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[edit] References to side-quests

Regarding this revision in Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Hyrule Castle#Gaining_Entrance, I tend to disagree with moving the more basic references to Gold Skulltula into the sidequests section. To a certain extent, the Gold Skulltulas are just as important to progressing through the game as heart pieces. But more importantly, I don't see the rationale for its removal. I don't think that the walkthrough was too cluttered before, and it can be helpful for a user to gain an understanding of good order of events to completing a game. One of my favorite walkthroughs is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Official Strategy Guide for GameCube by Brady Games [1] which contains three sections which lends themselves well to The Wind Waker's style of gameplay. It contains a general purpose walkthrough, a list of sidequests and special items, and an Island Tours section which breaks the game down into all of its distinct locations (islands) and summarizes all of the special actions/items that occur there. I have not seen any strategy guides here which are currently organized in this fashion, but I find this very helpful when trying to gain full completion of a game, and I believe it lends credence to presenting information in as many ways as possible rather than eliminating repetition in a strategy guide. --inarius 11:18, 9 March 2006 (PST)

You make a good point. I was actually the one who added the very Skulltula section that I removed. I was second-guessing myself. In any case, I was basically concerned about redundancy and the main quest vs. the side quests. I thought perhaps the main quest could be followed in the main section, with reference to the side quests. But since I have no strong opinion on the matter, I thought I'd delete it and see what the community thought.--Abunai 19:55, 9 March 2006 (CST)

I must agree with inarius in this matter. I believe that bringing up the optional side quest material when they occur in the game is a good thing, and it gives players their own choice of whether or not they want to follow it. That's the reason the sidebar was created, so that players can make their own choices on how to play the game. We can certainly have a more thorough "Skulltula guide" in the table of contents, but some players will be angry to learn that they missed a great opprotunity to complete a side quest by our omission. I vote we keep it. --echelon ^talk 17:29, 11 March 2006 (PST)

Since no one disagreed (and I hadn't gotten around to it yet), I have made this change. --inarius 17:34, 27 September 2006 (CDT)

[edit] No TOC?

Regarding this edit, I don't see why it is necessary to remove TOC boxes on most articles, including this one. I don't think they serve to distract form the primary AllGameNav-TOC, and since their appearance is automated, they won't show up on ridiculously small articles. The TOC boxes make the article a bit more accessible and easier for someone browsing the walkthrough to see what the highlights of a particular page are and skip to them. This particular page doesn't describe a level, and isn't as large as several others, however I still preferred the format before.

Here is how I would envision the page looking with the new skulltula box and the old format, including the TOC. Another change which I have reverted, but I am not married to, is the bold lettering in the intro. Also practiced in most Wikipedia articles, I think the functional purpose of this is to alert a user as to what this page/article is about if they don't read the actual title. Since, in walkthoughs as complex as this one, the title is buried under one or more forward slashes (/), this might actually be useful information. Many pages in the OoT guid already begin with a little intro that disucsses where you are in the game, rather than fitting a strict step-by-step progression. The format I have proposed, including the TOC, bold text, and enlarged screenshot, in my mind, sets these intros aside from the walkthrough content and helps the user quickly place where he/she is in the game before reading on. --inarius 02:46, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

Looks fine to me (as somebody who's got no idea about the game ;-) ). --DrBob (Talk) 10:58, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

Seconding DrBob, I don't think it really matters if we know about the game (even though I did play it, but it was a while ago), it looks better, and is more accessible. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 21:26, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, that definitely looks better. :) Garrett^Talk 22:04, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

I agree with inarius on all counts! It looks and performs superbly! echelon 07:27, 17 October 2006 (CDT)