I'm really curious what exactly is Emil's design philosophy?
I remember him saying something like "Keep it simple, stupid" when he was working on Skyrim, I believe?
Reminder that he also worked on Thief 2: The Metal Age.
Yeah...
What changed?
His infamous speech said that his writing had 3 philosophy:
1) Keep it simple, stupid: concentrate on strong central themes, and 1 or 2 strong central themes is enough
2) Write what you know: he gave the example of how the popular Dark Brotherhood questline of Oblivion was based on his experiences with the Catholic Church which he grew up in.
3) Great games are played, not made: he made a point that this is not HIS philosophy, this is a philosophy of Bethesda as a whole. This means several things, then he gave that infamous "no design documents" cause they are constantly changing their games and they found it not worth their effort to keep a central design document. He also mentioned how every Bethesda writer wants to write the next great American novel for his games, but then if they give that novel to the players they will just use them to make paper airplanes. Cause they will just make shacks and find bobbleheads.