Starfield - Epic Shit Takes from Bethestards

[Yosharian]

I just realised I called NeverKnowsBest 'NNB', but it should actually be 'NKB'

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Bethesda doesn't work for gamers, but for themselves and Microsoft.

No. They work for the people buying their product and anything else is stupid modernity. They work for ME when I pay my money for their product and literally nothing else is ever going to be true in the entertainment industry.

The quality of Starfield is Bethesda's fault, as a collective entity. Nobody but themselves know how they work internally. But whatever, it doesn't excuse harrasment and misinformation.

Did CNN tell you to spew this garbage? Crying harassment is utterly stupid when you choose to engage with people. I can post on Twitter and never read a single other person's post or I could stay off the internet. It's not harassment to shit in public and people telling you it stinks.

 

[Butter]

No. They work for the people buying their product and anything else is stupid modernity. They work for ME when I pay my money for their product and literally nothing else is ever going to be true in the entertainment industry.

ESG.

 

[Late Bloomer]

The point of NNB's video is not Starfield's quality or who's responsible for it. It's the fact that it doesn't allow you to spout nonsense online.

fag

 

[destinae vomitus]

The problem with Emil is that his talents lie in designing levels/scenarios yet he ended up as the lead designer and in turn writer for Fallout 3, which happened less so due to merit but rather mainly because of the vacuum left behind by Ken Rolston after he departed, which someone had to fill no matter what so why not put the guy who made the most well-received quests in Oblivion in charge. Their games proceeded to sell more than ever and morons even lauded the writing (Fallout 3 got awards just for its story mind you ), so from their insular perspective it was clearly the right move and thus he's been entrenched into that position ever since. People also seem to overlook the fact that at the end of the day he's answering to Todd "you might want to upgrade your PC" Howard, a literal liar who schmoozed and lucked his way to the top position of the studio back in the day.

 

[Silverfish]

NKB has a point.

He does, but a defense of Emil is a hard sell if you've ever played a game he's worked on. He's absolutely right though about "analysis" style youtubers being sloppy and leaning too hard into biases.

 

[Shadenuat]

So gamerz praised loved and bought f3 oblidvion skyhrim f4 multiple times brought beth bilions but *now* they realise writeng is bad and witchhunt random dev for it?
Petty children didn't get toy they wanted heh

 

[taxalot]

So gamerz praised loved and bought f3 oblidvion skyhrim f4 multiple times brought beth bilions but *now* they realise writeng is bad and witchhunt random dev for it?
Petty children didn't get toy they wanted heh

Pretty much that. They give money to Bethesda every time, claiming every game they bought is worse than the last, and rather than stop buying the next game, they claim the company works for them and they should fire some guys.

But why would they fire him ? They'll buy the next game anyways.

 

[deuxhero]

So I'll be honest I was ready to annihilate NNB for this one, but the more I watch of this video, the more I agree with him. To my shock, it seems actually true that Emil's been unfairly assassinated (lol) for the content of that Copenhagen speech. It IS a shit speech (NNB says as much), but the discussion around it has been equally retarded tbh.

What I will not do is forgive Emil for his shit work on Fallout 3, Fallout 4, or Starfield (which he is additionally the lead designer on as well as lead writer). He clearly isn't a good writer, judging him solely by the product of his work.

Not to mention the best writing from Bethesda since he joined was the stuff it's known he had a minimal role in (Far Harbor)

 

[SpoonFULL]

Emil (or any another unfortunate) is just an escape goat - diverting attention to writing as the reason for failure (as if it the main problem with Starfield), Emil resigns, problem solved and Bethesda continues to produce and sell. Nothing new.

 

[Yosharian]

an escape goat

 

[Caim]

an escape goat

Obviously he meant to call him an escargot, a snail.

Weird insult, but whatever.

 

[deuxhero]

I don't think anyone pretends Emil is the sole bad writer at Bethesda, but he's the highest rank and clearly has minimal talent at writing.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

NKB has a point.

Is Emil responsible for Bethesda's writing ? Probably, at least to some share. Maybe even extensively.
Is he the sole responsible ? Who knows. What about Todd. What about Microsoft. Heck, what about HR.

Ultimately, the point is that the writing in Starfield doesn't justify ad hominem and misinformation. It doesn't justify to call for his firing, since Bethesda doesn't work for gamers, but for themselves and Microsoft. How can anyone feel betrayed by the writing when it was widely criticized since launch ? They don't force you to buy their games, and you have plenty of information about their quality online.

The quality of Starfield is Bethesda's fault, as a collective entity. Nobody but themselves know how they work internally. But whatever, it doesn't excuse harrasment and misinformation.

I'll push it even further. NNB's video, if you put in parallel with Hbomber's video point at a larger Youtube problem. Criticism is plagiarized, and unchecked. By the end point, the source of the facts is too obscure to even bother checking, but the important is that content is generated and that people watch the video asserting their opinion to the end.

It reminds me of that Civ1 legend about Gandhi nuking everyone. Everyone was sure of it, because they had it from a reliable source, which themselves had it from another source. None of these sources had bothered to check though, and it was all a lie in the end.

The point of NNB's video is not Starfield's quality or who's responsible for it. It's the fact that it doesn't allow you to spout nonsense online.

What a terrible post.

Saying something is shit and the guy that is responsible for shitting the big shit is not harassment or even misinformation. The two main points in this 2h drivel, some rando reddit post and lack of design documentation, are pure deflections and arbitrarily chosen points to focus on.

 

[Fearlessjay]

It's easily the hardest NKB video I've watched. I did really enjoy his last one about bad games. Sad truth is that as someone who actually thinks Starfield is a OK game is that Bethesda were never great writers, and their games were always just giant sandboxes to play in. They are basically popcorn games that will always better thanks to the modding scene. Years ago my dream game was the openness of a Bethsoft game with the character interaction of a Bioware game mixed in with Planescape Torment level writing. Daggerfall was basically running around in giant dungeons. Morrowind giant mushrooms and basically flying everywhere. Oblivion was trying to live up to Patrick Stewart's faith but always ended up living with that half naked guy in the first town you went to. They have a certain style and it's strange that they are now XBox exclusive everyone's finally realised this. It's like the classic Might and Magic games.

 

[Rahdulan]

Violence has escalated.

 

[whydoibother]

"violence"
most mild, bland, unspiced, soft and moist drama ever

 

[Dave the Druid]

I'll push it even further. NNB's video, if you put in parallel with Hbomber's video point at a larger Youtube problem. Criticism is plagiarized, and unchecked. By the end point, the source of the facts is too obscure to even bother checking, but the important is that content is generated and that people watch the video asserting their opinion to the end.

It reminds me of that Civ1 legend about Gandhi nuking everyone. Everyone was sure of it, because they had it from a reliable source, which themselves had it from another source. None of these sources had bothered to check though, and it was all a lie in the end.

The point of NNB's video is not Starfield's quality or who's responsible for it. It's the fact that it doesn't allow you to spout nonsense online.

There's a lot of widespread, common knowledge that's just plain factually incorrect and this has been going on long, long before the internet. Just to derail the thread for a second here's 3 of my favorites:

1. Pete Best, original drummer for the Beatles was fired not because he was a bad drummer but because the other Beatles were jealous of his good looks

Anyone heard this one? Seems legit right? I mean he's a good looking boy and Ringo was the least attractive Beatle by a country mile. It's complete nonsense though, he was objectively a terrible drummer. We have recordings of him playing with the Beatles and his drumming is atrocious. Here's Love Me Do with Ringo on the drums:


And here's Love Me Do with Pete playing (note: it starts getting really bad around the 1:35 mark)


He's rubbish! He was so bad that when they went to their first recording session for Love Me Do their producer (George Martin) had already got in a session musician (Andy White) to play because Pete Best had been THAT shit during the audition. As a result Ringo isn't playing on the album version of Love Me Do, it's Andy White instead (although the version I posted IS the single version with Ringo playing.)

Even funnier we actually can trace where this myth comes from: Pete Best himself and... Pete Best's mum, both of whom did a ton of interviews once the Beatles blew up and Pete himself still claims that he fired for being "too sexy" to this very day.

Anyway it got debunked years ago (at least as early as 1995 when Beatles Anthology came out if not earlier since bootlegs of the Pete Best stuff have existed since 1962) yet here's some fuckwit Youtuber repeating the myth almost verbatim... in 2019:


2. Soldiers returning from Vietnam were spat on by anti-war protesters/hippies and called names like "baby killer"

Yeah, you've probably heard this one right? Admittedly this one's harder to completely disprove (it's borderline impossible due to the sheer number of Vietnam vets) but it seems to be a complete myth. Someone (Charles Lembcke) wrote an entire goddamn book investigating these claims in 1998 (The Spitting Image which I'll link here on amazon) and every lead turned out to be complete nonsense. It's actually just something Rambo said in the 1982 movie First Blood:


Just to be clear, Lembcke doesn't believe the myth originated with First Blood (also while the novel it's based on came out in 1972 it doesn't have that speech in it, that was invented for the movie, in the book the Colonel just shoots Rambo and then sits with sheriff Teasle while he dies.) However whenever he pressed any Vietnam veteran who claimed to have been spat on, they'd often change their story ("Well, this didn't happen to me but a friend of mine," that kinda thing) and then would repeat, almost word-for-word, the exact story that Rambo told Colonel Trautman at the end of First Blood (they got off the airplane and there were protestors spitting at them and calling them "baby-killer.")

The more Lembcke looked into it the more it turned out to be bullshit, there was no reporting or footage of any anti-war protestor spitting on returning veterans or calling them baby killer. In fact, there is some reporting/footage of violence at protests except it's all violence against the anti-war protestors. This one was so widespread that even George H. W. Bush talked about how veterans were spat on... when he was the president. There are people here who are probably going to argue against this one even though they (almost certainly) didn't serve in the Vietnam war, in reality you just watched First Blood.

And I personally wouldn't have such a big problem with this one if it weren't for the simple fact that the Vietnam war gave us movies like Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket and APOCALYPSE FUCKING NOW but for some reason the shared, collective cultural memory that's been accepted as fact is from a fucking Rambo movie.

EDIT: THIS IS SLIGHTLY WRONG. I did that all from memory and then decided to pick up my old copy of The Spitting Image to actually check. First Blood was actually by no means the only film to solidify the myth. There were several Vietnam movies that caused it to spread, including several from before First Blood, the big one (according to Lembcke) being 1978's Coming Home, a movie that I have not seen. The reason why I remembered this wrong was because of all the films that spread this myth other than First Blood have faded from memory. I should've also been more clear that the myth was already around long before First Blood, it's just that Rambo's particular telling has been very influential and become the defacto version of the myth.

I'm gonna re-read Spitting Image (hopefully sometime this week and if I'm really bothered I might find a copy of Coming Home too) and I might update this post/write a new post if it's worth it. Still, in a post trying to debunk badly sourced bullshit I nearly spread some semi-badly sourced bullshit myself (in my defense I did correct it within 24 hours of posting.) To be very clear, the spitting thing is still a myth, it's just that First Blood was by no means the only movie to spread and solidify it. However the other 2 points about Pete Best and Star Wars (to the best of my knowledge/ability) are accurate.

3. George Lucas's original cut of the first Star Wars was a disaster and was saved in the editing room by others (usually George's then-wife Marcia Lucas)

I'm bringing this one up since the last two myths spread before the internet but now if you do the tinniest bit of digging via Google you'll quickly find them to be bullshit. However if you Google this one you're going to get horribly misinformed by poorly sourced dipshits (much like the Emil thing.) It isn't true. Star Wars wasn't "saved in the editing room" anymore so than any other film and it certainly wasn't saved by Marcia Lucas, the editor who literally did the least amount of work on the movie. This one takes a bit of explaining though:

1. The original editor of Star Wars, John Jympson, was fired by George Lucas before filming even wrapped. His rushes were terrible and when George pushed him to edit it differently Jympson refused. He wasn't a bad editor, he had a long career before and after Star Wars, he just didn't understand the material. The is no "disastrous" first cut of Star Wars as the Jympson cut was never finished. And it was not edited by George himself, it was edited by the guy whose ass got fired by Lucas
2. When principle photography wrapped Lucas binned all the work Jympson had done, hired 3 editors (Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch and his then-wife Marcia Lucas) and the 4 of them started recutting the film from scratch. Note I said 4 of them as Lucas was himself one of the editors on the film. The only reason why George Lucas doesn't have an Oscar for editing is because he isn't a massive narcissist like Neil Breen and didn't credit himself as an editor in addition to all the other things he was doing on that movie
3. The shooting of Star Wars was a disaster, thanks to things like malfunctioning props and weather conditions in Tunisia, and as a result George hadn't got as many shots as he would've liked. This does not mean he missed entire scenes, more that he didn't get enough coverage before they lost light that day and in the editing room it turned out they didn't have enough close-ups of R2-D2. This is where the editors (including George) had to create shots out of thin air, by using footage from when they were setting up the cameras, manipulating existing footage or just plain sticking a close-up of R2 in from a completely different scene (watch the movie again, there's like 3 or 4 close-ups of R2 throughout the entire film where he's blatantly in the Death Star control room.) For some reason this has gotten conflated with the whole, "the original cut (which was never finished) was a disaster" thing
4. Marcia Lucas didn't save Star Wars because Marcia Lucas only edited the final Death Star battle scene. The rest of her scenes were cut early on, those being the scenes with Biggs and Luke on Tatooine at the start, and she was the one who fought to keep in the film, along with the Jabba scene, it was George who wanted to cut them. More than that she literally did the least amount of work on the film, and I don't mean she was lazy - I'm talking purely as far as man hours go. She left to go work on Martin Scorsese's New York, New York after Thanksgiving, in November 1976. Richard Chew also left after Christmas, so that's December 1976, leaving the film to be finished by Paul Hirsch and George himself. And while she did make 2 crucial changes to the Death Star battle, her contributions have been WAY over-exaggerated by internet word-of-mouth to the point where she even gets credit for "saving" Empire, a movie which she did not edit (that was almost all Paul Hirsch)

All this information is from the J. W. Rinzler book (amazon link here) which I'd highly recommend if you like Star Wars (it's just a really nice book with full color behind-the-scenes photos, concept art, storyboards - that kinda thing) but if you read or watch any decently researched book/documentary on the making of Star Wars it'll say more-or-less the exact same thing. And now that you've read all that, here's one of the worst video essays ever. Don't worry - you only have to watch the first two-and-half minutes to get the gist. Come back when you get up to the title drop:


Okay you've watched that. Notice anything weird? Like the fact that the entire narrative he just told you is complete bullshit? By the time Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg et al. watched this rough cut of Star Wars the editors had already "fixed" it because it was February 1977. By that point two of the editors (Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew) had already finished their work on it. Sorry, that video haunts my soul because one of the sources they use is the J. W. Rinzler book which proves everything they said was bullshit. Like, is this intentionally dishonest or are the people who made this really fucking stupid? I genuinely can't tell anymore. Which brings me to...

TL;DR/conclusion: People are fuckwits who believe anything they hear and always have been fuckwits. Redditors and shit youtubers are merely the latest form of this fuckwittery. There is so much bad information out there (and always has been) that everyone here probably believes in something that's complete, verifiable bullshit. The NeverKnowsBest video is necessary because it debunks this bullshit before it spreads any further. Forget whatever you think of Emil's/Bethesda's writing/game quality for a second, this is purely an effort to debunk a load of nonsense started by a deranged redditor who was probably a child at the time.

P.S. For the record I haven't played Starfield because I didn't like Fallout 4 and Starfield looked like more of the same. Also, I love you George but Attack of the Clones is fucking terrible mate. I think you whiffed on that one. Sorry if this was a bit TL;DR I just felt like effort-posting today

 

[Butter]

Pete Best was to drumming what Emil Pagliarulo is to video game writing.

 

[Dave the Druid]

Pete Best was to drumming what Emil Pagliarulo is to video game writing.

He got fired before publishing a single game with Bethesda and then spent the next 20 years claiming he was let go because Todd Howard himself was jealous of Emil's rugged, good looks?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Todd Howard himself was jealous of Emil's rugged, good looks?

Probably seething at the height difference lmao

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Pete Best was to drumming what Emil Pagliarulo is to video game writing.

He got fired before publishing a single game with Bethesda and then spent the next 20 years claiming he was let go because Todd Howard himself was jealous of Emil's rugged, good looks?

More like both are associated with group of people that produced overrated mediocre products for the retarded masses.

 

[Doktor Best]

You guys really watched an two hours long "leave britney alone" video about Emil Pagalolo or whatever his name is?

 

[Yosharian]

Lmao this NKB video has sparked some proper drama

Oh woops didn't notice it had already been posted

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Lmao this NKB video has sparked some proper drama

Jesus that Skyrim quote