It’s not easy to take back something you said on the internet, and that’s a lessonBethesda Games StudioDesign Director Emil Pagliarulo is learning the hard way today. Pagliarulo hasdone a lot with his time at Bethesda, including serving as the head writer forFallout 4, and over the weekend, he shared a Fallout secret that’s completely blown up the online fanbase just like Megaton.
Despite his big reveal’s popularity, which has been seen by (at the time of this writing) more than 4.6 million viewers on X/Twitter, it’s also caused a lot of division, and now, he’s wishing he could take it all back.
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So What’s The Big Reveal?
On Saturday, April 13, Pagliarulo took to X to share some big Fallout news, in honor of the recent upswing in Fallout’s popularity, which can almost certainly be attributed to the debut of thelive-action streaming series adaptationavailable on Amazon Prime. He wanted to give the fans a gift: a tidbit of information that links Fallout 4 to the opening cutscene of the original Fallout (which was neither developed nor produced by Bethesda).
Unfortunately for a lot of fans, this big reveal gave them the realization that they had been playing Fallout 4 as a “war criminal”.
Yes, according to Fallout 4’s head writer, if you played as the male protagonist in that game (whose default name is Nate), you were also the same guy who stood by while another soldier shot a prisoner of war in the head during the U.S. occupation of Canada before all the bombs fell. And that didn’t sit well with a lot of people, who were probably viewing their character as an incorruptible hero of the post-apocalyptic wastes.
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Wishing He Could Take It All Back
While the Tweet has seen massive popularity, it seems Pagliarulo wishes he had never sent it. He has clarified in a series of follow-up tweets that “Nate is not a war criminal,” and he was not the one who actually executed the prisoner before waving cheerily at the camera. Also, just because he’s the head writer and made a social media post about it, he pointed out that it doesn’t mean what he said is in the Fallout canon. Because of the free-form nature of the game’s character creation, he says the canon backstory of the main character is whatever you want it to be (although the game clearly states that the male character was a soldier and the female character was a lawyer). He added:
When you’re world and character building, you have a LOT of head canon. You’re always sorting ideas. Early on, we talked about that being Nate, in that video. He had been through hell as a soldier. Every day was another unknown horror. This was one of them.
Most recently, the fallout over Fallout has gotten so bad that he’s stated he even considered leaving X behind, but he says the interaction with fans of Bethesda’s games would be too high a cost to pay for quitting the platform. He also followed up with this:
In the end, it seems to be much ado about nothing, since it’s not actually part of Fallout’s canon, and hopefully, we’re all able tokeep enjoying all the Fallout franchise has to offer, which includes fun facts shared by its creators.
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