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Recurring elements in the Final Fantasy series

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Recurring elements in the Final Fantasy series (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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This is a relatively recent Good Article (2020). It is also, I fear, a major fail of WP:GNG and WP:OR (and of Good Article review requirements...). No sources cited use the term 'recurring' in the title. We don't have any category for "recurring elements in work of fiction" (the closest concept we have is on recurring character). The article does not define the topic outside lead (with no references there); in fact the term "recurring element" is used in article just three times: in the very name, in the lead, and in a single sentence in the body ("Twin antagonists, with the second main antagonist being hidden for the majority of the game, is also a recurring element" - a sentence sourced to... errr, an offline game trailer??) No sources I can see in my BEFORE tackling this particular topic. The article is effectively an essay stretching the definition of recurring - it discusses stuff from the obvious ("Stories in the series frequently emphasize the internal struggles, passions, and tragedies of the characters..." - wow, those recurring elements might be found in any and all works of fiction!), series-specific (crystals, chocobo, character names or specific characters recurring in the series, game mechanics), to irrelevant ("The Final Fantasy series and several specific games within it have been credited for introducing and popularizing many concepts that are today widely used in console RPGs." that have nothing to do with "recurring elements"). Bottom line, the fact that FF series have recurring elements like chocobos or like is trivial, and might merit mention in the article on Final Fantasy media franchise, but it is not an encyclopedic topic that merits a stand-alone article, not until such a time this topic (of "recurring elements in FF" is covered in depth by reliable sources - not offline video game trailers...). Again, this is a major failure of OR and GNG, as I fear the author of this confused Misplaced Pages to publish an essay on video gaming trivia. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

As a note, this article was not someone's personal essay, but a 2016 merger of Gameplay of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy character jobs, and Character design of Final Fantasy in an attempt to consolidate these series-aspect spinouts into a more cohesive whole. Those article themselves were the result of a decade of consolidation of minor spinouts like Minigames of Final Fantasy (merged 2011). --PresN 13:16, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy, and Video games. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment - After my initial skimming of the article, it all looks like valid content that is routinely covered by series articles. Given giant scope of the respective series article, I assume this was more of a WP:SIZESPLIT. I'm leaning much more towards re-titling than deleting. Sergecross73 msg me 12:53, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  Do note that SIZESPLIT stresses that splits should occurr "only if the new articles are themselves sufficiently notable to be included in the encyclopedia". There is also the OR angle to consider. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:08, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  I say "retitle" as a means of addressing your OR concerns. It's very clearly reliable source commentary on the series. No one would bat an eye if all of this was just in the series articles, so there's obviously ways to do it while avoiding OR. Sergecross73 msg me 13:17, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• Merge (Or perhaps the better word to describe it would be "split"?) It seems like overall this article is a very excessively-detailed description of stuff that should (and is) covered in the mainline articles via summary style (the series article itself is 43 kB, not exactly in a "dire need of splitting" state, and duplicates some of this content anyhow.) I agree with Piotrus that stuff like Cid and the characters completely veer into trivia; that stuff isn't necessary to understand the series, and it's not integral. The fact is that Final Fantasy has a lot of commonalities, but it's also a very diffuse and sprawling franchise at this point and trying to address everything like it's one big video game development section doesn't seem like it has the sourcing behind it. This fundamentally isn't any different than those "Development of..." articles the VG project has realized are generally not appropriate; it's duplicative and forking of a lot of content already on Misplaced Pages. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 13:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Just popping in as the creator of this article to say that, regardless of my feelings on the language used in the nomination, I'll abide by the decision reached. If the decision is to merge/delete, salvageable information can be condensed into other articles. --ProtoDrake (talk) 13:17, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Keep There are lots of mentions of the series' recurring elements, such as this IGN article. I think it's a separately notable topic to discuss, and dispute the claim that it is entirely WP:GAMECRUFT. Let's not throw out the baby along with the WP:BATHWATER. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 13:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Keep - I'm open to reworking the information or retitling it, but this is well-sourced, well researched, well-written content. There's ways to fix the noted concerns without resorting to deletion. Sergecross73 msg me 13:41, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment – This article would be Final Fantasy's version of a "Universe of " article, à la Universe of The Legend of Zelda. I don't think it's in good spirit to literally look for "recurring elements" or similar terms in source titles: I'll grand that this title might not be optimal. It would take a dive in the sources to find if there's enough to say about the franchise thematic and universal consistency (or inconsistency?) to form an article. I'm taken aback by how many sources used are tweets or development updates for sequels; in that sense I do think there's a problem here. I also think an article somewhat similar to this one is probably very reasonable, however. The recurring elements and inconsistencies of Final Fantasy's worlds is quite well-discussed I'm sure. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  "Shared elements of the Final Fantasy series" may be a better way of naming it. "Recurring" does sound a bit like the writers of the article are looking for anything and everything that is the same in later entries. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 13:45, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Nomination is not convincing here IMO, way overfocusing on if the words "recurring element" are applicable. If you dislike the title of the article, that's cause to go to WP:RM - not for deletion. "Recurring elements" is a descriptive title (WP:DESCRIPTIVE), i.e. just a Misplaced Pages term, and thus isn't expected to be mentioned constantly. If anything, perhaps parts of the article should be split back out again for more coherent topics like in 2016, but this would not be in an AFD sense but rather a content organization sense with no content lost. To get to the topic AFD is more interested in, are there valid secondary sources for all this? Yes (by far the most important criterion!). Would this cause bloat if moved into other articles, meaning this is a valid WP:SUMMARYSTYLE split? Yes. Does this also help with repetition so that an element shared across the series can easily be wikilinked so that the general idea of a character named Cid can be invoked? Yes. Not seeing a problem here. SnowFire (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Keep. Whether or not the article should be retitled to better reflect its content is one discussion, but deleting the whole thing is another altogether. The article contains a spate of in-depth RS coverage on the article's topic. The exact phrase "recurring elements" is unnecessary here, in the same way that, for example, sources in List of Final Fantasy media do not need to use the exact word "media" if the items listed all fit the plain definition of the term. RSes treat these elements as important enough to dedicate sustained coverage to them, and treat them as defining aspects of the series, and that is good enough for an article. Phediuk (talk) 14:34, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
• Keep - The nom's argument that the topic fails GNG and OR is easily debunked by examining the article's exhaustive and extensive sourcing. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 04:16, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

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