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Emil Pagliarulo is a developer who worked at Bethesda Game Studios on Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 as a lead designer and writer. He also wrote the main story for another major Bethesda game Starfield.

He was credited with special thanks on Fallout: New Vegas, as a writer on Fallout Shelter and as the creator of the concept for One Man, and a Crate of Puppets.

His son, Cullen Pagliarulo, has worked on several Fallout games with Emil.

Career[]

Before working at Bethesda, Pagliarulo was a designer on the Thief series, and worked at Looking Glass and Ion Storm Austin. At Bethesda, his first task was creating miscellaneous quests for Bloodmoon, the second official Morrowind expansion. He also worked as a designer on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, largely for the Arena and Dark Brotherhood. In 2011, he served as a senior designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Work on the Fallout series[]

When put to work on Fallout 3, Pagliarulo incorporated some of the game's dark humor. One of his ideas was suggesting the Pint-Sized Slasher for the evil ending to the Tranquility Lane quest, which, when finished, allowed the player character to exit the simulation.[2] He also had an uncredited voice cameo in the game, as the Boston-accented trucker in Partial CB radio backup.

Pagliarulo was also the primary writer on Fallout Shelter, the mobile spin-off released before Fallout 4 in 2015.[3]

Pagliarulo reprised his role as lead writer and designer on Fallout 4 in 2015. He also voiced Parker Quinn, a character modeled after people he knew growing up in Boston, and added his childhood home block as a location.[4] He also voiced a few other minor uncredited roles, including Mr. Callahan, Jonathan Widmark, the narrator of the groundskeeper's log, the NCR radio announcer in Dangerous Minds and the Silver Shroud Radio play announcer.[5]

Pagliarulo served as a design director on Fallout 76, released in 2018.

Although Pagliarulo is credited as a lead writer or design director on several Fallout games, he does not write everything; his responsibilities include high-level story concepts and overseeing the larger design team, who do most of the writing as a collective.[6]

Employment history[]

FromToCompanyRole
19982000Looking Glass Studios, Inc.Designer
??Ion Storm AustinDesigner
2003PresentBethesda Game StudiosLead Designer/Writer

Credits[]

Fallout series[]

YearTitleCredited as/for
2008Penny ArcadeConcept
2008Fallout 3Lead Designer
Lead Writer
Boston trucker (uncredited)
2010Fallout: New VegasSpecial Thanks
2015Fallout ShelterWriting
2015Fallout 4Lead Designer
Lead Writer
Mr. Callahan (uncredited)
Parker Quinn (uncredited)
Jonathan Widmark (uncredited)
Groundskeeper (uncredited)
NCR radio announcer (uncredited)
Silver Shroud Radio play announcer (uncredited)
2018Fallout 76Design Director
2021Fallout: The Roleplaying GameBethesda Staff

Other work[]

YearTitleCredited as/for
1999Thief: GoldJunior Designer / Opera Guests
2000Thief II: The Metal AgeJunior Designer / Frederick Juniper Rothchild III
2003The Elder Scrolls III: BloodmoonWriting and Quest Design
2003Pirates of the CaribbeanAdditional Writing and Design
2004Thief: Deadly ShadowsSpecial Thanks
2006The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionQuest Design / Dark Seducers (Shivering Isles)
2009Spider: The Secret of Bryce ManorPlaytesting
2011The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimSenior Designer
2017Wolfenstein II: The New ColossusScript Consultant
2018The Elder Scrolls Online: SummersetSpecial Thanks
2023StarfieldDesign Director / Writer

External links[]

References[]

  1. Emil Pagliarulo on Twitter
  2. Bethesda_DE: Interview with Jeff Gardiner and Emil Pagliarulo at Gamescom 2020 (reference starts at 00:55:18):
    Alina Ullrich: "So, there's a question about your favorite quest ever made in the Fallout universe."
    [...]
    Jeff Gardiner: "It's gotta be... COVID has affected my brain, sitting home all day... the black and white one -"
    Emil Pagliarulo: "Oh! Tranquility Lane. In Fallout 3."
    Jeff Gardiner: "Yes, that's it. Tranquility Lane. Yes. I'm sorry, I just..."
    Emil Pagliarulo: "That actually might be my favorite too, that was... that was really fun."
    Jeff Gardiner: "Fallout 3, when you go into the, yes, in Tranquility Lane. And the kid - the Pint-Sized Slasher. I just - that is the perfect example to me of the dark humor. And you can do anything in the Fallout universe, pretty much, and make it work. And they, Emil and they did. And it's still to this day, where you go 'wow.'"
    Emil Pagliarulo: "Yeah. Blowing up Megaton, that whole quest, probably... you wanna know, here's some trivia about Tranquility Lane. So, in the ratings system in the United States - you can't kill children, right? There was a big limitation with killing children. In Fallout 3, there's only one place that a kid can die. And that's in the Tranquility Lane simulation. And it wasn't okay to kill a kid in a video game, but it was a simulation within the video game. It was okay for a kid to die in the simulation in the video game, because he wasn't a real kid."
  3. Pixel.tv interview with Emil Pagliarulo (reference starts at 1:23):
    Emil Pagliarulo: "Yeah, I did all the primary writing on Fallout Shelter, too."
  4. See references on Parker Quinn, Bus and apartment wreckage and Joe's Spuckies sandwich shop.
  5. Writing the Worlds of Bethesda (reference starts at 29:15):
    Emil Pagliarulo: "I do a couple of the super mutant voices, the announcer for the Silver Shroud Radio stuff... so, I slip in a little bit of stuff here and there. I have in the past, anyway. It's fun."
  6. Pixel.tv interview with Emil Pagliarulo (reference starts at 23:38):
    Emil Pagliarulo: "I'm credited as being the lead writer, but that's a bit of a misnomer. I don't write everything. I come up with the high-level story, but, y'know, we have our design team, who are writers. I will sort of oversee their writing and guide them, but they're doing all the writing."
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