Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pathways into Darkness/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 19:31, 3 August 2010 [1].

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Pathways into Darkness

Pathways into Darkness (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Pathways into Darkness/archive1

Nominator(s): Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 12:49, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Back in 1993, the video game developer Bungie consisted of two University of Chicago students who worked out of their apartment, doing everything by themselves. Then they found critical and commercial success with one of the Macintosh platform's first shooter games: Pathways into Darkness. Because of Pathways, Bungie was able to expand to a real office, hire employees, and start themselves on a path that would result in the creation of a nearly $2 billion franchise. But that's jumping ahead of this article. It's short and sweet, and while I wish I had been able to dig up more content for the reception section, it hits all the important notes. Enjoy. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 12:49, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

• "published by Bungie Software Products Corporation (now Bungie)" Is this necessary? The name of the company was Bungie, and is still Bungie. The particulars of the full corporate name may have changed but that's hardly relevant here. That former full name is mentioned only once on Bungie, and relegated to an infobox. --Golbez (talk)
  • At the time, it was called Bungie Software Products Corporation (you can barely make it out on the Pathways cover). When it was shortened to Bungie is hard to claim, because it didn't incorporate officially until 2007. So no, it's not essential, but I think from a historical perspective it's useful and precise. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:41, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Comment No dab links or dead externals. The page apparently has a link to "Pathways Into Darkness" (with a capital "I") that links back; I can't find it in the article or navbox, so it may have been fixed. --an odd name 18:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

• • Mm40 got to it and fixed the navbox. I was wondering where that redirect was :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:41, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Sources comments

• Different date formats used. Compare 1 and 6 with 11 and 16
• 15 lacks a retrieval date

Otherwise, no problems with these references. Brianboulton (talk) 16:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The ones formatted differently are done so because there's no specific day that they were released on—they were monthly releases. I'm not sure about putting them in YYYY-MM-DD format, since saying "1993-09-01" might be incorrect for all I know. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:05, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

• Some notes:
  • The article switches between "Pathways into Darkness", "Pathways Into Darkness", and "Pathways". I don't know which capitalization is correct so I'll leave that to you. Also, the shortening to "Pathways" is a little awkward. Do you have a source that it's an accepted abbreviation? Otherwise, it might be best to use the full title whenever it's mentioned and use "the game" or some variation when it starts getting too long.
  • The player moves, dodges fire, uses weapons and items --- needs an extra "and"
  • player can absorb a certain amount of damage, but once their health --- "player" is singular, "their" is plural; you may want to reword to avoid the possessive
  • rid the player of poison and heal them --- same, perhaps "and replenish health"?
  • Another type of items are crystals --- avoid passive voice, when possible. There are other instances which you may want to adjust, but this one was particularly noticeable
  • a couple more "theirs" in the plot section
  • when the nuclear device was set to explode --- literary present
  • The final plot was occupied a middle ground --- there's an extra word here somewhere, you choose which one
  • designed to work on any Macintosh or better --- what does "or better" mean? I assume "Macintosh" here refers to some version of the many Macintosh computers, so some specificity would be nice
• Other than those, it looks good. Conditional support. Axem Titanium (talk) 11:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks very much for the review. I've tried to comb through the article and discuss actions in terms of generic and nonspecific players (since that allows for generic and non-gender-specific diction as well). I've consistently changed the nomenclature to Pathways after the first mention of the full title in the article body (the capitalized "I" in the title was due to a page rename that I didn't notice.)
    • Looks good. A fun read, I'm happy to support! Axem Titanium (talk) 15:36, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Support - Looking through everything in the article, I believe that its FA material. GamerPro64 (talk) 03:02, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

• Support comments -okay then, if you've looked and nothing else has come up from a reliable source, then I guess it's got everything sourceable that can possibly be in it, in which case I can't see anything else to improve. righto sunshine...prepare for a working-over....Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Players can absorb a certain amount of damage, but once their health reaches zero, the game ends. -ummm, are there save points? I have often seen some discussion on how frequent or otherwise save points are so some detail here is warranted methinks. I't be fairly unsual to have to start right from the beginning (?)

Any other out-of-universe discussion of inspiration in any commentary? e.g. the idea has similarities with Cthulhu (ancient gods rising yada yada)

Does anyone cite this game as an influence on later works? often games that are highly regarded leave some sort of legacy.

Other than that, looking good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:39, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I've tweaked the bit about the game ending to discuss resuming your game... is it clear enough, or should I go into more detail? I also found an interesting post on the subject by Jones,[2] but I'm not sure how reliable old newsgroup postings are (or if it really fits that much into other development content.) As for influence and inspiration, I wasn't able to find anything else beyond very surface discussions. The problem is that Pathways is largely forgotten as it was A) an old Mac game, and B) superseded by Bungie's own Marathon games later on. Discussion about, say, the influence of early shooters generally focuses on Marathon, for instance. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 13:21, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.