No, I >Don’t< Think It Likely That Emil Pagliarulo Is An “Incompetent” Writer

So, I keep seeing that Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo is an Incompetent Writer video title popping up in my recommendations on YouTube. I will not link to it here, because I’m not out to bring the posting account traffic, nor am I out to destroy them - according to my carefully evaluated ethical standards, very few below the 1% line deserve that and more importantly, many can’t reasonably be expected to withstand it. It’s not funny! I just feel spurred into talking a bit about discourse and its value, and the importance of filtering.

Just from the title alone I thinks to myself I sez,

"I don't know much about Mr. Pagliarulo, but knowing what I do about the world in general, this assertion seems highly unlikely to me and does not logically track.”

Also:

“Bet it's a hyperbolically putzy dunce take, no thanks."

I’ve never clicked on it, glad I haven’t, don’t ever plan to. I nuked Twitter and functionally abandoned Facebook to get away from this kind of butt-spam, and now it’s coming after me on YouTube. You won’t get me!

I had no idea what an exasperating bullet I was dodging until this well-put, beautifully-titled takedown, courtesy of NeverKnowsBest:

Lies, Hate and the story of Emil Pagliarulo

Refreshing, isn’t it? Bracing even! I love this guy.

What you’re reading started as a comment on the above YouTube video after I listened to it falling asleep (I do that): When I realized how much I apparently had to say about it, I turned it into a blog post.

Not A Fanboy

Don't get me wrong; as a fan of story-based single-player games, I wouldn’t say I’m much a fan of Bethesda's later overall company direction regarding game narrative. You can chart the steadily-descending line right on down as time progresses and observe as story sadly gets shorter and shorter shrift:

Skyrim was fine, but the crafting/grind were both a meaningless life-eater and necessary for progression. And there are many story/player-freedom issues that will have one wondering incredulously: Why, for instance, couldn’t one turn on the Dark Brotherhood New-Vegas-style and just kill those dorks once it became obvious what no-account asshats they are? By my recollection, it’s not even that they’re impervious to damage; you are simply, literally unable to attack them.
As beloved as Skyrim is, and for legitimate and beautiful reasons, it’s also on some levels one of the more empty-feeling games I’ve played, and I really think it may be where things started to take a turn for the worse.
Though I played more Fallout 4 than a responsible adult should because it did have some very strong points, I didn't appreciate how it focused, like Skyrim, on building an addictive experience through poorly-developed fiddly/grindy/crafty timesink stuff to the detriment of coherent story. Poorly developed, maybe? Or maybe it just wasn’t allowed to bake for long enough, I really don’t know. The Institute in particular is pretty WHAT
I couldn’t work up any interest in Fallout 76 due to Bethesda’s decision to forego NPCs and proper story altogether for the sake of online multiplayer, uh, “action” I guess. If you’re into that kind of Destiny grind or whatever (I am not well-versed here due to my profound lack of interest in competitive/team sport) then I hope FO76 is great, and that you really enjoy it. Definitely not my bag, however. I came here for a single-player post-apocalyptic RPG, like a Fallout game, so: hard pass.
After Fallouts 4 & 76 my interest/curiosity re: Starfield was muted and cautious despite how gorgeous it looked, and after confirming my procedural boredom suspicions by reading reviews & watching some videos I passed on it as well.

No beef or anything. I just have limited time on this earth and these later offerings are not how I want to spend a chunk of it. Especially when there are plenty of other good games being made.

Base-building in Fallout 4 could be amazing if you were very patient, but was also an *excruciatingly janky time-waster*

But blaming this disappointing company arc on the one guy, a writer - even Head Writer, whose departmental output has likely been progressively minimized and sidelined by the powers that be, seems remarkably naive about the workings of the industry, and even the world.

Like, have any of these pitchfork-mob people ever worked for a corporation before? Do they know what consolidation is?

Rhetorical questions, pitchforkers, in order to make a statement. My bandwidth isn't infinite, and I’m not trying to give the impression I’m actually hoping for “engagement” on this. I guess you can weigh in in the comments if you like.

It seems pretty obvious to me that Bethesda’s overall direction, like a great many companies’ of late, is down to compulsory and typical late-capitalism boardroom mandates to pump existing properties for maximum short-term profit. To attempt to produce “blockbuster” games with minimal effort - read: minimal time and minimal $$$ - put into story and narrative because those are the things that consistently produce the most additional incidental work through branching, and are also the hardest to get right.

[Story and narrative being, also incidentally, a couple of the main things I’m here for]

**Fallout 76 Is So Much Better With NPCs**: Of *course* it is. Literally no one is surprised.
Too little too late? Couldn’t tell you - at this point I’m just not tracking anymore.

By deciding to let the players themselves be the “content” (man do I hate what that word has become, as do many) with Fallout 76, Bethesda made it pretty clear that controlling interests at the company realized at the time that they had a winning property in Fallout, and that they intended to turn it into one of those weird grindy addiction-based multiplayer money machines with subscription conveniences, then milk it for maximum return.

Seems like a lot of this is going around, doesn’t it?

You don't see the tabletop RPG kids out there gunning for individual creatives now do you? Oh wait, wow, I guess you do (there’s a can of worms right there. Or pit vipers).

Anyhoo, to me this just looks like yet another company cashing in on previously-earned goodwill, perhaps on its way out: predictable, garden-variety bummer 2020’s corpo/shareholder-service enshittification. Like, everyone understands it hurts more when it’s a company that put out stuff in the past which you have great memories of/associations with, but this is par for the course stuff, no? Of course this has affected Starfield as well, with all its uninteresting auto/procedural “content” (there I go again) which happily I realized in time I had no interest in sinking hours into "exploring", or spending money on.

I’ll give Starfield this: at least it’s not multiplayer. And I mean that. It’s the main reason I can imagine the possibility of waiting for it to go ultra-cheap on GOG, grabbing an anti-grind save editor, and firing it up on an old rig some woozy flu-afternoon (or hell, why not COVID, it’s coming around again) just to see if I’ve missed anything cool.

All I’m trying to establish here is that I’m not some boot-licking Bethesda fanboy for whom The Company can do no wrong and so I’ll defend them at any cost. But I’m not out to bash them either. I’m really, like, a guy, who, you know, thinks about stuff! Sometimes.

Edit: No one licks a boot like *this guy*, amiright?
Putin’s so excited about how clean his shoes are he’s doing a little Witch-Hazel heel click!

Listen:

There is a lot I really loved about Fallout 3 & Fallout 4. Fallout 3 may not have been quite as compelling to me as Bioshock from the year prior, but it was a different type of game, I say Fallout 3 was Game Of The Year for good reason, and Bioshock was in very good company once FO3 made the scene.

Who let these GOATs out? Bethesda. Bethesda.

I’ll always have real reverence for the publisher that greenlit Fallout: New Vegas, the Dishonored series, and Prey: these games/properties are on my short-list for GOAT (despite how ridiculous the Prey naming blunder was). Fallout 3 and Skyrim had some real high-points despite their issues. I think Ghostwire Tokyo is something pretty special as well.

Bethesda has done some truly great things, and also made some product decisions taking things in directions I consider pretty dang questionable. Using what information I have and filling in the blanks as best I can with educated guesswork, I think I view the company with, if not certifiably-informed technical accuracy, then at least pretty clear eyes. As anyone ought to do with corporate-beholden constructs which are by both nature and design very definitely different from the people they comprise.

You know what, actually go ahead and do that with people too.

Are You Serious?

The superficial impression of simplicity and elegance in modeling an understanding of the world around us can be so attractive to some that it becomes possible for them to lose all touch with reality.
Also don’t half-ass it lamesauce GET A DAMN TURTLE & SOME ELEPHANTS IN THERE

The ground-up whole-cloth through-and-through gonzo bananas shit-house rat incoherence of this single-bullet incompetent writer “take” really is breathtaking, and NeverKnowsBest highlights this beautifully in his takedown embedded up top.

Perfect segue, Mr. Reeves!

Because this entire lynch-o-matic clusterdump does remind me of all the bad, bad actors who let their fury over Cyberpunk 2077's extraordinarily rushed/botched launch (thanks, bean-vacuums) get the best of them so horribly that they went into full-on ends-justify-the-means anti-CDPR jihad mode, and just started lying through their filthy slanderous teeth about the content (not that kind of content) of the game being garbage overall despite the incredible work put into story, characters, and world-building by focused creatives at the very top of their game.

OK, so being fair, maybe the whole top-of-their-game thing is a bit harder to apply to Starfield - every game can’t be a Cyberpunk 2077. And my reasons for avoiding Starfield are things I saw coming ahead of time, things that I’ve come to expect from latter-day Bethesda: the company, I mean. This pigpile on the one specific guy is twice as weird as anything.

Starfield *is definitely pretty*. Maybe a good percentage of these people actually *are* at the top of their game.
Guess I won’t single out *a 3D artist* to blame for late-stage capitalist corporate enshittification, then.

Do such people really have an ingrained disbelief or blindspot about the possibility that companies (human-made mechanisms designed by necessity, first, for maximum extraction of resources & value, and second, for deflecting culpability) could be capable of doing wrong, or even simply just kind of doing dumb bummer stuff that kinda sucks once they get a whiff of a potential low-effort cash-cow?

“Working ‘smart’, not hard”?

“Low-hanging fruit”, right everybody?

I’m about to spend a few paragraphs talking like I might to an 11-year-old, in part because like NeverKnowsBest, I suspect it actually, possibly may be real 11-year-olds who are at the heart of this wet-fart take re: Mr. Pagliarulo’s acumen and expertise. If you’re an adult who already understands the principles I outline here regarding certain workings of the world, please don’t take offense: I’m not talking down to you intentionally. This just feels like something which must be covered here.

School

The media world is practically constructed from the ground up of earnest, talented creatives trying their damnedest to continue making nice things for people who on some level appreciate nice things, while constantly being thwarted on multiple levels by, not bean-counters, but bean-vacuums at the very tippy-top of the system, hell-bent on ruining everything for everyone, the consumer included - not always intentionally, but incidentally. Consumers think it’s about “great media”, but really it’s about boats or some shit.

Assuming you as a creative care about quality and about consumers’ experience of the media you work hard to contribute to, this is literally (and I mean literally literally) what it means to work for a big company making media:
On a daily basis, you do everything within your power to make the end product as good and as compelling as you possibly can within the constraints imposed upon you by the system in which you work, while at the same time doing everything in your power to make the process of creation as fullfilling as possible both for yourself and for the people you work with, again within the constraints imposed upon you by the system in which you work.

Bonus points if you’re not a dick! Bonus bonus points if you’re someone who is actually collaborative by nature. I see you there - You’re the best <3

And everything doesn’t always work out the way you want it to in that end product, because bro, the system is real. You’re not the hero of some weirdo pulpy The Fountainhead dingbat boner power fantasy; this is the real world, with real physics, real give-and-take, and real power structures. And the less family-money you have, the more real all that stuff is. Now get out into the real world and pay that rent, schmuck.

Aaaand here is where I thank you for your patience if you are one of the aforementioned adults who didn’t need the kindergarten breakdown of how control functions in larger power structures.

Perspective

I don’t know Mr. Pagliarulo. Maybe he’s a dumb jerk, or maybe he’s the second coming of whomever it is you think is really swell and you’d really get a kick out of seeing them, uh, come a second time. Maybe, just maybe, he’s something in between - I hear a lot of people are that way.
If I had to guess (and I don't, but I will anyway!) I'd bet Pagliarulo is probably heartbroken about how some aspects of Starfield turned out, even while simultaneously ecstatic over others. Because that’s what happens on most projects.

He headed up design on the utter classic Life Of The Party and Precious Cargo missions in Thief 2: The Metal Age, as well as contributing to Eavesdropping. And for Thief: The Dark Project he contributed to arguably the very coolest parts of the iconic The Sword mission for chrissakes. The guy has proven standards, and impeccable taste.

Though **The Dark Project** will always be my favorite, **The Metal Age** is another GOAT:
Pagliarulo’s missions are *excellent!*

Dumping every last bit of blame on the head of a single creative for the overall objectionable direction taken by the company they're working for as a larger entity is beyond... I don't know what it's beyond. I'm trying not to be too insulting, so it's just *beyond*. I’ll just say that we all, as citizens, should at the very least make an attempt to keep our general discourse above the level of a Putinite 4Chan bot trying to destabilize a democracy during an election year.

The criminal thing is that when one comes down like a ton of bricks on the head of someone who likely doesn’t have as much say over the matter as one seems to think they do, one is also completely missing the target and letting those who are more likely the real culprits off scott-free: Witch-hunting, complete with scapegoats.

Super gross!

Some people are simply way more focused on clicks/views or on imagined vengeance than they are on how their output affects their long-term credibility, or even other people. This stuff is garbage “content” (that word again).

Think about your reputation!