The Male Sole Survivor from Fallout 4 is Canonically a War Criminal

Nate the Rake is canon in my mind, Emil. I'm with with you on this if nothing else. Fuck those syrup-swilling cunts.

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Lots of people still love his work
This is debatable. Even the biggest Bethesda fan will usually admit that the writing of the main quest/certain factions is terrible. Usually that's the stuff Emil has written. It must sting to generally be considered the worst part of every game your company makes.
 
He's not the core problem of Bethesda.
He's the lead writer and designer of the last handful of games. You know, the games that more with time are being considered bad, if they weren't already considered as such at release.
 
I’ll be honest, Emil isn’t a terrible writer, he is just fine. The problem is his style of writing doesn’t fit well with the open World structure of a series at all.
If he was writing a Bioshock game for example, I think he’d be doing amazing work.

If there’s some credit I will give him, at least with Fallout 3, he understood the structure and pacing a bit on the main quest.

In Fallout 3 for example, you can completely, like F1, bypass the whole first act of the game.
It actually sets you upon an adventure and World to explore.
Now yeah, the actual main quest and ideas of F3 make no sense, but the sandbox style nature of the game is actually okay.

I think he needs someone to reign in his worst impulses, a good editor can make a bad script workable.

I will also point out that the pacinh drops off from the moment the Enclave are introduced. But for a second, the game looked promising.

But if you give a linear game into the hands of Emil, it would restrain him a bit, make him think about what’s important and how the World works a bit.
You can tell that some lessons in terms of “what do they eat” were learned for F4.
I’m not saying Emil is an amazing writer or anything, I’m just saying that he is just fine.
 
There's no fundamental problem with Sole Survivor being a war criminal. Indeed, given the conduct of the United States pre-War, and the general conduct of mass-conscript armies in total wars or aggressive wars, it would be silly to have ever considered it an outside chance. Regardless of how he is at home after his deployment, ordinary men can do wild things in a combat zone.

What's really silly about it is to have in mind the idea that the Sole Survivor is this EXACT GUY from the EXACT VIDEO from the FIRST MINUTE of FALLOUT. It just reflects a certain smooth-brained shrinking of wolrd building projects, the sort of thing that happens when they get captured by a fanboyish and/or moronic audience. The reference, the fan service, becomes king, that becomes the point of the narrative in and of itself, to obscure the entire setting by creating an infinite series of interconnecting lines between various hyperspecific, originally unrelated moments, that became famous in the first place for how distinctive they were. Everything becomes tied to characters and personalities, rather than being seamless parts of a vast world.

This is a problem in settings like Star Wars, and it's been a bad tendency in the Bethesda Fallout games since 3: A lot of that could have been excused or handwaved with cries of "Soft reboot!" or "Finding their footing!"... but as time has gone on and Bethesda theoretically has had time to build themselves off and create their own moments, the frequency and silliness of these sorts of connections has only intensified.

These leads one to the unavoidable conclusion that these tendencies are, in fact, reflections of who Emil Pagliarulo is as a person: A smoothbrained fanboy himself, devoid of true creativity beyond some very narrow purviews, who would think that an idea like "Nate was in da video!!" is such a cool concept that he just has to share it with all of the other fanboys. This is the sort of moronic post I'd expect to see from an underage on /r/fallout, and would hope not to see from the man charged with the lore and narrative of the franchise... not that it's really surprising at this late hour.
 
I’m not sure why he even said it to begin with. Saying “No not the shooter” doesn’t take away from the fact that he’d still be involved in a war crime. If I remember the intro correctly, the guy on the left even laughs after the first shot.
 
I’m not sure why he even said it to begin with. Saying “No not the shooter” doesn’t take away from the fact that he’d still be involved in a war crime. If I remember the intro correctly, the guy on the left even laughs after the first shot.
Maybe he meant the guy recording it? Emil could even say something to the effect of "Nate was recording it to reveal a war crime". Unless he actually circled the guy on the left, then no he's an accessory, hell he even chuckled about it. Nate must love murdering Canadians, dude has major Canuckaphobia.
 
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Maybe he meant the guy recording it? Emil could even say something to the effect of "Nate was recording it to reveal a war crime". Unless he actually circled the guy on the left, then no he's an accessory, hell he even chuckled about it. Nate much love murdering Canadians, dude has major Canuckaphobia.
Nah, he wasn't laughing, he jizzed in his power pants. That's how much Nate "The Rake" loved executing Canucks.
 
Emil is just dick swinging to tell people that Bethesda own Fallout and they/he can do what ever they want. Nothing new in that, however it's funny that this time it seems his dick got caught in the shit fan.
 
I've been giving way to much thought to this... what if Nora turned out to be Canadian and Nate at some point found out. So at the end of the game, Nate get's one last opportunity to get his rocks off killing Shawn, the last pre war half Canadian, truly a bittersweet moment for him.
 
Well thanks to AI tech we can hopefully get some 100% voice acted Rake mods where Nate finally gets some closure on his past sins (he goes to Canada and finishes the Lord's Work).
I also need the robot to call me "Rake".
 
The most interesting thing Emil has ever written, and he did it entirely by accident and immediately backpedaled.
 
Necroed my old account to get fallout fixt and thought to browse the forums a bit! Hope you're all well muties.

This is hilarious and somehow makes me like the guy, it's so incredibly naive and really illustrates how it's possible for bethesda's fallout to be so uncritical of pre war america. There's no way to not be a dick about this because it shows a shocking lack of understanding of the source material but he comes off as so genuine that i can't help but like him. The thought that pre war america was not the good guys had not crossed his mind. He watched this scene of an unarmed prisoner shot in the back of the head on live television time and time again and it went completely over his head that it was social commentary on american imperialism, prefacing the "war never changes" line. He even specifies that it's not the guy that shoots, when the other guy was laughing cartoonishly.

It's not even about the specific guy being the protagonist imo, it's a fundamental clash between what we see as the american army in fallout and fallout 4, just completely different universe. War never changes in fallout 4 is a pro war message, the idea being that war (nuclear war! Hiroshima is mentioned by name) sustained the real life tranquility lane that is pre war america. Good men like "Nate" and his grandfather protect america with war, and that way they can have a life of luxury. In classic fallout, i always got the idea that pre war america was hell. The propaganda and advertizing material from the old games became canon reality in Bethesda's universe since fallout 4. It's not just a simple misundersanding of the specific lore thing, it's the exact opposite central message ( war is hell vs war is necessary to sustain a good quality of life in America). This is something that always infuriated me but this tweet gives me the necessary insight to understand that there was no malicious (fascist even) intent, the guy is really that innocent about the whole thing. I never got a malicious vibe from bethesda's fallout the more i think of it. I would best describe them as comfy really. Seeing the writer's tweets with the emojis etc helps me recontextualize the games.
 
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I'm glad he got burned for casually retconning his character into a game he wasn't involved with at all.

This is something that always infuriated me but this tweet gives me the necessary insight to understand that there was no malicious (fascist even) intent, the guy is really that innocent about the whole thing. I never got a malicious vibe from bethesda's fallout the more i think of it. I would best describe them as comfy really. Seeing the writer's tweets with the emojis etc helps me recontextualize the games.

I don't believe one has to be malicious to be fascist/imperialist, or whatever we want to call it. The ignorance is enough to be complicit, because it still reinforces the narrative. Especially for people who make media consumed by millions of people.
 
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