Talk:The Bureau: XCOM Declassified/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 13:28, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Look for comments beginning of next week. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:28, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Overall, the article is in pretty decent shape, however there's some issues with information organization and miscellaneous problems detailed below:

• Prose and general:
  • While some of this is clarified in the article body, the lead is trying to convey a lot of information and the development details get a bit muddled. With this passage—Development began in 2006 after Irrational Games was acquired by Take-Two Interactive. The title then became a collaboration between 2K Marin and 2K Australia, which was later removed from the project due to communication issues between the two studios. The team initially wanted to create a mysterious first-person shooter with fearful alien life forms. —I'm confused on a few details. The implication with the first sentence is development didn't begin until after Irrational was acquired, which makes the following sentence "The title then became a collaboration" unclear as it implies it was already in development. It's also unclear unless you're already familiar with Take-Two what relation 2K studios have to the former.

 Done

• • The team initially—which team? You've mentioned multiple studios.

 Done

• • Carter's team travels through a Venn portal —a what?

 Removed

• • and surviving Sleepwalkers are cured.—no mention of these until this point.

 Removed. I also changed other mentions of the term "infected".

• • The phrasing for the bullets should be reworked; treating each bullet as a continuation of the main sentence makes it hard to follow. I would just lose the last sentence and end the previous one with the colon, then make the bullets start with a proper clause.

 Done

• • 2K Marin found it difficult to animate and program an enemy that was unknowable.—I don't know what this means.

 Done. I hope that I have made it clearer.

• • 2K Marin used the opportunity to fill leadership roles—this is a little unclear in how it relates to the rest of the paragraph.

 Done

• • The team failed to complete the demo on time. The radial wheel was introduced [...] Another example of a paragraph with sentences that ping-pong around and don't seem to naturally follow.

 Done

• • After seeing the positive press reaction,—positive press reaction to what? The demo that you only told us wasn't completed on time? Was it actually shown?

 Done. Removed the part about them not finishing the demo on time. The demo's production is very rushed, but they managed to finish it on time.

• • and with continued communication problems between 2K Australia and 2K Marin—I thought 2K Australia was gone, merged with 2K Marin.

 Done - I change all mentions of 2K Australia to the Australian branch after 2K merged the two companies together

• • including classic X-COM enemies like Sectoids into the game—Casual readers will have no idea what "Sectoids" are, so you might as well just leave it as "classic XCOM enemies."

 Removed

• • Unlike XCOM: Enemy Unknown, players could not conduct any research because there was no procedural generated content and time did not pass between missions. Research would disrupt the game's narrative and remove the game's tension. Players can pick up alien weaponry in the field, an approach which was seen as more immediate by the team.—Likewise, this is spending a lot of time detailing differences between two games, one of which I know nothing about and seems largely irrelevant beyond an aside.

 Done. I trimmed some part of it. Let me know if you think I should trim more.

• • The AI was programmed to ensure that the accompanying agents could survive on their own, though they require player input to function effectively—I'm unclear how this sentence squares with the one before that agents can permanently die. So they can stay alive if the player doesn't do anything with them?

This is what the dev says. They can stay alive without players' input.

• • Downloadable content were released for the game—this should be "was" in this context.

 Done

• • I'm not really sure on the relevance of the "pre-release" reception content. If that belongs anywhere, it feels like it should be mentioned in development if it had any impact or in the bit about releases and teases in the section earlier.

 Done - Moved to the release section

• • The permadeath feature was criticized as incapable as it was not as engaging—this is wordy and convoluted.

 Done

• • The basic third-person gameplay received praise from critics. This needs a reference, as there's some conflicting and not regularly positive comments about the gameplay immediately following.

 Done

• References:
  • Spot-checked statements attributed to current refs 2, 4, 8, 19, 20, 35, 46, 53, 62. I didn't spot issues with verification or close paraphrasing.
  • References used all look to be reliable sources properly formatted.
• Media:
  • File:XCOM alien designs.jpg—the caption doesn't really make it clear what readers are supposed to take from this image.

 Done

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:09, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: - Thanks for the review! I have fixed most of the problems. OceanHok (talk) 05:58, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Looks good. Passing. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:27, 21 April 2020 (UTC)