I never did yet tell my story here.
I got Fallout 2 as a Christmas present from my brother many, many years ago. It was some random game he found, post-apocalyptic setting, he said. Might be cool.
The first time I ever played Fallout 2, I was put off by the Temple of Trials. I got halfway through it, said this game was crap, and stopped playing. I was fool at the time... Maybe a year or so later I found the CD and decided to try again. I made it through the Temple of Trials and out to Arroyo. Before long I was hooked. I played hours and hours every day. I couldn't stop. I had never seen a game quite like this. The bugs got to me, but I made it to the end.
I went searching for patches after this and found an unofficial patch by a modder named Seraph. While playing the game, I had also come across Per's ultimate guide. At the end, there was this section on bugs and unfinished content and it got me thinking.
The Fallout modding scene was relatively young at this time but there was already enough to extract the scripts and edit the maps. Using Seraph's patch as a base, I started to fix things listed in Per's guide that were not yet fixed by Seraph. I had never modded a game in my life before. I just suddenly felt like I needed to do it. Something was calling me.
Several batches were sent to him before I decided I wanted to make my own patch. And on that day my unofficial patch was born.
A year or so later I decided I also wanted to bring back unfinished content to the game. And here the Restoration Project came to be. It was a bit of a rocky road for the RP since I wasn't yet fully focused on quality and seamless integration with what was already there. The 1.x series of the RP is not how I wanted things to be. The 2.x releases changed this and I feel satisfied with how everything has turned out, RP and UP both.
Somewhere in the mix of all this I also played Fallout 1, since I wanted to see what game started it all. I enjoyed it too, but always felt like Fallout 2 had a special place in my heart.
In the end, and you might be surprised to hear it, I have only played Fallout 1 once and Fallout 2 ... maybe twice. Hell, I've played Fallout Tactics more times than that.
Crazy, I know. Blasphemy you might even say. The thing is, when I play a game I play it completely. No stone left unturned. Now, yes, Fallout is the type of game with immense re-playability, but modding it ruined everything for me. I know too much about how things work and spent too many hundreds of hours scripting/mapping/etc to be able to make it through a full game. Maybe some day, many years from now I'll be able to play again. That will be a fine day.
), Skyrim, I don't like them.