TOP 10 games that fans have completed: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., GTA, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines and others

Sometimes developers release potentially excellent projects in a completely indecent form: buggy, unfinished and completely unplayable. Then the fans get to work, correcting errors on their own, returning the cut content and creating their own. It is about the games that the players themselves brought to mind that we will talk about in this article.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines is a very bright phenomenon in the gaming industry. It's hard to find another game for which gamers would feel as much love and hate at the same time. An absolutely amazing project is considered by many to be almost the best RPG in history, but its genius became a victim, to put it mildly, of technical imperfection.

The game was riddled with bugs, and one broken script made it completely unplayable. Official patches, of course, fixed crashes in story quests and other fatal errors, but not immediately and not all. A little later, Troika Games closed down completely, and the players themselves had to bring the brilliant but broken game to fruition.

At first, the fan-made Unofficial Patch was supposed to simply fix crashes and other errors, but over time it turned into a large-scale mod that returns a lot of cut content to the game: deleted missions, locations, music, effects, perks and much more. Of course, it should be noted that some content should have been left buried (the mission in the library can hardly be called good, and some skills are either useless or unbalanced). But the mod itself is regularly updated and improved, and its strengths more than offset its shortcomings.

Thanks to the joint work of fans and developers, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines has gained cult status, and its sequel has become one of the most anticipated games of this year. The main thing is that Hardsuit Labs does not make the mistakes of its predecessors.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl turned out to be an incredible game. Yes, she spent seven years in production hell, and at some point, fans, exhausted by anticipation, stopped believing in her existence altogether. But as a result, we still got a real masterpiece, albeit not quite what we expected. A huge amount of content was cut from the game, and it was the fans who took up the task of restoring it.

The most famous modification of this kind was Lost Alpha. Modders had to work hard to recreate, based on early builds, screenshots and videos, those storylines, characters and quests that were supposed to appear in the game, but were left out.

Of course, the mod was no less buggy than the game itself. For example, the plot could very well become impenetrable due to the fact that a wave of zombies killed an important character. Nevertheless, the works of the mod makers cannot be called anything other than amazing.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, one of Obsidian's most controversial games, has split the community in two, with some fans fiercely loving the RPG and others hating it just as fiercely. In many aspects, the sequel definitely surpassed the original, but it came out unfinished.

Obsidian has never been known for quality control, but in this case there are reasons for that. The developers tried to make the most large-scale project possible and asked LucasArts for time to make improvements, but the marketing gears could not be slowed down: the game had to be released exactly by Christmas 2004, period. As a result, an entire planet had to be deleted from the script, and testing seemed to be completely skipped.

At the start, being a Jedi turned out to be extremely difficult, because bugs, slowdowns and crashes over and over again prompted us to switch to the dark side of the force and destroy KotOR 2 from the hard drive. However, the developers themselves tried to improve the situation, and the fans joined the process, essentially bringing the game to the correct state with their own hands.

In 2009, The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod was released, which brings back a lot of dialogue, tidies up the epilogue, adds new companions and even an entire planet (which, by the way, is quite boring). Of course, after fan patches the game did not become what it was originally intended to be. Unfortunately, it was not possible to restore a significant part of the content. However, it was thanks to the efforts of gamers that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 came closer to the ideal, and this is already a lot.

The Gothic trilogy ended in 2006 (we won't remember the godless Arcania: Gothic 4), but we can't even call its finale glorious. Piranha Bytes has never been known for its good optimization and lack of bugs, but this time it has outdone itself.

The sad thing is that the game looked good, the world was huge, and the quests were interesting, but it was all painful to play. Gothic 3 was constantly glitching, crashing, freezing, and some enemies, like jet boars, became both memes and gamers' nightmares. The developers corrected the imperfections as best they could, but the final word once again remained with the fan community.

After some time, gamers released a Community Patch, which weighed as much as a third of the entire game, eliminated a huge number of errors, improved textures, increased optimization and finally made Gothic 3 playable.

Fallout is without a doubt one of the most popular game series in history, and the foundation of its greatness was the first two parts. Given the cult status of the second part, it was unbearably painful for fans to accept the fact that so much content was cut from Fallout 2. Rolling up their sleeves, they set out to return to the game everything that should have been there in the first place.

The Restoration Project modification has been in development for several years. It contained several new locations, expansions of existing ones, new characters, quests and dialogues. Many tasks were brought to fruition. For example, if in the original the conflict with the raiders from Vault 15 invariably ended in bloodshed, then with the mod it became possible to resolve all issues peacefully. The mod gave fans dozens more hours of gameplay, and definitely deserves a place in our selection.

Sometimes fans have to fix not even the game itself, but its port. If the console version of Dark Souls made you suffer because of hardcore enemies and bosses, then on PC the project posed other challenges: technical problems, low resolution, dull graphics, disgusting interface... Horror.

FromSoftware at that time did not have much experience in porting and warned in advance that one should not expect much from the PC version — problems with FPS and many other shortcomings should have become an unpleasant addition to the opportunity to play on a computer. As a result, it was possible to comfortably enjoy Dark Souls on PC only after installing the fan modification DSfix. The mod improved network connections in multiplayer, added support for Full HD, improved graphics, allowed you to change the interface and, of course, error rules. The developers needed a whole re-release for this.

It was a similar story with the PC version of Deadly Premonition — «the Japanese Twin Peaks». While console players generally appreciated the psychological thriller, PC gamers three years later were offered a product as raw as the jungle in the rainy season.

The game immediately looked outdated, and by the time it appeared on Steam it completely looked like an ancient buggy fossil with a maximum resolution of 1280x720. The fans had to make it playable. They quickly released a patch that increased the resolution, improved depth of field, anti-aliasing, and added SSAO to the game. Although Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut did not get rid of all the problems, many were still able to appreciate its mysterious atmosphere.

San Andreas is an outstanding game for which the fans did as much as the developers. It was the folk artists who created the legendary SA-MP (San Andreas Multiplayer) mod.

SA-MP almost became a subculture in which a huge number of players truly lived: they went to work, served in the army, joined gangs and entertained themselves in hundreds of other ways. GTA had multiplayer from the very first part, and a similar fan mod for Vice City was impressive. However, it was SA-MP that deserved maximum popular love, becoming, in fact, the progenitor of GTA Online.

But at some point the authors announced the cessation of support for the mod, because they were tired of fighting cheaters. But gamers did not agree with this, organizing a large-scale petition, which ultimately helped bring the developers back into action. And for good reason, because SA-MP is still played today.

The Just Cause series has always been famous for its unbridled fun, but wreaking havoc with live partners would be much more interesting! It's strange that Avalanche Studios didn't add this feature themselves. But where the developer fails, the fans come into play.

Three years after the release of Just Cause 2, the Multiplayer Mod addition appeared on Steam, which allowed players to misbehave in a group. Craftsmen gave the project a second wind, and then added a similar feature to Just Cause 3. However, this successful experience did not teach the developers anything. They continue to ignore multiplayer capabilities, and fans seem to be tired of creating modifications. It's a pity.

Sometimes fans not only improved games, restored content or expanded functionality, but also created new projects based on old ones. Thus, thanks to the efforts of modmakers, a multiplayer map appeared in Warcraft 3 where there was no need to build a base and train hundreds of units in barracks — Defense of the Ancients. Everyone already knows what this has developed into.

Today Dota 2 is one of the most popular e-sports disciplines in the world. Blizzard, meanwhile, bites its elbows due to the fact that it does not have the rights to the game, which grew from a mod to their brainchild.

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As you can see, thanks to the fans, even a broken and cut game has a chance of a new life. What other projects did mod makers have an equally colossal influence on? Write in the comments!