User blog:Tullis/Absentia

I'm still away from the wiki and will be for a little while longer. Work is using up a lot of my concentration and creativity, and to be honest, things seem to be going pretty well around here without me : ). I do want to come back sometime at the end of February, but probably in a more limited capacity. This wiki seems to be going pretty damn well.

Besides I'm really enjoying my Insanity playthrough at the moment. I'm actually finding that Insanity difficulty adds an awful lot to the story. It makes every big battle into a tactical and logistical puzzle: did I bring the right squad members, do I need to respec my abilities, I need to carefully conserve my medi-gel, maybe I should switch to a different heavy weapon because I'll need it for that guy, etc. Feels very appropriate for a tale about a suicide mission.

I'm replaying battles a lot, but it's turning into a more satisfying experience overall and I feel like I'm really getting to grips with the new combat system. For those who've tried it, what do you make of Insanity?

Callouts

 * Cerberus Daily News. Thanks to everyone who's keeping this updated. Did you see it got a mention on Kotaku? : )


 * Featured articles. There's some nominations down for these; we're probably not going to feature any ME2 articles until things settle down a bit, to ensure they meet the proper criteria. After getting a nomination I'm going to change the featured article to David Anderson, just for a change (when I can get the page to behave and load for me properly : ) ) As a reminder, featured articles need to be nominated here, and should follow these criteria:


 * the page must be free of spelling or grammatical errors, and not refer to Shepard by gender or have alien race names capitalised (see the Style Guide).
 * it must contain at least one picture or screenshot.
 * it cannot be a current candidate for merge or deletion, or tagged as a stub (pages where the stub tag is an artifact will be considered).
 * the page must be well formatted and tidy.


 * Trivia sections. I've seen a couple of them on character articles, especially Samara and Garrus' pages, which are getting MUCH too long. Trivia sections should be a few, interesting points that people may not have known about the character. A good 70% of material I've seen in the trivia sections can be removed (i.e. comparing Garrus' activities to Saren's, which is not trivia and more of an opinion) or integrated into the article (i.e. Garrus' talk of using sniper shots to make Shepard hurry up). It's an easy way to add extra info, but a lot of it isn't trivia and, in many cases, is important or interesting enough to be merged into the article proper. Ideally trivia sections should have about half a dozen interesting snippets of info, not more than a line or so long.


 * Examples of trivia include:


 * Ashley was originally to recite Robert Heinlein's "Cool Green Hills of Earth." The rights for Heinlein's work are rather complex, and when time ran out to acquire permission, it was replaced with Tennyson's "Ulysses," which is in the public domain. The second and third stanzas were used when she discussed her father, and the fourth and final on the way to Ilos.
 * Talking to Miranda early on in the game reveals that she pushed for a control chip to be implanted within Shepard's brain, but was overruled by the Illusive Man (who insisted that Shepard be brought back exactly as the Commander had been).
 * The Japanese word 'kaidan' loosely translates as 'ghost story'.


 * ...and so on. It's often things people might not have known just from playing the game and that are kind of intriguing.

Take care all, and happy editing,

--Tullis

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