a whole could easily be a lot more detailed than this, both of the PS2 games have tons of out of universe material available, I was thinking about developing a article that covers the scope of the series by this summer, but its the final product is going to be more broad and less focused on the lead character than this one. - Caribbean~H.Q. 23:11, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I meant to add covert the attributes section to an overall settings section and rework the tone in my suggestions. Anyways, the final product of that is going to be pretty similar to this one overall. Taking the four unique creation and reception paragraphs and working them into the article, which is going to end up sharing the whole "Role in the God of War series" section (though one will be more general) and much of the attributes section to form one very good FA seems preferable to having two GAs. TTN (talk) 23:23, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree to some extent here with TTN. Right now there is no GOW series article, but knowing from trying to source the first game that development information is not going to be easy to find fully, and the fact that Kratos is effectively the game for the most part. However, I think this is something to keep in the back of our minds if/when we develop the series article. Maybe that will be large enough that keeping Kratos separate is fine in the long run. There is no need to rush off and create a series article while this one is under GA review. --MASEM 23:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
That's assuming this article couldn't pass WP:FAC, which I very much think it could. Notability has been established, there's no need for a merge. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 23:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
The creation part is what has more potential here, there are so many details available to build one three to four times bigger than this one without going into detail about Kratos, the voice cast of GoW II has some nice potential, lots of detail and reception by the voice artists. Personally I think that a series article could make it easier to FA if the prose is worked correctly, if we avoid focusing on Kratos both of the articles would complement each other. - Caribbean~H.Q. 23:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
It should probably be noted that only the design stage of development can easily provide a lot of material, from the technical issues (the Centaur's model had to be changed due to texture issues) to the somewhat trivial ones (prior to the design of Kratos a giant in a diaper was used as a placeholder hero, this is not mentioned here because it isn't Kratos) to the just plain bizarre ones (the game director wanted to give nipples to all female monsters and a penis to the cyclops because he felt that was "animalistic"). Now we can add to that the countless variations in the character (non-Kratos) models, the ammount of elements discarded due to time limits (including levels and the Icarus wings in GoW), heck we even have enough to produce a subsection only dealing with the designs of Ares (his design varried depending on how "elemental" he could be) and Zeus. Then we have the GoW II bonus disk wich basically covers all of the game's development and testing. - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Don't forget that a lot of that belongs in the game articles rather than the series article. While would certainly mention that there were placeholder characters during development, stuff chopped off, and other things briefly, most of those details would be better placed in GOW1 instead. Stuff like the general development of the series, rather than the specific game details, is what the focus of the series article would be placed on. Only things that transcend two or more games would be worthy of detailed mentions (i.e the Icarus wings being developed for one, but utilized in two).
My main worry is that it'll just look really redundant to have two similar sections summarizing the games between the two. Even if they have different focuses, it'll look rather weird. A good possible way of organizing would to just have separate sections for Kratos, Zeus, Athena (Does she have any real info?), Ares, and general other characters under the setting section. I think it could have the potential to look pretty nice. TTN (talk) 00:16, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I can't recall any development information about Athena, on the other hand Zeus has quite a lot of it. - Caribbean~H.Q. 02:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)