Emil Pagliarulo - Tumblr Posts
i actually do find it baffling that there is no documentation at bethesda game studios. like with their sheer size and scope of their projects that is absolutely a batshit thing to do. you have hundreds of ppl in different departments and disciplines working together on this project with literally no fucking actual central document for guidance. the plan was "just meet with todd howard personally for clarification on anything" and todd is the director of MULTIPLE studios. he doesnt have the time to sit in his office and let you pitch ideas like he did back in 2001.
"well it just takes too much time to update the document. we have to get in there and implement stuff in the game before we can decide if its working or not. it's not a strict, planned thing and it takes SOOOO much time to update it for every little thing--" documentation is supposed to SAVE TIME. that is what it's there for.
i will give some leeway to emil pagliorulo for once. i am a creative person who prefers to ad lib everything. i do not enjoy outlining when writing and find it stifling. i will not know exactly how a scene plays out until i sit down to write it. i'll often write out of order, or move things around. i sometimes get better ideas literally in the middle of writing a scene and change it and the stuff before it, or smth that greatly impacts the rest of the story going forward. i know how much things can change on the fly.
BUT I STILL HAVE DOCUMENTATION.
i have a discord channel for all my major fics (and a misc one) just for ideas, references, things im considering or might be handy to have later, etc. stuff that i cant immediately recall on the fly, because i'm human working on stuff long term. i have forgotten really interesting stuff i was excited abt bc i just thought "eh i'll remember later" and then i DIDNT.
but with large projects with multiple people documentation is even more important. it is what is there to help guide people on the goals, overall picture, how things will work with other aspects of the project, what still needs work, etc. it exists to make work more streamlined and easier, not to mention faster. "but then we have to sit down and keep updating the document!!" means you need someone or a couple of people who's main job is meeting with people, checking in on various projects, and updating the documentation for everyone else in the team. people have managers for that reason. you as the director should not be personally in charge of updating it every single day once projects have reached a scope beyond a handful of people.
which means this is a problem with the entire structure of their teams being just. unoptimized. either the teams are way too small and they need more people working with more managers, or they need to restructure it, stick a few managers in, and work out the development process into something more robust. why the fuck would emil think "its so annoying to update the game design documentation.... i guess we better just throw it out! no one needs this! why did we even have this in the first place?" rather than just... finding someone else to do it. so he can focus more on his directing????
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that this is Emil Pagliarulo, lead writer of every Bethesda RPG from Oblivion to Starfield, saying killing the rich people is good. Yes even the more empathetic rich people, who were willing to let the ghouls in. They deserve to die according to Emil. People all to often take this as a whoopsie to the morality system in Fallout 3, I think it was intentional. Me, I always kill the ghouls in the Tenpenny Tower quest. If you are going to kill someone after they generously open up their home to you, you are evil and need to be taken out.
