Oh I am so here for this because I’ve been arguing this ever since Fallout 3!
I literally said to myself while playing Fallout 3 the first time:
Only Bethesda could make post apocalyptic hookers boring.
EDIT: I want the 30 mins I took before I gave up of my life back. Bethesda’s writing sucks but in a lot of ways this dude just has an axe to grind and can’t stop himself from speaking in a mocking tone every time he quotes somebody. Fuck! This is why I mostly don’t watch YouTube videos, the people who make them are fucking insufferable, even when I agree with them!
I clicked through to the video, and then immediately changed my mind. The thought that had occurred to me was that good critics rarely, if ever, call out a specific member of a creative team by name. Even if the quality of Bethesda’s writing has gone to shit, laying the blame for that entirely on one specific person misses the incredible complexity of what writing, especially video game writing, actually is.
Good critics generally criticise the work, not the creator (cases where the creator crosses the line from “unskilled/incompetent/tried a thing and it didn’t work” to “bigoted and hateful” are the most common exception) because art is complicated. Just because you can see how and why something doesn’t work, doesn’t mean you know how and why it got that way.
These problems are not new and he is/was/will-be lead writer+lead designer for decades worth of Bethesda’s games. Sure you can blame Todd, but beyond that it seems like saying it wasn’t Emil’s influence is a bit of a “so you agree” situation (as in still his fault) relating to his public admissions (lack of design document and saying that players don’t care about story).
Looked through the guy’s channel and their content, and basically, it’s rant after rant after rant. Why should I trust a user that does little to establish objectivity outside of toxic rants? Where’s the video establishing this guy’s credentials? Where are the video’s actually praising the alternatives that do it right? Drama sells, I guess that’s why I keep seeing people here trying to kick this dead horse of theirs.
Yeah, this guy and some people on reddit have a hate boner for Emil for some reason when he has been the lead writer since Fallout 3 and has been in several games that are loved by most people like Fallout 3, Skyrim etc. But for some reason this guy and some others started a witch hunt against Emil more or less recently, its fine if you dont like Bethesda game, i like them just fine, but stuff like this does nothing. (And no surprise this bullshit is shared by Nanoufo, number one contributor to sharing the most bullshit articles of shitty websites and youtubers tbh)
I can understand nanoUFO trying to bring content into the community. What I can’t understand is them trying to bring toxic negativity content into it just to drive participation - like, are you a Facebook algorithm that’s made it onto lemmy or something?
Fallout 3 was greatly disliked by a lot of people including creetosis because of how different it was from the source material. Its not a bad game by any means but it replaced a story driven rpg series with a sort of adventure/exploration game that has mediocre writing. Some people take it too far and go after Emil, blaming him for everything.
