Gamasutra interviews Emil Pagliarulo

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Exploring A Devastated World: Emil Pagliarulo And Fallout 3.<blockquote>You just won best game and best writing at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Emil Pagliarulo: Yeah! We did. The shock that people saw was legitimate. I'm actually really shocked at the writing award. I'm shocked at all these award shows where GTA IV hasn't won. I expected them to win. I think the writing in GTA IV is awesome. For us to win over GTA IV, I can't get a bigger honor than that.

And as far as game of the year, we were coming from the DICE awards a couple of months ago, and LittleBigPlanet swept all the awards including game of the year. We were expecting that. So yeah, it was great. </blockquote>Indeed, there is no rational explanation for Fallout 3 beating out GTA IV on writing, dead on there mr Pagliarulo.<blockquote>On the note of recognition, I recently spoke to Jason Anderson, who was one of the original Fallout designers and is making an RPG at inXile. He said he played Fallout 3 and really liked it, but what I found particularly interesting was that what he most appreciated is how Bethesda is to an extent proving the viability of the large-scale single-player Western RPG. It's not the most ubiquitous genre.

EP: Yeah, I couldn't be happier that he feels that way. We certainly do. The talk these days is that if it's not massively multiplayer, it's at least multiplayer. Some people have been really saying that single-player is dead. For us, winning that award, I hope it sends a message that's, "Guess what? Single-player isn't dead."

Obviously, we're doing something that people want and they like. I'm really psyched he said that. I totally agree. I'm glad we get to do what we get to do.
(...)
With the upcoming DLC, you guys are actually going to change the ending, right?

EP: It's the third DLC, Broken Steel. We haven't said exactly how, but the game doesn't end anymore. We looked at the ending cutscenes, we looked at the states of the characters, and we debated, "Should we do this?"

Todd Howard and I had a conversation, and [realized] it would be more seamless than we had first thought. We looked at it, and said, "You know what? It feels pretty natural. It almost feels like this is the way it should have ended to begin with."

So, the game doesn't end, and it raises the level cap to 30. It adds new perks, new weapons, and new quests, too. And obviously it's a new quest where you're dealing with the Enclave. You're working with the Brotherhood of Steel to wipe up the Enclave remnants once and for all.

That must be bizarre from a design standpoint; I doubt that kind of decision gets made in games often. There are new cuts of films released all the time where the ending is changed, but not so much in games. It's almost like a mea culpa here.

EP: "Mea culpa" is kind of the right phrase, actually. Because, you know what? We've said this before, but we ended the game because we thought it should end. Other games end. And we wanted to balance it to level 20.

And while we realized that people saw this game as a sequel to Fallout; they saw it just as much as a sequel to Oblivion, and Oblivion didn't end. People expected that from us. Even when they reached the level cap, they didn't really care -- to them that was was secondary to adventuring more in the world. </blockquote>
 
Good writting ... Fallout 3 ... men ... Emil what happend to you, you have been supposed to be good during the Thief series :( !
 
Bethesda follows the "let's do what's cool" rather than "let's do what's best from a game design" standpoint, so this doesn't shock me that much.

He's right though, GTA IV, while not my favourite game, had better writing than FO3.
 
what I dont understand though is how people legitmitate the "best writting".

I mean seriously now without any "they ruined Fallout" bias or "this is not true Fallout!" gibberish. If we even forget the Fallout theme for a minute completely, but who can seriously see the writting in this Bethesda game as anything better then mediocre? In many cases a lot worse then that even, and not just for side quests pretty anything after you found your father and in Raven Rock is an ultimate drop.

Maaaybe compared to Duke Nukem or Doom 3, then yes the writting is better ... but for an RPG or any story driven game, Fallout 3 has so many plot holes that its pretty strange to call it "good" writting. Also some parts dont even make sense in the first place. There might be a few times where the writting is "ok". But that are only very few and individual parts of the game. As a whole ... I really dont see how anyone could give it a rating that says "best" you know, for me usualy "best" or "awards" have the meaning that it has a reason to get it. I mean you dont get olmipic medals for nothing as well, you know what I mean? YOu have to DO something for it, or at least it should be possible to see the reason why they got the awards. I dont see the legitimisation.

Or was it just that they had no other games to give the awards to ?
 
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that even Doom 3 had a more logically consistent story, that was more engaging, and made more sense than the one in Fallout 3.

I love how he also doesn't seem to know the fact that Fallout 2 doesn't really end either.... I wonder if the guy has actually sat and played the games...
 
Bethesda is to an extent proving the viability of the large-scale single-player Western RPG. It's not the most ubiquitous genre.
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Yeah, if by "large-scale single-player Western RPG" you mean FPS Adventure game with RPG elements. Perhaps the most ubiquitous genre currently.

Hey, at least this reviewer called Emil out on the ending flip-flop, deservedly.
 
Ugh.. just... ugh. I'm glad Emil at least is shocked and realizes his writing isn't 'omg teh bestz' unlike Todd Howard who seems to think he shits gold bricks.

But Seriously, GTA (I dunno about 4 never played it) always had pretty solid writing, nothing amazing but certainly solid and well fleshed out, and with a little suspension of disbelief the characters were pretty good too (specially San Andreas).

But FO3? No. Just... No. I bet they didn't even flesh out what happened between FO2 and FO3 in terms of a timeline, go read the timeline in the FO bible its amazing how much history is in there. There is several games worth of history just outside of what happens in FO1 and FO2, the back story is incredibly fleshed out, and believable.

Backstory is done to help prevent things like plotholes and inconsistancys, while you might not see a lot of the back story for a character or location (unless you are playing bethsofts games where everyone tells you their life story...) it serves a VERY important purpose.

The people in FO3 don't have reasons, motives, ideas, or a past. They are just there to give you some sort of goal in killing or collecting things. TBH the only character in FO3 I liked was Moira and even she was flat, but at least she had an interesting personality and voice.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Maaaybe compared to Duke Nukem or Doom 3, then yes the writting is better ...
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hey! duke3d had great writing! it was just all stolen from bruce campbell and they live. it's time to kick ass and chew gum, and i'm all out of gum.

seriously though, these awards are bullshit and this is just further proof of that. gta4 had way better writing and it wasn't even an rpg. you pretty much had to do things that it told you and got few actual choices, but the story and characters were much more memorable.
 
I'm honestly more flabbergasted by the "balanced to level 20" comment. The entire reason people stopped playing the game was because they hit the cap too fast and felt they didn't gain anything by exploring whatever content was left over it. While the ending itself was unsatisfying, that wasn't the heart of the problem. You could simply avoid it, as long as you felt you had a reason to explore everything else. And the solution isn't just "uncap it," it's just to slow down the leveling curve a bit, at least as you get to the higher levels.

I firmly believe that there's no one at Bethesda whose sole job it is to balance their games. They seem to just make up numbers that work as long as you don't delve too deeply into the game instead of creating a consistent experience.
 
I... just can't.... i don't... F*CKING BELIEVE IT!!! "Best Writing"?!?!?
Is this some sick joke? They awarded the *worst* possible thing in the game? It's so bad it hurts, even taking off all Fallout connections and references...

That's it, i give up on this world. I just can't handle it. I think i'll go make myself a home-made lobotomy.
 
And while we realized that people saw this game as a sequel to Fallout; they saw it just as much as a sequel to Oblivion, and Oblivion didn't end. People expected that from us.
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Guess what? Fallout 2 didn't end either.
 
I wonder what criterias they had to meet to win a "best writing" award over games, that while may not be revolutionary writing wise, are still much better in that category than anything bethesda could come up with.

The sad part is, that awards like these have some influence in setting a general standart in the industry, for the quality of writing in games. So these brown nosing parasites of the media are fucking it up for everyone :slap:
 
AskWazzup said:
The sad part is, that awards like these have some influence in setting a general standart in the industry, for the quality of writing in games. So these brown nosing parasites of the media are fucking it up for everyone :slap:
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The worst part is that it isn't just the media, they got awards from the industry award thing as well.
 
Well, actually I’m very shocked that Emil is shocked about the writing award; also mea culpa for the ending, unbelievable, is something wrong with my eyes, am I reading this correctly? Something has changed in Bethesda, I think.
First New Vegas announcement and now this.

I wonder, if somehow Todd could be put in hibernation for, let’s say 3 years, we would then experience a decent Fallout 4. :)
 
You would think the fact that Bethesda had to go back and change the ending because it didn't work would give everyone who voted for this award pause, but I doubt it.

A big problem here is that the number of people voting for this who actually played the game to completion was probably miniscule.
 
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