Nomination queries

[press_start_mod]

Nominations continue until 29 June!

First up, when nominating, please follow the nomination guidelines, including the disambiguation at the end of the tag.

Secondly, I have nominations for The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part I. I know that Part II came out a couple of days ago - how do you want to do this?

Thirdly, I'd like to know in terms of Assassin's Creed whether it should be split or grouped together. If it is to be split, how should it be split?

Finally, I have a nomination for Pokemon - AMT with nominations for Black and White, X and Y, and Sword and Shield. Are these all in continuity with one another?

Queries remain open until the the 27th, so please if you have a view about issues 2 and 3, let me know. Anonymous comments are screened unless your AO3 name is included in the comment, but I do read all comments.

Comments

Assassin's Creed

[asymptotically]

It makes sense to me to split Assassin's Creed. The vast majority of the gametime, to the point that you can easily forget that the modern storyline exists even as a briefly introduced framing device, is in very different settings with very different characters. I don't think the modern storylines of the new games even share characters with the Desmond era modern storylines (if they do, they were brief enough appearances that I do not remember them) so that connection is even more tenuous than it has been. Basically the only thing connecting most of the assassin's creed games to one another is the idea of the Isu and Abstergo and some easter egg appearances. It's become less of a modern storyline and more of a modern framing device since about AC3.

The only ones I would argue for combining are the Ezio Trilogy, since those three games do share characters in both the animus and modern storylines. Or the Heritage Collection (The Ezio Trilogy & AC1 & AC3) since those games are the ones where the modern storyline had a storyline with Desmond.


So I would say split:

Early games:
Option 1) All as one collection containing AC1, AC2, Brotherhood, Relevations, and AC3.
Option 2)AC1
Ezio Trilogy
AC3

The rest of the games:
All split. Only two of these even share a modern character and otherwise the only link is bloodline based and easter eggs.

Re: Assassin's Creed

[tkodami]

I agree with these splits! I would be fine with splitting it any of the above ways, though I think these would be my preference:

1) Via the main character of the (historical part of the) game. Therefore: AC 1, Ezio Trilogy, AC3, all of the rest of the games separately

2) Via the main character of modern storyline. Therefore: Desmond storyline (AC1, AC2, AC:Brotherbood, AC:Revelations, AC3), then all of the rest of the games separately*

*note: I haven't played later AC games aside from AC: Origins, so I don't even know if any of the future games share overlapping modern protagonists! My apologies if I've made a mistake anywhere.

Re: Assassin's Creed

[thedevilchicken]

I'd probably go with splitting by main character in the historical part. This is mostly because:

a) 1, the Ezio Trilogy and 3 are pretty different games, only really linked by Desmond

b) the modern main character in Unity/Syndicate is an unnamed "Initiate" who doesn't appear on screen and is presumably the player, and the modern MC in Origins/Odyssey is Layla (who appears for about 30 minutes combined over both games, if that) - linking Unity and Syndicate, and Origins and Odyssey, would feel really weird!

The questions I have are: how would people want to treat crossovers between games, and where would you nominate modern day ships?

Re: Assassin's Creed

[asymptotically]

Oh those are good questions.

I would definitely want the modern pairings to be kept with their games. Splitting them off adds too many questions, especially since it's pretty popular to ship the modern character with the historical character of that game. There's only a few pairings that would affect anyways (and only really in the Desmond era games) so splitting it out would probably make more issues than it solves.

I think crossovers should go into Crossover Fandom. If you look at the current tagset, most of Crossover Fandom is currently Final Fantasy/Final Fantasy. It wouldn't seem fair to give AC a special crossover fandom when crossovers for other games of the same series are in Crossover Fandom.

Re: Assassin's Creed

[lessened]

I'd do Desmond-Era (AC1, Ezio's stuff, AC3, Black Flag, Freedom Cry, Liberation, Rogue), Unity, Syndicate, Origins, Odyssey. There's a cohesion to the games pre-Unity, and while Shaun and Rebecca do briefly briefly appear in Syndicate, anything requesting Desmond in that era could still go in Desmond-Era while mentioning wanting the later timeline.

There's a chunk of fans who've only played Origins and Odyssey who won't really request outside that, so they should have their own little boxes. There's a cohesion to the stories before the next-gen plot retconning and reshuffling mess re: Juno that were the games post-Syndicate, but Unity and Syndicate should be separate to encourage separate nominations rather than grouping them where they'd be overshadowed by Origins and Odyssey or the Desmond games.

[(Anonymous)]

For TLoU:

My personal opinion is to just keep everything under "The Last of Us Parts 1 & 2" like "Final Fantasy X & X-2" are. If people don't want spoilers from Part 2, they can always put it in their optional detail box.

-Kameiko

[runicmagitek]

Regarding The Last of Us and Part II, I'd prefer to see them as separate entries, at least for this year. They are the same timeline/continuity, but I can see people not wanting to be spoiled, both for those offering and requesting. As mentioned above, those requesting can put a note in their letter about no spoilers, but there's little protecting those offering to create. If I'm someone who hasn't fully finished Part II, but am fully versed in the original game, I could potentially read a letter from a recipient who wants things from spoiler territory and in turn spoil the one offering. One could simply not offer to create anything if both games are lumped together, but then that limits the number of people offering. Especially with people on social media not being happy with Part II, there could be people who just want to stick with the first game and not deal with Part II.

And then yeah, if you have someone who wants to offer and/or request for both, that's two slots and kind of sucky. I'm not sure if there would be more people offering if the two were split as opposed to merged :\ but I'm completely fine if the two are split for the sake of preventing spoilers on both ends for this year. Also fine if they do get merged - I just won't be offering or requesting it unless I finish the game in time (and considering it just came out and I'm not keen on rushing it... D:).

Which all of this has me thinking... is this the first time this has popped up? Like a sequel coming out right when nominations happen and figuring out whether to merge or separate? Usually if it's a single game, I'm of the mindset of "well, don't touch it until I've finished it," but I'm curious if this has been dealt with in previous years.

[(Anonymous)]

I wouldn’t mind a separate listing, but I was trying to put slot availability into consideration. I don’t really want to nominate say Joel and Ellie in two different areas from within the same fandom/game when I could just pick one. If that were the case then we have to nominate all Continuity games separately regardless of time frame.

But as for this: Especially with people on social media not being happy with Part II, there could be people who just want to stick with the first game and not deal with Part II.

I have to disagree to an extent. Most of the “fans” are part of the trolling community that helped give the game a rating of 3 within the first 8 hours of the official release date, which was over 13,000 reviews.. I don’t know if that’s going to take part of the decision making, but I wanted to point that out. People complaining are just mostly parroting what others are saying.

Either way, whatever mod wants to do in the end. If I gotta use two slots, so be it! It’ll be interesting! Enjoy the game! I’m taking my time too and having a blast.

~Kameiko

[runicmagitek]

I know there are trolls review bombing the game, but I also have a handful of friends who have already finished and expressed how upset they are with Part II. The trolls are definitely being loud, but from my own experience, it's not 100% the trolls, so I wanted to include that, even if it's a minority.

And yeah, it's tricky :/ I'd rather be cautious and have to use two offer/request slots, but that's me.

Best of luck to you, too!

[kay_obsessive]

I'm not the nominator of these, but I am thinking about nominating some other things from Pokemon.

All Media Types would include the anime and various manga series as well as the main games and spin-off games, so that's probably not the best choice. All the worlds are very different, and many characters with the same name and general appearance but drastically different stories and personalities appear across the franchise.

All the main series sets of games are pretty self-contained (though the Gold/Silver games directly continue the story of the Red/Blue games, same with Black/White and Black2/White2) but they are all roughly in continuity with each other. There are some alternate universe niggles with the remakes, especially Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby, but characters from previous games frequently make cameos in later games, and the regions and sometimes the events from previous games also get mentioned.

I would probably go with the "Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)" tag unless someone else has strong feelings about breaking it into each set of games.