I know most of the Bethesda RPGs have massive mod support, and there’s games like Minecraft that have more mods than anyone can imagine. I would consider those games pretty playable in their vanilla states. Would you say there are any games that were “saved” by modding? Or that are still kept alive by thriving modding communities? What are some of your favorite mods?
I cannot speak for the entire S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, but at least the first entry (Shadow of Chernobyl) is, while still very much playable, just so much better with a couple mods. And once you’re familiar with the core gameplay, adding huge mods like Anomaly or G.A.M.M.A. (which itself is a modpack of Anomaly) adds many weeks worth of replayability to the game. Not even mentioning how good the game can look with these mods that touch it straight up into 2023. Of course, here and there you’ll still notice that it’s based on an older game, but it can easily compete with AAA releases of the past couple years in terms of atmosphere and immersion (especially the sound design).