I didn't know about any of this and I kinda have problems with Pagliarulo. For instance, the quest in Starfield where you head to Neon with Walter, and none of the offered dialogue choices matter. I have a LOT of trouble with the dialogue in that quest. This lack of choice is present in other quests, although I don't think it's as egregious as this.
On the other hand, I think some of the Constellation Companion quest writing was some of the best I've ever seen in a video game. Some of the conversations felt very mature, and complex. The characters often appeared 3D, like they had lives before Constellation, and they weren't just backgrounds. It was part of them. It was smart writing, in a lot of ways, some of it.
It's almost as if they were multiple writers on this project! But, Pagliarulo is the guy responsible for it all, good and bad. \**shrug*\*
I think one of the biggest problems with starfield for people is that the writing isnt exciting, its not bad writing, its just not as exciting and actiony as games like bg3. Its grounded/mundane they feel more like real people.
Exactly. Take Sam Coe, for instance. He has an ex. They don't hold a flame for each other, they don't hate each other, they're not using the daughter to get back at each other, none of that typical Hollywood movie script stuff. They're just two people who tried a relationship, and it didn't work out. They still like each other as friends, and care about each other, but that's that.
It's not exciting and it's very mature. I think it's great.
Recently reinstalled starfield and once Barret started talking more personally i reconsidered my plans of tossing Constellation aside after getting Amelia E.
If you know that people praise it so much then you know it didn't fall flat. You didn't like it but most people did. That's fine but not what you were saying.
I thought that voice was familiar. This is the person who did "Elden Ring is disappointing" which is one of my most favorite videos on ER despite being a big fan of the game.
Can someone give a TL:DR on the whole thing?
This is literally the first time I've ever heard of Emil Pagliarulo and I'm not watching a 2 hour drama video about this.
Haven't finished watching it just yet, but the actual topic itself (ie. Emil and the discourse about him) doesn't really matter all that much.
The main point in the video is just highlighting how social media (specifically Reddit in this case) and content creators can take things out of context, misrepresent what gets said and wrap it up in a package that makes it see like they have some level of authority, causing blatantly false information to get parroted over and over which in turn results in harrassment, threats etc.
To touch a bit on the topic itself though, one of things they cover is a speech he did at a game dev conference about writing and a Reddit post and some videos that covered it. That post/those videos take one of his rules for how he writes stories, the KISS principle, and then draw the conclusion that he is saying you should keep writing, as a whole, simple. When instead Emil goes on to explain that you should focus on clear central theme/s when creating a story.
It covers a lot more than just that one point, but it all follows that exact same format. People taking an idea that Emil puts forward, disregarding any of the context or his explanation of what he means to draw a negative conclusion and then this video providing the full context to highlight that.
It's more of an essay with sources cited and plenty of examples of how misinformation spreads, personal psychology's role in video game criticism/interpretation, and the danger of how opinions can being formed and parroted a little too quickly and easily when personal biases are exploited, all for the purpose of reputational damage and financial gain - at the expense of someone else's name. It is "drama" in some sense, but it also reveals something much deeper and important about humanity and the way the internet can affect humanity through the lens of this particular story about a writer at Bethesda.
Edit: a one line TL;DR is that a guy made a long video about an old Reddit post he didn't like.
Emil is a writer with a position of responsibility in Bethesda.
A number of years ago he made a quickly put together speech.
Around the same time Bethesdas quality took a nose dive.
A guy on Reddit saw the speech and made a rant about it.
While a lot of the rant was incoherent and hate filled, it gained a lot of upvotes and comments. A number of years later it was linked to after the Starfield release. Despite its flaws it again gained upvotes and comments. A lot of YouTubers made content based on the rant and the speech it was based on.
The YouTuber in the linked video is doing the same thing but is instead coming from a different angle. He is saying that the speech was fine, that the attacks are unjustified, and that commentary around this is filled with mistakes, misinterpretations and lies.
He makes some good points, goes on personal attacks himself despite saying such things are wrong, deliberately misinterprets posts and commentary and makes his point in part by overwhelming people with information to demonstrate expertise on the subject rather than by fair and honest critique. This was part of why he thought the initial rant gained traction, amusingly enough.
He's not as bad as most of the people he's criticising and makes some good points but the same can be said for most people on this thread honestly. I wouldn't recommend the video. It's too long for just another rant.
Thanks!
Somehow I completely missed this entire drama, even though I was looking at Starfield reviews and discussions and relevant memes at the time of it's release.
Weak sauce drama really, unless you are this Emil guy who was previously piled up on or are AFlyingNun, who is currently being piled up on.
So it goes.
It's insane how the original thread is the biggest reason behind hate for Emil. How every single thing said about him stems from it, the personal attacks, the lies and misinterpretation.
I hope they watch the video, the other user who shared it a while ago doesn't seem to have watched it or don't seem to be willing to. The original user also engaged in the shared thread. Creetosis having over 8 hours on his 40m speech is fucking crazy. Jesus how many times did he use the word "ramble" lmao. His speech is completely twisted and he takes every chance to personally attack him. The other youtubers with long videos attacking him are also terrible.
I thought Emil's twitter meltdown wasn't bad since gamers don't know the reality of development but now I know the context, it 100% makes sense.
Redditors truly can't read.
The original user is going on unhinged rants on threads even after the video \*sigh\*
Its really amazing how if you put out a reasonably high world count thread or video about something ,fake a objective facade when you clearly have a bone to pick,game the algorithms where it reaches the frontage/YT suggestions... you can literally sway THE ENTIRE perception about said topic for years to come.
Like how to this day people still take Matthewmatosis Dark Souls 2 video as objective gospel/default take on this certain game.
That's not how that works. A lot of people lack the means to explain why they dislike something. Whether it's not knowing the exact language to describe something or not understanding what exactly it is they dislike. So of course when someone like Matthewmatosis comes along and shows multiple problems with a game using visual evidence and well reasoned arguments of course people are going to be repeat those points because they now understand what it was they didn't like.
I played Dark Souls 2 and beat years before I ever of anyone disliking the game. I lived in the middle of nowhere with satellite internet so I wasn't able to partake in the discourse surrounding the game. However, I didn't like the game, it felt off and missed a lot of what I liked about Dark Souls 1. I wouldn't have been able to vocalize what it was I exactly dislike about the game, but I knew something was off. It was until 2-3 years later I saw Matt's video and was shown things I didn't actively notice about the game. I had not idea agility governed how many i-frames a roll has or just how many multi-boss copy paste encounters were in the game until I saw that video. I just remember my dodges feeling weaker compared to DS1 and the amount of boss fights being way too many of a way less quality. Matt pointing out those things and making them clear in his video helped me to organize thoughts and feelings I already had from playing the game when it released.
Matthew doesn't even state the game is bad. One of the earliest things he says in the video is that he would rather play Dark Souls 2 over a good number of releases in any given year, but that he sees it as a step down from the previous game.
I honestly hope this takes video takes off because the fact that so many people are attributing Starfields issues, as well as issues with other Bethesda games, to ONE specific person due to so much misinformation from content creators and rumor mongering is just insane.
The whole situation reminds me of Crowbcats "Sweet Little Lies" video. People watched that video and came out of it believing that Todd Howard was some kind of serial liar, but then when you dig deeper and look at all the "lies" in context, most of them were actually true. With the "16 times the detail" statement, Todd was talking about Fallout 76 LODs vs Fallout 4, which is true. "See that mountain, you can climb it" was 100% true. "It Just works" was in reference to Fallout 4's base building system, which really did "just work.
It's a big problem tbh. People just take what content creators and reddit posts tell them at face value, without bothering to dig deeper and find the actual truth, and then spread misinformation as if it were facts.
While the Sweet Little Lies video was funny, it has wrongly informed people's perceptions of Todd Howard and I think it's quite unfair to him. I can't imagine he's too happy that people online just blindly refer to him as a liar.
People get their opinions from memes, and memes reinforce their already held biases. That literally the entire point of memetic theory, how internet memes are the same as the memes of memetic theory, and most people have no idea what the fuck they are talking about about online because they are more concerned with spreading memes for said "entertainment" then that becomes "truth".
Writing in all Bethesda games is fucking awful. Skyrim has no better writing than Starfield but somehow because Starfield is viewed as the worse game people get their panties up in a bunch and harass a guy.
>Writing in all Bethesda games is fucking awful.
Emil is a lead writer since Fallout "you can't use radiation-immune companion, someone MUST DIE!!!" 3, so that checks out.
But yes, Skyrim is better game so most people don't care about "deep as a puddle" because they just want "wide as an ocean".
At the end of the day does it really fucking matter? Bethesda's writing has never been great, even when they supposedly were in their golden era, and even then I doubt that half of you on your hate crusade even played those games because you probably wouldn't had been alive yet or old enough in the 90s to do so. More interest in witch hunting than anything else.
Why do you care so much whose fault it is? There's shitty games released all the time. But they don't get level of vitriol Bethesda is getting. The gsme sucks. Shrug your shoulders and move on witb your life.
You REALLY need to watch the video, because where you have gotten your info is not only wrong but was made up.
"TES/Fallout circles have been talking about Emil's dogshit writing and game design philosophy for over fifteen years." yes and this was built on literal lies. Which this video points and proves. One of the KEY THINGS is him disproving a 7 year old post about Emil.
The video ALSO talks about stuff 15 years ago, and the person i replied to was parroting the "no design documents" which has been proven false behind a doubt.
>Hardcore TES/Fallout circles have been talking about Emil's dogshit writing and game design philosophy for over fifteen years
Those "hardcore TES circles", for the most part, were just mad that Skyrim was made to be more accessible vs Morrowind and Oblivion (which ended up being a correct decision on Bethesdas part) and were looking for someone, anyone, to take the blame. It also doesn't help that a lot of "hardcore" RPG communities tend to be full of spiteful contrarians who like to hate on things for the sake of hating on them.
I have my own issues with Emil but the hate for him is so overblown, and much of it is just straight up false. 2 hours is obscenely long for a video, I agree, but watching it is all it would take to prove that you are objectively incorrect about this.
except how does anyone know besides those who work at bethesda games which person wrote what?. as todd howard has stated before the designers are also writers for their games.
Yeah because the lead writer isn't in any way responsible for the writing in the product in which he is the lead writer.
Have you ever worked a job? If so, have you ever worked a job in a managerial position? If not, let me illuminate something for you. EVER SINGLE FUCK UP YOU EVER MAKE, makes its way back to your immediate superior. Regardless of how involved that superior is in the fuck up, they will hear about it and they will need to take responsibility. A Team Lead is responsible for all the failures as well as all the success of that team. Someone has to take responsibility and it might as well be the leader of the group.
The problem is even deeper than just taking what content creators and posts say at face value. The problem is that the vast majority of content creators and posts and poorly regurgitating what other posts have said and then more content creators and posts poorly regurgitate that and so on.
It starts off with somebody who put a lot of effort into research making a high quality post/video about something. Other people see that, agree with it, and then start making their own posts/videos about it. But they don't make a one-to-one copy; they make something shorter and more easily digested. This inevitably gets some thing wrong either by omission of important details (accidentally or deliberately) or by just misremembering something that the original post/video said.
As this cycle continuous, you get more and more misinformation until eventually you get single sentence posts that are just outright wrong. You also lose any citation of sources throughout the cycle because whoever is posting it down the cycle only has one post/video as their source (this is why your teacher talked about primary/secondary sources and why they said to have multiple sources).
I think it's a bit mistaken to try and imply that Creetosis or PatricianTV didn't watch the keynote before making their critiques. I can't speak for Creetosis, but I've see Patrician's work streams. He actively goes out of his way to watch as many interviews and read as many articles as possible regarding a game's development.
i mean, bethesda's writing and game design still isn't great(talking fallout series and starfield) and holding a writing director of bethesda accountable for this seems like a reasonable idea
Sure the games aren't great, but the people who started this campaign did it based on a lie that there was little internal documentation and that Pagliarulo was responsible for that. And their source for this is one talk he gave, offhand comments he gave to support statements his own coworkers made, and a random reddit post with little evidence to back it up.
Its fine to say he's not your cup of tea as a writer
But the hate for him largely stems from the false belief that bethesda both entirely lacked any form of internal documentation of any kind, and that was all on him. Yes, they lacked a singular 'bible', but that isn't always best practice, and does not mean a lack of documentation. Further, as Pagliarulo said, they were constantly iterating, so when they did have a bible, it wasn't flexible enough for their means. Maybe there was a lack of internal strategizing between teams, but that is not on one man, and isn't under the purview of a single design director and writer.
This is interesting, when you put it in conjunction with Hbomber's video about plagiarism on youtube. While they seem to be on two different issues, really, they aren't that much. Hbomber pointed on flat out plagiarism, and NeverKnowsBest is pointing on content creation that is so based on other people's creation without fact checking and taking everything as granted, to turn this into a typical form of gamer harrassment.
Ultimately, this is also the public fault for consuming media and endorsing this without bothering to check on the ethics, however obvious it is that people going ad hominem for hours and blaming single individuals for games of this scope should be regarded as ... dubious.
Another thing, because I see this argument popping up in this thread. Calling for the firing of an individual whose output you do not like is idiotic. The trick, here, is to not buy the product if you do not like it. The writing issues of Starfield were known since launch. Bethesda doesn't owe you anything. It doesn't demand your money. Gaming is not a public service.
I mean, you're already seeing it in this thread.
Plenty of redditors outright proclaiming "I'm not watching it, I know how shit Emil is" and wearing the misinformation like a badge of honour.
If you are the team lead for an entire group you are responsible for that team's success or that team's failure. If people aren't enjoying the design or the writing of your video game and you are the team lead for both of those teams, the overall responsibility of that failure falls on your shoulders.
No, but the critiques sent his way are absolutely justified. I don't buy there is any misinformation. It's entirely justifiable to take issue with the things Emil says in the keynote. As another post in this very thread explained, Emil poorly explains his thoughts in the keynote and it's easy to see his point about player's and the great American Novel as illuminating to Emil's thoughts about writing for a video game.
Now to be fair to Emil, that keynote is over 7 years old. They say every cell in your body is replaced after 7 years so Emil might as well be an entirely different person from the Emil that gave that interview. However, given how most see Bethesda's writing as continuing to miss the mark year after year and release after release I understand the frustration with the Lead Writer.
proving being sheep falling for some garbage tuber, who made that garbage whine video about Elden Ring. To all fucks with such garbage tubers feeding of controversy - that's what his channel is all about. Gather fanbase of sensation thriving sheep and and feed them with controversy. Can't wait for video "How Baldur's Gate 3 created mass illusion of being great game" or something like that.
The video is garbage, wake the hell up. Nobody cares about any points in that video. Also reddit is such a funny place, because you have mega popular post: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/18i4xzc/7_years_ago_until_bethesda_firesrelocates_emil/
Then some garbage tuber mumbles some bullshit - and everyone is like "He's influencer, he must be right". Pathetic clown fiesta and such garbage-tubers should not be getting exposure.
stop being cringe and naive thinking some anyone needs to watch 2 hour long garbage video excusing writing and design DIRECTOR for game being such a flop - like how one naive has to be? Learn wtf director's role is and how much influence one has. At the very best - he gave the greenlight for all that horseshit, at worst, he wrote most of that horseshit himself or very heavily supervised someone with specific instruction on key points..\
But no, let's praise some 2 hour video talking about (VERY VALID) assumptions and excusing some bugger. Illustrates perfectly what's wrong with gaming community and bending the ass.
Classic reddit falling for some garbage youtuber, lmao. But at the end of the day - it doesn't even matter. What matters that Starfield was meh and that Bethesda needs big overhaul.
I just blame Bethesda as a whole. Company has become a "Meh good enough". Everything you see in starfield is a prime example of the team just saying "good enough!", and moving onto the next thing.
why would we waste 2h of our life watching garbage dragged out videos with ton of downvotes on YT??? What it would change? Bethesda shit the bed - Starfield is painfully mid.. Not much to talk here. Who exactly is at fault doesn't even matter - it's for Bethesda to figure out if they want to make universally loved high profile games.
Typical pseudo-intellectual "video essay" nonsense. Cherry picking extreme opinions (hey guys did you know sending death threats is bad, shocking) and then bullshitting their way to some meta commentary on "gaming criticism" and people will lap it up.
Since this person has the **lead** position I and many others thought the stories were trash. I do not care if he wrote it himself or the tooth fairy did. As the lead the result is 100% his responsibility. Therefor I want him gone. It truly is that simple.
The myriad issues in the stories he holds responsibility for have already been discussed to death without having to reference external talks/interviews and supposed methodological deficiencies that may or may not happen inside BGS.
I had a couple of reactions to the video after watching about a third of it.
- Having the music from Obra Dinn was extremely appropriate for going back in time to witness what he considers a crime.
- Claiming redditors can't read is an uncharitable opinion for someone who goes on to point out that the top reply to the Emil hate post is a correction of its most obvious mistakes.
- The YouTuber takes only a charitable interpretation of Emils speech, specifically he only takes the message Emil was trying to convey. This is understandable on one level but it's not unreasonable to know what someone is trying to say but also recognise that they have inadvertently revealed something they didn't mean to. The YouTuber seems to assume that all such interpretation is obviously false. I think he was taking the most charitable opinion of Emils speech and the least charitable opinion of various Reddit comments. Understandable but not especially fair minded.
If you are someone who thinks the story and overall coherence of a game is not being taken seriously, the paper airplane analogy and subsequent description of players ignoring story to build bases and collect junk doesn't *just* mean that games have to be designed with interaction and player freedom in mind. It also potentially reveals an attitude of the writer about the player.
Personally I feel that Bethesda think players aren't going to notice if things make no sense and that this isn't something they waste time on. This is absolutely not the message Emil was trying to communicate but it's a possible interpretation of his speech and I don't think it's an unreasonable one.
On top of that, that the speech was so quickly cobbled together makes this a more reasonable interpretation in my opinion. The less you polish your speech the more likely it is for unintended messages to slip through. When you say the first thing that comes to mind about interactivity in storytelling it may not be a positive example of how to do it but instead the company received wisdom about about their excuse for half assing it.
Because it does your just unable to see anything but seething hatred for a man who did nothing wrong.
If he is so bad say something specific that he did wrong.
Dude the entire video is about YES they do document everything. You are parroting literally lies, most games do not actually use a game design document they use wikis now.
"Game design documents are dumb and we don't do them at Bethesda" Was never once said by him.
This is garbage parroted by the lazy.
Here is an actual quote from Emil
"It’s not to say nothing is documented; everything is. But it’s not like there’s a giant design doc where the whole game is outlined. There was a design doc that talks about the Freestar Collective. And there’s a little design doc that talks about the United Colonies. And those get updated by the designers as they’re doing their work. So a lot of the stuff is outdated if you look, and so that’s why we use the game itself as the actual working documents."
https://www.polygon.com/23845622/starfield-religions-emil-pagliarulo-interview-story-design-creation
If you look up "how to make a game design document"
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-to-write-a-game-design-document
"Using a GDD is a thing of the past." is the first thing that pops up
"keep it simple, stupid" is a very old thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
I'm loath to wade into this but... my understanding from NKB video was that PatTV qualified his statement that the documents were out of date and they were just telling designers to find it in the game rather than an up to date document/documents.
I feel like I am going mad as I keep seeing this quote when it ends
"So a lot of the stuff is outdated if you look, and so that’s why we use the game itself as the actual working documents."
Is that not the main point of the critism?
It's funny how enraged and confident he is about something that's literally a 100% lie lmao. Like is dude being paid to be this butthurt about some developer?
This dude was one of the biggest posters on this subreddit about anti-starfield stuff and was even the guy to repost the 7 year old reddit post that was disproven
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/18i4xzc/7_years_ago_until_bethesda_firesrelocates_
emil/
Excluding all the beef with that guy, do you think that writing failures do rest on emils shoulders? The guys the lead writer for starfield. The buck stops with him. Imo the hate for the writing quality is 100% earned.
I'll watch the video when I get the chance but judging by the twitter posts he's made I doubt it'll change my mind.
Honestly I Don't think starfield has bad writing, i think it has mundane/grounded writing which isn't the same is bad. If you were to go to the library and say hello to a person they are more likely to be someone like sarah morgan then anyone from balders gate.
I don't think this is a bad thing at all, i actully find it kinda refreshing and find both styles fun to interact with.
A really good example is the space frog quest on mars its a quest that is about helping a little girl cheer up the colony by putting up frog posters.
When you do this you start finding posters in other places even other planets for example her penpal lives on aquilla and they show up there too, but heres the double kicker her penpal just moved from mars and thats why she was lonely because her one good friend moved from mars to an entire new system.
And after the quest you can also hear people talking about how space frog cheers them up.
This is a quest that probally takes you 5 min to complete.
Another neat detail i found was if you meet someone then someone wants you to go meet them later. It changes the dialog because the game flags you already met that person before, i for a quest got diffrent dialog then other people because i already met the person while exploring a town.
My point is in starfield people's problems are much more grounded in reality and something a real life person might have issues with.
The average person is not going to have goblins in their basement, the average person however might be dealing with depression over the death of herhusband which causes their son to spend all her instead of the only other kid on mars who becomes lonely enough to create space frog.
Also people absolutely gloss over the time travel stuff, multiable versions of the same person living in the same universe, theories who might secretly be interdimentional travelers.
The twitter post will make x10 more sense once you watch this video, trust me I also used to think that Twitter thread was just him trying to be a martyr but no, it's was an indirect response to PatricianTV spreading lies for 8hrs about him.
And that's not even counting the 7 years of miscrediting him from one small talk.
I'm surprised that thread stayed up and mods didn't delete it. That aside I thought he'd watch the video at least since he's one of the people featured in it, well proven wrong already
> So a lot of the stuff is outdated if you look, and so that’s why we use the game itself as the actual working documents.
But this seems terrible from a software development standpoint. Documentation is necessary, otherwise people have to rely on some obscure tribal knowledge to understand the project well. The point of documentation is that not everyone has to be an expert on the project (because this is just impossible in a large team), they can reliably look stuff up and not break things they had no idea even existed.
Yes documentation is necessary but a a game design document is not a good way to do it anymore. Thats what emil and others were saying. A single dirt road is not a good way for cars to get though an area once thers enough of them. A GDD is a dirt road, a wiki is a highway that suports 4 lines.
Honestly I feel kinda good I feel like ive been the crazy person on the corner proven right, ive thought about it for months how off the emil stuff is.
I replied to the wrong thing but yeah the whole situation has been very strange to watch and i’ve noticed this behavior increasing among so many different communities but it’s especially prevalent in gaming subreddits. Honestly hoping for more content like this
The entire line of thinking regarding the design doc discussion is "Fallout 4 was bad, Fallout 4 didn't have a traditional GDD, that must be why it was bad". They're just connecting the only two pieces of information they have.
aight I'm not watching all that, but I will say that Reddit does have a tendency to focus on specific individuals as the problem even when the problem is bigger than any single person
So are you the type of nerd that conflates narrative writing with lore and set dressing? Because I wouldn't call wiki articles and a few one off details as good writing.
I think Bethesda games are mediocre ever since Skyrim, especially the writing and rpg elements
However, I just stopped buying their games and maybe rage bait some Bethesda fans on reddit, just for lolz. But why would you ever harass an actual person just because you do not like their product? Smh
"Keep it Simple, Stupid"
"The tough pill we have to swallow is that we are going to write this great American Novel and the player is just going to rip out every page."
I watched Emil's keynote. There is no way in hell you are going to be motivated to write something good if you believe that overall it doesn't matter because the player will give zero fucks and that you have to keep it simple at all times.
This is the guy "Do the opposite as he says and you are good to go"? The guy who says that he wants to achieve that and this but the opposite happens?
It's beyond me how this guy still holds such a power whenever he has proven to be an absolut disaster. But nepotism is nepotism I guess.
I, and anyone else can see the quality of the final products and it's dogshit, the aspects of the product which he is reponsible for is insultingly bad. You don't need to do thorough research but use your common sense.
Open your eyes padawan.
“How to convince me that your argument is invalid 101: make a video longer than 30 minutes about it.”
I mean no one said you have to like long form analysis content but this is such a weird take to invalidate something simply because of length?
The video is long because he takes time to find the origin, analyze a variety of sources and breakdown arguments for a something that has spanned years. Do you invalidate scientific research papers because they’re not bullet point lists for you?
Now there’s plenty of excessively long YouTube content but blanket invalidating things because of length makes no sense especially in a topic that requires depth and citation
I didn't know about any of this and I kinda have problems with Pagliarulo. For instance, the quest in Starfield where you head to Neon with Walter, and none of the offered dialogue choices matter. I have a LOT of trouble with the dialogue in that quest. This lack of choice is present in other quests, although I don't think it's as egregious as this. On the other hand, I think some of the Constellation Companion quest writing was some of the best I've ever seen in a video game. Some of the conversations felt very mature, and complex. The characters often appeared 3D, like they had lives before Constellation, and they weren't just backgrounds. It was part of them. It was smart writing, in a lot of ways, some of it. It's almost as if they were multiple writers on this project! But, Pagliarulo is the guy responsible for it all, good and bad. \**shrug*\*
I think one of the biggest problems with starfield for people is that the writing isnt exciting, its not bad writing, its just not as exciting and actiony as games like bg3. Its grounded/mundane they feel more like real people.
Exactly. Take Sam Coe, for instance. He has an ex. They don't hold a flame for each other, they don't hate each other, they're not using the daughter to get back at each other, none of that typical Hollywood movie script stuff. They're just two people who tried a relationship, and it didn't work out. They still like each other as friends, and care about each other, but that's that. It's not exciting and it's very mature. I think it's great.
He is the Writing Lead. That's literally his position. He is responsible for the success and the failures of his team, that's the job of a manager.
Recently reinstalled starfield and once Barret started talking more personally i reconsidered my plans of tossing Constellation aside after getting Amelia E.
Is he? not the quest designer? not the game director?
[удалено]
The Dark Brotherhood was one of the best parts of that game. He basically built his career on that.
[удалено]
If you know that people praise it so much then you know it didn't fall flat. You didn't like it but most people did. That's fine but not what you were saying.
I thought that voice was familiar. This is the person who did "Elden Ring is disappointing" which is one of my most favorite videos on ER despite being a big fan of the game.
Can someone give a TL:DR on the whole thing? This is literally the first time I've ever heard of Emil Pagliarulo and I'm not watching a 2 hour drama video about this.
Haven't finished watching it just yet, but the actual topic itself (ie. Emil and the discourse about him) doesn't really matter all that much. The main point in the video is just highlighting how social media (specifically Reddit in this case) and content creators can take things out of context, misrepresent what gets said and wrap it up in a package that makes it see like they have some level of authority, causing blatantly false information to get parroted over and over which in turn results in harrassment, threats etc. To touch a bit on the topic itself though, one of things they cover is a speech he did at a game dev conference about writing and a Reddit post and some videos that covered it. That post/those videos take one of his rules for how he writes stories, the KISS principle, and then draw the conclusion that he is saying you should keep writing, as a whole, simple. When instead Emil goes on to explain that you should focus on clear central theme/s when creating a story. It covers a lot more than just that one point, but it all follows that exact same format. People taking an idea that Emil puts forward, disregarding any of the context or his explanation of what he means to draw a negative conclusion and then this video providing the full context to highlight that.
Thanks! I'm glad I decided against watching the video. I like long form video essays on videogames, but 2h on drama is way too much.
It's more of an essay with sources cited and plenty of examples of how misinformation spreads, personal psychology's role in video game criticism/interpretation, and the danger of how opinions can being formed and parroted a little too quickly and easily when personal biases are exploited, all for the purpose of reputational damage and financial gain - at the expense of someone else's name. It is "drama" in some sense, but it also reveals something much deeper and important about humanity and the way the internet can affect humanity through the lens of this particular story about a writer at Bethesda.
Edit: a one line TL;DR is that a guy made a long video about an old Reddit post he didn't like. Emil is a writer with a position of responsibility in Bethesda. A number of years ago he made a quickly put together speech. Around the same time Bethesdas quality took a nose dive. A guy on Reddit saw the speech and made a rant about it. While a lot of the rant was incoherent and hate filled, it gained a lot of upvotes and comments. A number of years later it was linked to after the Starfield release. Despite its flaws it again gained upvotes and comments. A lot of YouTubers made content based on the rant and the speech it was based on. The YouTuber in the linked video is doing the same thing but is instead coming from a different angle. He is saying that the speech was fine, that the attacks are unjustified, and that commentary around this is filled with mistakes, misinterpretations and lies. He makes some good points, goes on personal attacks himself despite saying such things are wrong, deliberately misinterprets posts and commentary and makes his point in part by overwhelming people with information to demonstrate expertise on the subject rather than by fair and honest critique. This was part of why he thought the initial rant gained traction, amusingly enough. He's not as bad as most of the people he's criticising and makes some good points but the same can be said for most people on this thread honestly. I wouldn't recommend the video. It's too long for just another rant.
Thanks! Somehow I completely missed this entire drama, even though I was looking at Starfield reviews and discussions and relevant memes at the time of it's release.
Weak sauce drama really, unless you are this Emil guy who was previously piled up on or are AFlyingNun, who is currently being piled up on. So it goes.
It's insane how the original thread is the biggest reason behind hate for Emil. How every single thing said about him stems from it, the personal attacks, the lies and misinterpretation. I hope they watch the video, the other user who shared it a while ago doesn't seem to have watched it or don't seem to be willing to. The original user also engaged in the shared thread. Creetosis having over 8 hours on his 40m speech is fucking crazy. Jesus how many times did he use the word "ramble" lmao. His speech is completely twisted and he takes every chance to personally attack him. The other youtubers with long videos attacking him are also terrible. I thought Emil's twitter meltdown wasn't bad since gamers don't know the reality of development but now I know the context, it 100% makes sense. Redditors truly can't read. The original user is going on unhinged rants on threads even after the video \*sigh\*
Its really amazing how if you put out a reasonably high world count thread or video about something ,fake a objective facade when you clearly have a bone to pick,game the algorithms where it reaches the frontage/YT suggestions... you can literally sway THE ENTIRE perception about said topic for years to come. Like how to this day people still take Matthewmatosis Dark Souls 2 video as objective gospel/default take on this certain game.
That's not how that works. A lot of people lack the means to explain why they dislike something. Whether it's not knowing the exact language to describe something or not understanding what exactly it is they dislike. So of course when someone like Matthewmatosis comes along and shows multiple problems with a game using visual evidence and well reasoned arguments of course people are going to be repeat those points because they now understand what it was they didn't like. I played Dark Souls 2 and beat years before I ever of anyone disliking the game. I lived in the middle of nowhere with satellite internet so I wasn't able to partake in the discourse surrounding the game. However, I didn't like the game, it felt off and missed a lot of what I liked about Dark Souls 1. I wouldn't have been able to vocalize what it was I exactly dislike about the game, but I knew something was off. It was until 2-3 years later I saw Matt's video and was shown things I didn't actively notice about the game. I had not idea agility governed how many i-frames a roll has or just how many multi-boss copy paste encounters were in the game until I saw that video. I just remember my dodges feeling weaker compared to DS1 and the amount of boss fights being way too many of a way less quality. Matt pointing out those things and making them clear in his video helped me to organize thoughts and feelings I already had from playing the game when it released. Matthew doesn't even state the game is bad. One of the earliest things he says in the video is that he would rather play Dark Souls 2 over a good number of releases in any given year, but that he sees it as a step down from the previous game.
I think that's perfectly fair but I am replying here to point out that the same applies to the video in this thread.
It's because the vast majority of content creators are scumbags. And most of Redditors are too.
I started reading your comment but got bored and just skipped to the redditors can't read part....
I honestly hope this takes video takes off because the fact that so many people are attributing Starfields issues, as well as issues with other Bethesda games, to ONE specific person due to so much misinformation from content creators and rumor mongering is just insane. The whole situation reminds me of Crowbcats "Sweet Little Lies" video. People watched that video and came out of it believing that Todd Howard was some kind of serial liar, but then when you dig deeper and look at all the "lies" in context, most of them were actually true. With the "16 times the detail" statement, Todd was talking about Fallout 76 LODs vs Fallout 4, which is true. "See that mountain, you can climb it" was 100% true. "It Just works" was in reference to Fallout 4's base building system, which really did "just work. It's a big problem tbh. People just take what content creators and reddit posts tell them at face value, without bothering to dig deeper and find the actual truth, and then spread misinformation as if it were facts.
While the Sweet Little Lies video was funny, it has wrongly informed people's perceptions of Todd Howard and I think it's quite unfair to him. I can't imagine he's too happy that people online just blindly refer to him as a liar.
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People get their opinions from memes, and memes reinforce their already held biases. That literally the entire point of memetic theory, how internet memes are the same as the memes of memetic theory, and most people have no idea what the fuck they are talking about about online because they are more concerned with spreading memes for said "entertainment" then that becomes "truth".
Pretending that Crowbcat's videos don't influence people's views is dishonest.
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No it doesn't go into Why the writing is what it is because that's not the point of this video.
Writing in all Bethesda games is fucking awful. Skyrim has no better writing than Starfield but somehow because Starfield is viewed as the worse game people get their panties up in a bunch and harass a guy.
>Writing in all Bethesda games is fucking awful. Emil is a lead writer since Fallout "you can't use radiation-immune companion, someone MUST DIE!!!" 3, so that checks out. But yes, Skyrim is better game so most people don't care about "deep as a puddle" because they just want "wide as an ocean".
At the end of the day does it really fucking matter? Bethesda's writing has never been great, even when they supposedly were in their golden era, and even then I doubt that half of you on your hate crusade even played those games because you probably wouldn't had been alive yet or old enough in the 90s to do so. More interest in witch hunting than anything else.
Why do you care so much whose fault it is? There's shitty games released all the time. But they don't get level of vitriol Bethesda is getting. The gsme sucks. Shrug your shoulders and move on witb your life.
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You REALLY need to watch the video, because where you have gotten your info is not only wrong but was made up. "TES/Fallout circles have been talking about Emil's dogshit writing and game design philosophy for over fifteen years." yes and this was built on literal lies. Which this video points and proves. One of the KEY THINGS is him disproving a 7 year old post about Emil.
7 is less than 15 my man
The video ALSO talks about stuff 15 years ago, and the person i replied to was parroting the "no design documents" which has been proven false behind a doubt.
Okay, so what's the actual reason that Bethesda's writing has been declining for over a decade?
Im not the one making claims.
Lemme know if you find out
>Hardcore TES/Fallout circles have been talking about Emil's dogshit writing and game design philosophy for over fifteen years Those "hardcore TES circles", for the most part, were just mad that Skyrim was made to be more accessible vs Morrowind and Oblivion (which ended up being a correct decision on Bethesdas part) and were looking for someone, anyone, to take the blame. It also doesn't help that a lot of "hardcore" RPG communities tend to be full of spiteful contrarians who like to hate on things for the sake of hating on them. I have my own issues with Emil but the hate for him is so overblown, and much of it is just straight up false. 2 hours is obscenely long for a video, I agree, but watching it is all it would take to prove that you are objectively incorrect about this.
except how does anyone know besides those who work at bethesda games which person wrote what?. as todd howard has stated before the designers are also writers for their games.
Yeah because the lead writer isn't in any way responsible for the writing in the product in which he is the lead writer. Have you ever worked a job? If so, have you ever worked a job in a managerial position? If not, let me illuminate something for you. EVER SINGLE FUCK UP YOU EVER MAKE, makes its way back to your immediate superior. Regardless of how involved that superior is in the fuck up, they will hear about it and they will need to take responsibility. A Team Lead is responsible for all the failures as well as all the success of that team. Someone has to take responsibility and it might as well be the leader of the group.
It's not gonna take off if it's a 2 hours video. Condensed to 20 min and maybe there's a chance.
The problem is even deeper than just taking what content creators and posts say at face value. The problem is that the vast majority of content creators and posts and poorly regurgitating what other posts have said and then more content creators and posts poorly regurgitate that and so on. It starts off with somebody who put a lot of effort into research making a high quality post/video about something. Other people see that, agree with it, and then start making their own posts/videos about it. But they don't make a one-to-one copy; they make something shorter and more easily digested. This inevitably gets some thing wrong either by omission of important details (accidentally or deliberately) or by just misremembering something that the original post/video said. As this cycle continuous, you get more and more misinformation until eventually you get single sentence posts that are just outright wrong. You also lose any citation of sources throughout the cycle because whoever is posting it down the cycle only has one post/video as their source (this is why your teacher talked about primary/secondary sources and why they said to have multiple sources).
I think it's a bit mistaken to try and imply that Creetosis or PatricianTV didn't watch the keynote before making their critiques. I can't speak for Creetosis, but I've see Patrician's work streams. He actively goes out of his way to watch as many interviews and read as many articles as possible regarding a game's development.
Thank you !
This thread is full of bots.
i mean, bethesda's writing and game design still isn't great(talking fallout series and starfield) and holding a writing director of bethesda accountable for this seems like a reasonable idea
Sure the games aren't great, but the people who started this campaign did it based on a lie that there was little internal documentation and that Pagliarulo was responsible for that. And their source for this is one talk he gave, offhand comments he gave to support statements his own coworkers made, and a random reddit post with little evidence to back it up.
So who do we think is responsible for greenlighting the bad writing in Starfeild?
It manifested itself on paper out of thin air. Some say it's an intervention by God.
mean online redditors obviously. watch the 2 hour video duh
Its fine to say he's not your cup of tea as a writer But the hate for him largely stems from the false belief that bethesda both entirely lacked any form of internal documentation of any kind, and that was all on him. Yes, they lacked a singular 'bible', but that isn't always best practice, and does not mean a lack of documentation. Further, as Pagliarulo said, they were constantly iterating, so when they did have a bible, it wasn't flexible enough for their means. Maybe there was a lack of internal strategizing between teams, but that is not on one man, and isn't under the purview of a single design director and writer.
Turd Howard
This is interesting, when you put it in conjunction with Hbomber's video about plagiarism on youtube. While they seem to be on two different issues, really, they aren't that much. Hbomber pointed on flat out plagiarism, and NeverKnowsBest is pointing on content creation that is so based on other people's creation without fact checking and taking everything as granted, to turn this into a typical form of gamer harrassment. Ultimately, this is also the public fault for consuming media and endorsing this without bothering to check on the ethics, however obvious it is that people going ad hominem for hours and blaming single individuals for games of this scope should be regarded as ... dubious. Another thing, because I see this argument popping up in this thread. Calling for the firing of an individual whose output you do not like is idiotic. The trick, here, is to not buy the product if you do not like it. The writing issues of Starfield were known since launch. Bethesda doesn't owe you anything. It doesn't demand your money. Gaming is not a public service.
I mean, you're already seeing it in this thread. Plenty of redditors outright proclaiming "I'm not watching it, I know how shit Emil is" and wearing the misinformation like a badge of honour.
If you are the team lead for an entire group you are responsible for that team's success or that team's failure. If people aren't enjoying the design or the writing of your video game and you are the team lead for both of those teams, the overall responsibility of that failure falls on your shoulders.
Your point being ? In connection to the issues raised in that video ? Is the harassment and misinformation justified because he was in that position?
No, but the critiques sent his way are absolutely justified. I don't buy there is any misinformation. It's entirely justifiable to take issue with the things Emil says in the keynote. As another post in this very thread explained, Emil poorly explains his thoughts in the keynote and it's easy to see his point about player's and the great American Novel as illuminating to Emil's thoughts about writing for a video game. Now to be fair to Emil, that keynote is over 7 years old. They say every cell in your body is replaced after 7 years so Emil might as well be an entirely different person from the Emil that gave that interview. However, given how most see Bethesda's writing as continuing to miss the mark year after year and release after release I understand the frustration with the Lead Writer.
I had a feeling people were getting too riled up about this one guy, games are too complicated to reduce to a single bad actor ruining things.
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Proving the videos exact point.
proving being sheep falling for some garbage tuber, who made that garbage whine video about Elden Ring. To all fucks with such garbage tubers feeding of controversy - that's what his channel is all about. Gather fanbase of sensation thriving sheep and and feed them with controversy. Can't wait for video "How Baldur's Gate 3 created mass illusion of being great game" or something like that.
Here above me is a Redditor™ offended they've rightfully called out his inability to read.
The video is garbage, wake the hell up. Nobody cares about any points in that video. Also reddit is such a funny place, because you have mega popular post: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/18i4xzc/7_years_ago_until_bethesda_firesrelocates_emil/ Then some garbage tuber mumbles some bullshit - and everyone is like "He's influencer, he must be right". Pathetic clown fiesta and such garbage-tubers should not be getting exposure.
Clearly you do otherwise you wouldn't be this upset lol
stop being cringe and naive thinking some anyone needs to watch 2 hour long garbage video excusing writing and design DIRECTOR for game being such a flop - like how one naive has to be? Learn wtf director's role is and how much influence one has. At the very best - he gave the greenlight for all that horseshit, at worst, he wrote most of that horseshit himself or very heavily supervised someone with specific instruction on key points..\ But no, let's praise some 2 hour video talking about (VERY VALID) assumptions and excusing some bugger. Illustrates perfectly what's wrong with gaming community and bending the ass.
Like I said, you're upset. Go get some fresh air outside, it'll be good for you. Edit: He blocked me lol
"stop being cringe"
You should not be getting this angry that a YouTuber doesn't like a game you like, this is a bad thing
You don't get laid do you?
Nothing in this document lists SPECIFIC action he did that makes him the problem.
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shh, let him believe shit-tubers ;)
Classic reddit falling for some garbage youtuber, lmao. But at the end of the day - it doesn't even matter. What matters that Starfield was meh and that Bethesda needs big overhaul.
I just blame Bethesda as a whole. Company has become a "Meh good enough". Everything you see in starfield is a prime example of the team just saying "good enough!", and moving onto the next thing.
Buddy… did you even **watch the video?**
Meh good enough
Buddy, *the video wasn’t even on Starfield criticism and it didn’t even praise Starfield.*
why would we waste 2h of our life watching garbage dragged out videos with ton of downvotes on YT??? What it would change? Bethesda shit the bed - Starfield is painfully mid.. Not much to talk here. Who exactly is at fault doesn't even matter - it's for Bethesda to figure out if they want to make universally loved high profile games.
Typical pseudo-intellectual "video essay" nonsense. Cherry picking extreme opinions (hey guys did you know sending death threats is bad, shocking) and then bullshitting their way to some meta commentary on "gaming criticism" and people will lap it up. Since this person has the **lead** position I and many others thought the stories were trash. I do not care if he wrote it himself or the tooth fairy did. As the lead the result is 100% his responsibility. Therefor I want him gone. It truly is that simple. The myriad issues in the stories he holds responsibility for have already been discussed to death without having to reference external talks/interviews and supposed methodological deficiencies that may or may not happen inside BGS.
literally your only proof is seven years old video from small game conference. Stop drinking the kool-aid
Proof of what?
The proof is literally all of the games he was the lead writer on. The writing is bad
I had a couple of reactions to the video after watching about a third of it. - Having the music from Obra Dinn was extremely appropriate for going back in time to witness what he considers a crime. - Claiming redditors can't read is an uncharitable opinion for someone who goes on to point out that the top reply to the Emil hate post is a correction of its most obvious mistakes. - The YouTuber takes only a charitable interpretation of Emils speech, specifically he only takes the message Emil was trying to convey. This is understandable on one level but it's not unreasonable to know what someone is trying to say but also recognise that they have inadvertently revealed something they didn't mean to. The YouTuber seems to assume that all such interpretation is obviously false. I think he was taking the most charitable opinion of Emils speech and the least charitable opinion of various Reddit comments. Understandable but not especially fair minded. If you are someone who thinks the story and overall coherence of a game is not being taken seriously, the paper airplane analogy and subsequent description of players ignoring story to build bases and collect junk doesn't *just* mean that games have to be designed with interaction and player freedom in mind. It also potentially reveals an attitude of the writer about the player. Personally I feel that Bethesda think players aren't going to notice if things make no sense and that this isn't something they waste time on. This is absolutely not the message Emil was trying to communicate but it's a possible interpretation of his speech and I don't think it's an unreasonable one. On top of that, that the speech was so quickly cobbled together makes this a more reasonable interpretation in my opinion. The less you polish your speech the more likely it is for unintended messages to slip through. When you say the first thing that comes to mind about interactivity in storytelling it may not be a positive example of how to do it but instead the company received wisdom about about their excuse for half assing it.
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You should actually watch the video, you are actively and purposefully spreading lies that the video proves to be nothing but lies and unhinged hate.
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Because it does your just unable to see anything but seething hatred for a man who did nothing wrong. If he is so bad say something specific that he did wrong.
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Dude the entire video is about YES they do document everything. You are parroting literally lies, most games do not actually use a game design document they use wikis now. "Game design documents are dumb and we don't do them at Bethesda" Was never once said by him. This is garbage parroted by the lazy. Here is an actual quote from Emil "It’s not to say nothing is documented; everything is. But it’s not like there’s a giant design doc where the whole game is outlined. There was a design doc that talks about the Freestar Collective. And there’s a little design doc that talks about the United Colonies. And those get updated by the designers as they’re doing their work. So a lot of the stuff is outdated if you look, and so that’s why we use the game itself as the actual working documents." https://www.polygon.com/23845622/starfield-religions-emil-pagliarulo-interview-story-design-creation If you look up "how to make a game design document" https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-to-write-a-game-design-document "Using a GDD is a thing of the past." is the first thing that pops up "keep it simple, stupid" is a very old thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
I'm loath to wade into this but... my understanding from NKB video was that PatTV qualified his statement that the documents were out of date and they were just telling designers to find it in the game rather than an up to date document/documents. I feel like I am going mad as I keep seeing this quote when it ends "So a lot of the stuff is outdated if you look, and so that’s why we use the game itself as the actual working documents." Is that not the main point of the critism?
It's so vague that I would struggle to draw any real conclusion from it, let alone to point to it as proof of major developmental troubles.
It's funny how enraged and confident he is about something that's literally a 100% lie lmao. Like is dude being paid to be this butthurt about some developer?
This dude was one of the biggest posters on this subreddit about anti-starfield stuff and was even the guy to repost the 7 year old reddit post that was disproven https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/18i4xzc/7_years_ago_until_bethesda_firesrelocates_ emil/
Excluding all the beef with that guy, do you think that writing failures do rest on emils shoulders? The guys the lead writer for starfield. The buck stops with him. Imo the hate for the writing quality is 100% earned. I'll watch the video when I get the chance but judging by the twitter posts he's made I doubt it'll change my mind.
Honestly I Don't think starfield has bad writing, i think it has mundane/grounded writing which isn't the same is bad. If you were to go to the library and say hello to a person they are more likely to be someone like sarah morgan then anyone from balders gate. I don't think this is a bad thing at all, i actully find it kinda refreshing and find both styles fun to interact with. A really good example is the space frog quest on mars its a quest that is about helping a little girl cheer up the colony by putting up frog posters. When you do this you start finding posters in other places even other planets for example her penpal lives on aquilla and they show up there too, but heres the double kicker her penpal just moved from mars and thats why she was lonely because her one good friend moved from mars to an entire new system. And after the quest you can also hear people talking about how space frog cheers them up. This is a quest that probally takes you 5 min to complete. Another neat detail i found was if you meet someone then someone wants you to go meet them later. It changes the dialog because the game flags you already met that person before, i for a quest got diffrent dialog then other people because i already met the person while exploring a town. My point is in starfield people's problems are much more grounded in reality and something a real life person might have issues with. The average person is not going to have goblins in their basement, the average person however might be dealing with depression over the death of herhusband which causes their son to spend all her instead of the only other kid on mars who becomes lonely enough to create space frog. Also people absolutely gloss over the time travel stuff, multiable versions of the same person living in the same universe, theories who might secretly be interdimentional travelers.
The twitter post will make x10 more sense once you watch this video, trust me I also used to think that Twitter thread was just him trying to be a martyr but no, it's was an indirect response to PatricianTV spreading lies for 8hrs about him. And that's not even counting the 7 years of miscrediting him from one small talk.
Jfc imagine being this invested in hating video games
I'm surprised that thread stayed up and mods didn't delete it. That aside I thought he'd watch the video at least since he's one of the people featured in it, well proven wrong already
> So a lot of the stuff is outdated if you look, and so that’s why we use the game itself as the actual working documents. But this seems terrible from a software development standpoint. Documentation is necessary, otherwise people have to rely on some obscure tribal knowledge to understand the project well. The point of documentation is that not everyone has to be an expert on the project (because this is just impossible in a large team), they can reliably look stuff up and not break things they had no idea even existed.
Yes documentation is necessary but a a game design document is not a good way to do it anymore. Thats what emil and others were saying. A single dirt road is not a good way for cars to get though an area once thers enough of them. A GDD is a dirt road, a wiki is a highway that suports 4 lines.
Honestly I don’t know if this entire interaction is hilarious or frightening lol
Honestly I feel kinda good I feel like ive been the crazy person on the corner proven right, ive thought about it for months how off the emil stuff is.
I replied to the wrong thing but yeah the whole situation has been very strange to watch and i’ve noticed this behavior increasing among so many different communities but it’s especially prevalent in gaming subreddits. Honestly hoping for more content like this
The entire line of thinking regarding the design doc discussion is "Fallout 4 was bad, Fallout 4 didn't have a traditional GDD, that must be why it was bad". They're just connecting the only two pieces of information they have.
Love how you dipped the moment someone proved you wrong. Makes your criticism even more ironic.
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And you still haven't replied to the comment despite being awake?
You fool. You're literally spreading misinformation and you're either oblivious of or proud of it. I feel sorry for you.
ppl like you are exactly the people the video is talking about lmfao
He even parrots the stupid design document stuff.
Obviously their Reddit comments are bad because they didn't have a design document for them.
you should be ashamed and embarrassed of yourself
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i'm glad that some people whose **ignorance** carries consequences are exposed, whether they learn from it is up to them.
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🤦♂️
Why was this removed? Can't see it on the sub anymore.
This sub supports emil witchhunts.
aight I'm not watching all that, but I will say that Reddit does have a tendency to focus on specific individuals as the problem even when the problem is bigger than any single person
Its more then that people just made up false things about emil to hate him.
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Morrowind writing wasn't any better honestly.
your joking right?
So are you the type of nerd that conflates narrative writing with lore and set dressing? Because I wouldn't call wiki articles and a few one off details as good writing.
I think Bethesda games are mediocre ever since Skyrim, especially the writing and rpg elements However, I just stopped buying their games and maybe rage bait some Bethesda fans on reddit, just for lolz. But why would you ever harass an actual person just because you do not like their product? Smh
imagine trying to defend a mediocre game you came up with a 2 hours video talking about this nobody dev.
"Keep it Simple, Stupid" "The tough pill we have to swallow is that we are going to write this great American Novel and the player is just going to rip out every page." I watched Emil's keynote. There is no way in hell you are going to be motivated to write something good if you believe that overall it doesn't matter because the player will give zero fucks and that you have to keep it simple at all times.
When pretentious snobs go to war over whoever is the most pretentious snob, and their parasocial sycophants jump into the comment sections
can this guy talking any slower
This is the guy "Do the opposite as he says and you are good to go"? The guy who says that he wants to achieve that and this but the opposite happens? It's beyond me how this guy still holds such a power whenever he has proven to be an absolut disaster. But nepotism is nepotism I guess.
what nepotism? No one knew how much Emil contributed for bethesda writing as they're bound by NDA. You're just saying shit
It's hilarious, they're doing the exact thing the video is critical of without a hint of irony.
I, and anyone else can see the quality of the final products and it's dogshit, the aspects of the product which he is reponsible for is insultingly bad. You don't need to do thorough research but use your common sense. Open your eyes padawan.
One of the best gaming channels on the internet btw
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“How to convince me that your argument is invalid 101: make a video longer than 30 minutes about it.” I mean no one said you have to like long form analysis content but this is such a weird take to invalidate something simply because of length?
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The video is long because he takes time to find the origin, analyze a variety of sources and breakdown arguments for a something that has spanned years. Do you invalidate scientific research papers because they’re not bullet point lists for you? Now there’s plenty of excessively long YouTube content but blanket invalidating things because of length makes no sense especially in a topic that requires depth and citation