StrategyWiki:Guide/Walkthrough pages
The Walkthrough section of a guide is the most important and usually biggest part of any guide. Everything else in the guide is to support this section, which is where readers can go to learn how to beat their game. Walkthrough pages should be ordered logically, which usually means in the same order that the game is completed. The Walkthrough page itself is mandatory for every guide, whether it contains any actual walkthrough information or not. A link to the Walkthrough page is on every Header Nav at the top of every page in the guide. A game page with the title "Walkthrough" is also a high probability search term and likely the first page a reader will see in your guide.
As a general rule, if something is not necessary to complete the game ("complete" in this sense means seeing the ending if there is one) it can be considered a secret or sidequest, and should be covered as an appendix page (although mentioning it with a sidebar is still a good idea).
Walkthrough page[edit]
The main walkthrough page can have a wide variety of uses:
- A simple "splash page", perhaps with a centered graphic and short story synopsis or description of the opening cut scene.
- A meta-guide explaining the layout of the following walkthrough pages or any unintuitive terms or formatting used through the guide.
- An overview of common elements and strategies used throughout the game, as opposed to only on specific guide pages.
- The actual beginning of the walkthrough, such as the tutorial level before the game proper begins.
- The entire walkthrough, if it is short enough to go on one page.
This is also the one page that has a fully expanded Footer Nav, giving easy access to all links found on the Table of Contents page. While in general it may be better to put actual helpful content on this page, treating it as a cover page for the walkthrough is also acceptable. Keep in mind that extremely bare Walkthrough pages (e.g. one sentence or completely blank with just Header/Footer Navs) will be deleted as empty pages.
Individual pages[edit]
For many games, especially recent ones, it is common to have a lot of information that won't fit all on one page. In this case, the walkthrough can be split up into multiple pages. Where to split content should be a logical choice, such as at different chapters or upon arriving at new areas. This is highly dependent on the type of game, but as a guide writer you should be able to decide on a method that will make the most sense to the reader, allowing them to easily find the part of the game for which they're looking.
Other walkthrough pages should be subpages of the main guide and not a subpage of the Walkthrough page (e.g. Game name/Level 1, not Game name/Walkthrough/Level 1). If it has an official name, such as many chapters or levels do, please use that instead a generic numbered page. As with all pages, us the "Guide page" preload button to add the Header Nav at the top of the page and the Footer Nav at the bottom.
