Unreleased Work Page Cleanup (Speculation, Spoilers, ZCE etc.)

Understood, thank you.

Not an example. Ascended Glitch is about a glitch that is turned into an official game mechanic. This specific instance didn't actually happen in prior games, and as far as we know it's not being used in Sword and Shield itself — in short, nothing "ascended" to actual game status.

It might be an Ascended Meme, or maybe a Mythology Gag, if it really is a reference to Missingno; but at this point we can't even say that for certain.

Gold and Ultimate version owners of Ghost Recon Breakpoint will be able to play the game on October 1st, three days before the official release date. I'll clean the entry up now before uncommenting whatever I confirm during play.

I deleted an example from Kamen Rider Zero-One on the ground of speculation.

• Spoiler Opening: The opening revealed Horobi and Jin will become rider, and Izu will play important role in the future.

The opening in question debuted in the third episode released last saturday. I admit Horobi and Jin becoming Riders is extreeeemly likely but this hasn't happened yet.

As for "Izu will play important role in the future", it's shaky at best. All Izu (the robot girl) does in the opening is bringing files on Aruto's desk and helping him to stand up at the end. I don't see how this announce a bigger role than the one she already has.

Just like Trailers Always Lie, there's also a trope for misleading opening: Bait-and-Switch Credits

The part about Izu can probably be cut. Besides being too vague about what the "important role" might be, she's already the female lead as the hero's closest ally, which is pretty darn important to begin with.

As for Jin and Horobi, we already know that there are going to be Riders with the same names, so it can be reasonably assumed that they're the same people. (Then again, we only know the Rider names thanks to early toy catalogue leaks.) Personally, I'm willing to let it slide. We'll find out for sure soon (possibly this weekend), though, so I'd wait to make any changes either way until then.

But I'm frankly annoyed at the heavy-handed crackdown on "speculation" in the last few months. If it's genuinely guessing, that's one thing, and I'll even join in on removing it; but "we don't know that Horobi will be Kamen Rider Horobi" just seems like nitpicking.

Edit: Wait, Zero-One started a few weeks back; so is it even under this thread's purview any more?

Edited by DragonRanger on Sep 17th 2019 at 10:43:19 AM

It might be a better fit for the Episodic Troping cleanup thread.

Regardless of where discussion belongs, I concur with Silverblade.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 17th 2019 at 11:33:45 AM

Ugh.

I wrote "Seems to be a favorite of Walker's" in the entry for Hand Cannon on the Ghost Recon page to mean it's, to my best knowledge based on trailers, his go-to weapon. The guns themselves are clearly visible in both the trailers and the "first 15 minutes" video released by IGN, which are publicly viewable and linked to in the article. So yes, those things clearly are handcannons, Walker is clearly using them and the only thing that's doubtful is his preference for them (since they're Awesome, but Impractical all things considered).

The main edit page for Promare says it is still private. It aired in May 2019 in Japan, according to wikipedia, and I saw it in theaters yesterday, through a fathom event. It seems is has been released worldwide and should no longer be private?

Courtesy link?

Okay, truthfully the stuff going on in the Death Stranding page is ridiculous. Recently there's been a near-hour-long presentation of gameplay at the Tokyo Game show that's presenting a ton of information about the game (set to be released in a little over a month), explained directly by Hideo Kojima, the game's very director. Much of the content is tropeable as definite, concrete non-speculative information.

Last night I put down entries for Bandit Mook, The Cameo, Genre-Busting,The Power of Blood, Powered Armor, Product Placement, Resources Management Gameplay, and The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, and I include direct timecode links to that video as citation for each instance knowing how fickle this page already is regarding Speculative Troping.

However, High Crate seems to be adamant in delisting everything I put down, and I do not understand this logic whatsoever. The logic is "And no, weblinks do not count as citation. If these tropes occur in publicly-released, tropable material, the entry text needs to say so. Right now they read as if they're referring to material that has not actually been released yet. If you have questions, bring it up on the cleanup thread. Thank you."

This makes no sense. Everything else present on the page is based on information of the material which hasn't been released yet. If the logic is that information from cinematic trailers is supposed to be an independent representation of Death Stranding separated from the game itself 1) that's still incredibly arbitrary because that still represents content (which I have not added and are not cited) that can still be misleading and speculative, missing the entire point of the whole Speculative Troping cleanup, and 2) the cited sources for my entries are explicitly representing the hard material to be released in early November and directly exposited by its creator. There should be no ambiguity as to what's being demonstrated in the game as factual, and the content I put as entries as existing.

If the logic is that "the game isn't released yet" and "weblinks do not count as citation", then what the H does? And what gives basically everything else about the entire game that's been troped already under the same disqualifications a pass other than them existing before High Crate decided to go on a pedant delisting crusade?

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 9:35:50 AM

Yeah, HighCrate is very strict about that stuff. He wants you to say "in the presentation" in every line instead of linking it. And the presentation may not be considered valid for whatever reason; I'm not always clear on the dividing line between valid official sources and invalid official sources (and frankly, I think official is official, but the current policy says otherwise).

We have a thread discussing the policy, if you'd like to bring such topics up there.

Edited by DragonRanger on Sep 18th 2019 at 9:48:23 AM

I am more than willing to discuss this with you politely, but I am not interested in responding to hostility and personal insults.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:11:03 AM

I'm guessing that wasn't directed at me, but nonetheless I think I was a touch too harsh originally and edited my post down a notch; and I'm sorry if I caused any offense.

Edited by DragonRanger on Sep 18th 2019 at 9:53:36 AM

Thank you.

It is site-wide policy that, while external links may be used for the benefit of those who are interested in following them, it should never be required to follow a link. Linking to something is not a substitute for actually saying, in the text of the example entry, what's behind the link. If the point of the link is to explain that the trope is present in a Tokyo Game Show gameplay video, then it's fine (but optional) to link to the video for the benefit of those who are interested in watching it, but it's not optional to say in the text of the entry where the trope takes place.

Absent such a citation, the entry text reads as if it is referring to an unreleased work, and is therefore by definition speculative.

Additionally, the creator describing a trope being used is not valid citation, because the trope has not actually happened yet. "Word of God says the trope will happen" is neither citation nor context. It's an announcement of intention. "I intend to do a thing" is not the same as the thing actually happening.

It may be illustrative to point to a good entry on the Death Stranding page:

• Animal Motifs: The first three trailers begin with prominent shots of thousands of dead crabs piled up across the dirt, and of all the dead animals that have appeared stranded on beaches or lying dead in decayed water, crabs are the only one species that's appeared in all three trailers.

Where does the Animal Motif happen? It happens in the first three trailers. It may happen in the final game, or it may not. Doesn't matter. The final game is not out yet. Nobody here has played the final game. We're not talking about the final game. We're talking about the first three trailers. And in the first three trailers, the Animal Motif trope is present.

Ironically, VideoGame.Death Stranding was quite possibly in the best shape of any unreleased-work page at the time I first cleaned it. There was still a bunch of uncited stuff and speculation that had to be hidden or removed, of course, but for whatever reason there were also many entries that already cited specific trailers / gameplay videos / etc. before there was a formal policy requiring it.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:15:54 AM

I specified in my first post of the entries that I put that you took down specifically to be looked at. If you're gonna argue against me not being allowed to write stuff down, argue against the stuff that I'm actually writing. All you're doing is proving some other situation isn't allowed, but said and proved nothing about why the specific tropes of the work that I've got from a specific context aren't other than super-exact semantic word construction.

Like come on, everything else in the article is? Again: really, really arbitrary.

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:17:07 AM

Let's look at an example of an entry that you added:

• Bandit Mook: Mules are an enemy type which — while they won't try and kill Sam — are out to steal his cargo and will incapacitate him with electrified weaponry. The items which they pilfer (both from you and other online players) are contained at their guarded sites, which can be stealthily raided to recover what was lost.

Keep in mind that we must, by site-wide policy, assume that the reader will not follow the link. For the benefit of such a reader, please answer the following question: how do you know that Bandit Mooks will appear in a game that has not been released yet and which you have never played? Where is this information coming from?

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:30:20 AM

Are you for real? The game is coming out in just over a month. Kojima has been supremely hesitant to actually show gameplay before the game has come out, but feels obligated to because most fans are impatient and lacking concrete info of the gameplay. To believe that there's some kind of conspiracy that he's just showing us completely up-in-the-air content for a project that he willingly presented info on for over an hour in great detail only to bait everyone screams enormous bad faith on your part; that's not cutting down speculation, that's just adamant refusal of things that are being told to us, up to literal word-for-word: "these enemies are called Mules. They will try to steal your cargo, they won't try to kill you".

Like, I know Kojima is a renowned Trolling Creator, but on a basic logistical/game development level for a project of this size, there's zero reason for him in this context to be presenting any of this as anything except what it is at face value, and is to be accepted and expected.

And that still ignores my other point: what excuses literally everything else on the page?

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:33:46 AM

Please answer the question, preferably with less hostility. Am I to understand from the above few posts that gameplay footage was shown at Tokyo Game Show in which one or more Bandit Mooks appeared? Do I have that correct?

I've also wondered what HighCrate is trying to achieve here. HC equates anything about an unreleased work to speculation, even if it's obviously not.

Edited by bwburke94 on Sep 18th 2019 at 1:32:43 PM

I am attempting to make sure that I understand the basic facts of the matter before we move on. That's all.

If you actually were, you'd be consistent in how you approach entries as canon, speculative, and would also have a stance on what you believe does count as acceptable which already exists in the article, which you curiously have not made despite me asking you multiple times.

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:37:58 AM

Please answer the question. It's a simple yes or no question.

I have already given an example of an acceptable entry (and explained why it is acceptable) above when I quoted Animal Motifs.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:39:04 AM

Thank you. So again, the entry currently reads:

• Bandit Mook: Mules are an enemy type which — while they won't try and kill Sam — are out to steal his cargo and will incapacitate him with electrified weaponry. The items which they pilfer (both from you and other online players) are contained at their guarded sites, which can be stealthily raided to recover what was lost.

You are telling me that this trope is present in gameplay footage shown at TGS. That is your citation for the above. The problem is that the citation is not actually present in the entry text. So let's fix that. Can we rephrase the above entry so that it describes what we see in the TGS footage, and explains that that's where we see it? Something like,

• Bandit Mook: In gameplay footage shown at TGS, enemies called Mules incapacitate Sam with electrified weaponry and steal his cargo. The stolen items are contained at their guarded sites. Sam stealthily raids them to recover what was lost.

Does that look accurate?

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:48:53 AM

Because that's not just gonna be in limited to the trailer: it's part of the game itself, and will be out. My original grievance which I listed in the page itself as I was adding content was "this constant requirement of citations of actual definite content that has been seen and expressed in the official product is gonna make this page a gross mess requiring a lot of gratuitous cleanup of irrelevant links just to prove that things that exist... exist, once the game comes out in a little over a month."

This is the same principle: specifying that stuff from a work is presented from a specific presentation and not the actual game itself is just unnecessary word cruft that will be completely irrelevant in a matter of just over a month. The material/work/game/Death Stranding exists. It should not have to prove itself that it exists from a secondhand source.

Stuff exclusively found in cinematic trailers can be specified as coming from specific trailers which we in fact do not have the ability to verify if it accurately represents the game or not, but this information I'm writing is taken from the context of an actual demonstration of the game itself, effectively the game itself. So like... yeah?

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 10:53:33 AM