"The industry is really small--if you're an a******, people are gonna remember six years down the line," warned the designer. Luckily, Pagliarulo was not an a****** to Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines, who worked under him at the Adrenaline Vault.
"I used to tell him what to do, now he tells me what to do," joked Pagliarulo. "Karma's a bitch."
Emil just confirmed that VP of marketing outranks Lead Designer at Bethesda.
Considering that Pagliarulo and Howard both had young kids, they wanted a father-son relationship to be central to Fallout 3's story.
Though some might say, "How sweet," I'm not impressed by such a week and crappy inspiration. The road comment has already been pointed out to be false.
In terms of writing, Pagliarulo said that he resents professional writers coming in and trying to write a game when they don't play any. He disdains cutscenes and "too much text," preferring to tell the story through gameplay. Throughout, his top priority is player experience, from the moment they look at the game's cover to the time they finish the main quest.
I can see how a professional game writer of Pagliarulo's caliber might resent better writers coming in and doing the same work that he does, only much better. As has been pointed out, TES had no problem with tons of text given the amount of books in the game which were full of flavor text and back story but I'm sure he'd justify that by saying that it's all optional and that they wanted to fit everything they wrote into the game somehow. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of having hundreds of pages of text in a game to sift through if I really want to know what's going on, I'd rather have all story important information presented to me through gameplay and short readings (Fallout 1&2). That said, text is a powerful tool and the first two Fallouts used them extremely well to add extra flavor and feeling to the world through the description box. I get where he's coming from on cutscenes but he's off dismissing all cutscenes and/or the idea of prerendered scenes in general as they can be very effective when they are used properly (Fallout 1&2 talking heads for example). Yes, MGS4 with it's thirty minute opening cutscene was over the top with them, or rather had too long of cutscenes. Yes, it would be cool if players could do all of the awesome things that the character does in cut scenes but that's generally not very viable.
Throughout, his top priority is player experience, from the moment they look at the game's cover to the time they finish the main quest... "My motto is: Great games are played, not made," said Pagliarulo... When looking for employees, Bethesda's top requirement is a "low a****** quotient."
I guess I need to go back and write up the third part of Todd's DICE speech so that we can call them out when they steal from it...
He also resents the sense of entitlement many younger applicants had. "They come in with all this badass attitude and say, 'I'm the guy you want to hire.'" Anybody who does that, their resume gets thrown out straight away."
Yes, because the last people you want to hire are confident, driven individuals. Now arrogant people are totally fine to trash their resume but what he's describing sounds more confident than arrogant.
Primarily, Bethesda wants enthusiastic people who are fans of its games and RPGs in general. When a programming student mentioned that he was a dungeon master at a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game session at his college, Pagliarulo told him to put that on his resume. "At Bethesda, that would actually be relevant experience," he declared.
Considering how little Bethesda looks at PnP and game balance in general, I doubt that it's as relevant as it could be.
He also praised the modding community and predicted that "someone will re-create the original Fallout" with the Fallout 3 toolset within a year.
Trying and succeeding are two very different beasts. I doubt that someone will successfully recreate Fallout with the Fallout 3 toolset, let alone do it in a year.
In closing, Pagliarulo also said that even though he works long hours, he has a dream job: "Some people put up drywall or do roadwork for a living. I have to decide how many heads a monster has. ... I love what I do. In fact, I hope I die in my cube working on Fallout 20."
I hope Bethesda doesn't produce another 17 Fallout games like Fallout 3...
Per said:
"So you can dual-wield flaming katanas by hotlinking the secondary item overlay to the main inventory interface!" cried the game designer as, without looking up, he swerved deftly to avoid the tanker screeching madly across the junction. The light of a 14-car pile-up going up in a mushroom cloud flashed briefly off his rear view mirror as he flipped angrily to find the appendix on DPS optimization.
Hahah, yeah no kidding. If you're still reading manuals when driving home then you are either being chauffeured (I feel sorry for your chauffeur) or you are a reckless driver who shouldn't have a license.
