I'm late to the party with this, and I know this isn't the first time he's ever been criticized. However, I recently came across this video, saw a comment it was discussed here several months ago, and found the thread associated with it. While people were critical of him, I really wanna speak up about that video because I don't think anyone really broke down just HOW BAD it is and how it speaks volumes about how unqualified this man is. If you've seen the video? Great. If you haven't? I'm about to break it down anyways:

First problem is that for the entirety of the video, Emil seems to follow this pattern:

Step One: Emil makes a claim that a new feature or major change/content cut was neccesary for development

Step Two: You rationally ask yourself "why" as he hasn't said why yet.

Step Three: Emil goes off on a pointless tangent for a bit

Step Four: Emil begins making a very good counterargument against his own argument and his own initial claim, highlighting serious flaws with it.

Step Five: Emil moves on to the next subject.

Step Six: You throw your keyboard through your computer monitor in a fit of rage with how retarded that just was

A great example of when this occurs is that Emil introduces the new dialog system for Fallout 4 and says "look, 4 buttons and 4 choices. Neat right?" He likewise makes some comments about how great a voiced protagonist is. He then goes on to say that the new dialog system was a MASSIVE HEADACHE for his own workers because they sometimes had conversations that didn't warrant four distinct answers (true/false), and that this created a lot of work for them. (he also more or less divulges Bethesda hard-coded that all convos need four answers, because reasons) He likewise mentions just how much recording, studio work and data a voiced protagonist demands, stating the two lead voice actors make up for 40% of the game's dialog data, or how players are capable of depicting the protagonist's voice in their head. Emil never makes a statement why any of this was neccesary.

Keep in mind, this is their lead writer. This is someone high up in the company with a lot of power and influence in the decision-making side of things, and he himself failed to make a compelling argument for these features, instead accidently arguing against his own stance before he awkwardly moves on. One of their creative leaders cannot complete a speech without fumbling through it, and cannot even justify some of the major changes made, and even does a better job criticizing them. You may say "he said himself he's not a great speaker, he could just be socially awkward," and hey that's understandable, but he's supposed to be a writer!!! You mean to tell me he couldn't write a speech, collect his thoughts and read it emotionlessly and devoid of charisma? He "wrote" the powerpoint presentation, and at times it's all over the place, which leads me to...

Second main point: He sometimes goes off onto pointless topics. At one point he's talking about the three main aspects of his writing technique, and then he awkwardly shows pictures of his co-workers in the middle of a speech for no discernable reason. He completely skips out on explaining the third part of his technique, and "oh look, here's my co-workers and some cosplayers."

In literature, there's a rule called "Chekov's Gun." In short, every story element needs to have a purpose, and if it lacks purpose, it has no reason to exist. Makes sense, no?

What bothers me with this is that while some of you may think ok, Emil is awkward as a speaker so at times there's random tangents with no purpose, he's supposed to be their lead writer. Their lead writer cannot even compose a half-hour speech that's devoid of basic violations with writing. ANY speech writer - let alone literature writer - would know not to go off on random tangents and divert attention away from the focus of the speech for no damned reason, yet Emil does this in spades. After the co-workers comes a Star Wars reference, then comes the Great Gatsby, then comes Moby Dick, then comes some photos of Cosplayers. Great way to make his point, right? If you REALLY try, you can see his thought process, but no, a writer should not be making me do the bulk of the work to understand them.

That particular snippet ends with Emil saying the player will take any stories Bethesda writes, rip the pages out and make paper airplanes, and that the most important story is the player's story, "and we're ok with that." Problem is, he's failed to describe how this affects his work. If it doesn't, why bother with this point? Why is being concious of this part of your formula? When I try to fill in the blanks myself, the conclusion I'm left to draw is that since the player will potentially ignore your stories, don't bother with too much care or detail. Again, Emil doesn't ever answer this or explain his point. It's left without conclusion.

Third major problem is probably the biggest, and that's his own lack of analytical skills in regards to writing. Emil will actually correctly highlight key elements of certain famous movies or novels, or correctly interpret some rules of writing....but then fail to recognize when his own stories, IN HIS OWN WORDS, have missed the point.

Great example: at one point he's praising some of his favorite stories, such as Casablanca. He will identify that Casablanca is about "sacrifice." I've actually not seen Casablanca, but seeing as "sacrifice" seems like a good theme worthy of a story, I'll give him benefit of the doubt. He names some other quick examples (all of which I'm unfamiliar with, unfortunately), but there's a pattern in the key story elements, themes and motifs he's highlighting. "Sacrifice." "Isolation." "Self-Discovery." One example is the Incredibles movie, which I'm not sure I'd use as an example of storytelling, and he names the theme as "family." To provide some examples of my own? Death of a Salesman is about the death of the American Dream, Importance of Being Earnest is a criticism of the Victorian (?) era and misplaced values.

Emil then describes Skyrim and Fallout 4 summarized in his own words: "Dragons." "Messiah." "Androids." "Suspicion."

Noticing the problem?

When he's praising works like Casablanca, he's using a broad concept. "Sacrifice" is broad and ambiguous, and as such, has multiple elements to it. Or great example? Fallout itself. Fallout's theme is war. That tagline is not fluff, that tagline exists for a reason. Fallout explores the paradox that although every living man can admit war is wrong, you'll seldom find a point of time in history where a war is not being fought. Why? You could write MANY novels about this, and the answer to that question has not actually been discovered by humanity itself. Fallout is such a good franchise because it actually has a recurring theme and a recurring motif.

But when Emil steps up to plate...? "Dragons." "Androids." These are not broad concepts, these are not even ideas. These are things. A key, core concept needs to be ambiguous. It needs to be an idea, it needs to be a thought, it needs to be an emotion or it needs to be about a rich, diverse culture. If it's something simple like "dragons," guess what, there's not enough material to work with to make a compelling story.

Even when Emil picks a broad concept, he picks "suspicion," and names an example of being scared of the boogeyman as a child. Of all emotions and feelings, I daresay Emil somehow found the most infantile. Like really, I'm asking seriously: can someone think of a less interesting human emotion/feeling than suspicion? Even "Lust" spawns dozens of trashy romance novels...

Another good example is "Messiah." Messiah COULD be interesting if done correctly. For example, think of "hero." Yknow who does "hero" as a concept poorly? Superman. Yknow who does it exceedingly well? Batman. Batman often gets criticial acclaim, and you know why? Batman moves beyond the acts and the motions of a hero, and instead chooses to ask "what does it mean to be a hero," turning it more into a concept and a philosophical thought. As we know, Skyrim fails to do this with "messiah."

This is a serious problem. Their lead writer cannot differentiate between concepts and things. Sure enough, the focus of his stories are things rather than exploring concepts.

Final problem? Emil himself repeatedly correctly identifies or interprets literary concepts....but then blatantly violates them. Great example is he discussed "write what you know" and said if you work as a dishwasher, this doesn't mean write about washing dishes. No, the intent is more write about the experiences you know, focused more on emotional experiences and thought experiences, not action experiences. Washing dishes is just an act, so he's right. Chris Avellone for example often writes about things he hates or things that depress him. I'm sure he's probably had a lot of sorrowful nights, and that makes me wanna hug Avellone, but all the same? It gives him a very broad range of things to write about, the only consistent theme being Avellone's ideas will usually challenge or upset you rather than inspire you or make you happy. Josh Sawyer uses his experiences as a history major, which while broad, is more factual and informative knowledge than emotional. It meshes excellently with the theme of war and with Fallout, but I'll confess for example that I found Pillars of Eternity's main storyline to be "meh," precisely because he left that comfort zone, which unfortunately limits him to all subjects historical.

Now what does Emil say he has experience in?

"Stabbing people. I worked on Thief II."

Holy fucking shit. Emil, how on earth is "stabbing people" any different from "washing dishes?" Both are acts devoid of thought or emotion!! Stabbing people could have emotion and thought put into it, but we all know through experience with his writing that he didn't.

Another example of him contradicting himself is that one of his steps of writing is "Keep it Simple." (he adds "stupid" at the end so he can turn it into a K.I.S.S. acronym and pat himself on the back for how fucking brilliant and clever he is for thinking of that) Thing is, while this can work in the right context, I feel as though keeping it simple contradicts his speeches of praise for Casablanca and the others. With all of them, he says there's an INITIAL impression of a simplistic story, but when you dig deeper there's a bigger theme such as "sacrifice." Yep. Correct Emil. So why are we keeping it simple? As usual, don't expect an answer.

In short, the entire video depicts Emil as someone incapable of collecting his thoughts, incapable of analytical thinking skills neccesary to differentiate a good theme from a bad one, incapable of withholding a thought or rule in the back of his mind for longer than 10 seconds so he can actually FOLLOW the rule, and even incapable of justifying any of his own decisions. It's embarassing, and worst of all, it's more or less a death sentence for Bethesda's writing. I watched the vid expecting the cringe, but my jaw was dropping at how bad it actually was. It somehow managed to be worse than expected.

TL;DR This.

EDIT: Trying to squeeze this in with limited characters left: my goal is not to deride Emil as an individual worker or a person. In one of the comments below, I actually highlight I think he could be a good quest designer. (scripting, providing branching paths) For me? Emil is simply a great example of bad decision-making at Bethesda. He should never have been named writer, and I view my points above as arguments for that. The fact that he was and the fact that he continues to be there? I view that as evidence Bethesda may be going down the wrong course. It's not just a critique of his writing, but also of the decision to put him as lead writer; the burden is not soley his, but also those who put him in over his head and choose to keep him there. This goes beyond Emil's writing.