If Bethesda begins to regularly give some information on Starfield, the studio also wants to highlight certain personalities. Today, it’s the turn of Emil Pagliarulo, the Lead Designer of Starfieldbut also a writer on the studio’s next juggernaut.
19 years of career at Bethesda
Emil Pagliarulo began his career 25 years ago on Thief Gold, a game developed by Looking Glass Studios. After that, he joined the Bethesda teams during the development of the extension Bloodmoon from The Elder Scrolls 3 : Morrowind. During all his experiences, he held several positions, from writer on many quests to today, notably Lead Designer on Starfield.
Now this all looks like practice for Starfield. You can’t even start making a game like this without knowing what you’re getting into. So that experience really turned out to be invaluable.
The development of Starfield, a huge task
The lead designer also reviews the development of Starfield, which he lived from the beginning until now. According to him, the first days were both very fun and also intimidating. In effect, Starfield is here “first new license in over 20 years”. Many things had to be defined:
- What are the main places?
- Who are the main characters ?
- How do they fit into the story
With the game releasing on November 11, 2022, most of Emil Pagliarulo’s time is now spent between meetings with the other designers to help them, or playing the game. Indeed, testing the game is an integral part of seeing the progress made and detecting what might be improved. The writer thus evokes the unofficial motto of the studio:
Great games are played, not made.
According to him, this means putting yourself in the shoes of the player at every stage of development. Teams want to be brutally honest with each other regarding what is or isn’t fun or what works. This helps to get the experience that players deserve. He also returns to the course from the start of development. At first, the title was rather chaotic with many loose elements. But following a while, the systems started to line up and work, and everything aligned to match the vision the team had at the start. And Emil Pagliarulo vividly describes his reaction when this happened:
Oh. Oh wow. Yeah. It’s…really something special. Players will lose their minds. Now we just have to finish it.
Words that can only leave you dreaming and make us wait impatiently for November 11, 2022, the release date of Starfield. As a reminder, this is planned for Xbox Series X | S and PC and will integrate the Game Pass as soon as it is released. You can find his trailer below:
