Played Skyrim with 47 mods for 3 years, then tried it on my old Xbox 360 and had more fun
I used to spend entire nights in Nexus Mod Manager, fixing load orders and hunting down patches for 47 mods on my PC. Last month my PC died, so I pulled the old 360 out of the closet and started a plain vanilla save in Whiterun. Honestly, not having to check for conflicts or CTDs made the game feel like a game again instead of a second job. I put in 22 hours in one week and never once opened a wiki. Is there anyone else who went back to a vanilla version of a game they modded to death, or am I just getting old?
I read a thread on a retro gaming forum where a bunch of people said the same thing after going back to old consoles. One guy pointed out that mods can turn into a checklist you never finish, and vanilla lets you just play the game as it was made. Sounds like you hit that wall and came out the other side with a save you actually enjoy.