Forum:Which characters go into game/expansion templates?

Is there any reason for not including [Nova] in the StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty Characters section, along with 'Others' characters Mengsks, Lockwell, and Warfield? --Purewasted 06:54, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Well, the underlying question is, what is the criteria a character has to pass to be considered eligible for "Campaign Character" status? Let's pretend that we have the game in our hands, we know exactly how much screentime each character has, everything. Must they have a speaking line, as opposed to appearing for 5 seconds in a cinematic next to a speaking character? If Nova's 'cameo' turns out to be no more than her appearing in an in-game rendered cinematic to call down a Nuke on something (highly unlikely based on Metzen's hype), the mission page will still have to note her presence, won't it? And once her presence is noted there, she's a character in the campaign, isn't she?

Then, of course, that raises the question of the eligibility one-shot characters. IE, a local Marine 'hero' the player controls in Outbreak, and doesn't see afterwards. Obviously that wouldn't warrant a mention on the campaign page... so it's far from clear-cut. Is the defining factor then whether the player can interact with the character in the RPG setting? Then it's very likely Arcturus, Valerian, Warfield, and Kerrigan will all fail to qualify.

Lostpedia, for Lost, offers one way: listing every single character, no matter how brief (or dialogue-less) their appearance... though they would make a note of the brevity. WoWwiki offers another: listing only those that appear within missions themselves. Curiously, King Terenas, who appears in both the opening and closing cinematic and is referenced many times in the dialogue, would get no mention; while notably insignificant, one-shot enemy Heroes that appear in missions WOULD.

(for reference: http://www.wowwiki.com/Path_of_the_Damned all six of the "Other Major Characters" are as far from major as you can imagine; http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Season_5 lists every single character, even appearing only in archived footage, and lets the users sort for themselves)

Do we have this criteria figured out? My personal preference is to go with the safer route and over-include, as opposed to being strict and under-including. But anyway, just wanted to bring that up. --Purewasted 02:09, November 1, 2009 (UTC)