While Skyrim probably has the same issues you ran into with Fallout/other TES games, it’s quite viable to roleplay the game without doing the main quest without the game feeling empty.
I did one “playthrough” as an Orc blacksmith, with the goal being maxing out the smithing skill and crafting a dragonbone armour to present to a chieftan of one of the orc strongholds in order to join. I started out hunting deer and making leather stuff to gen enough money for food and board, working my way up, eventually venturing into dwemer ruins to gather metal. I did a handful of quests if they felt doable for a non-heroic regular dude and ran if I got into too much danger.
Strict pacifism wasn’t my goal, I was just playing as a non-heroic normal person, but I’m sure you could do something similar. You just need to abandon the main quest and set your own goal.
Same with doomwiki.org and a bunch of others.
Yeah, it works really well. Here’s some gameplay footage.
Ravenholm was certainly an experience, but it’s manageable. I mean, I’m more and more of a pussy when it comes to scary games but I pulled through.
I have yet to finish HL1in VR (as well as Opposing Force and Blue Shift), but it’s certainly on my list. I played it up to around that early part with the long diagonal elevator with headcrabs dropping on you. Using the crowbar by actually swinging into them takes practice and I was getting my ass kicked, so I decided to restart on medium difficulty but never got around to actually doing it.
I think I got distracted by Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy VR being released… Those are incredible.
I liked how the third one went in a completely different direction instead of rehashing what made Max Max yet again. It’s a bit of a shock at first but it makes sense, especially since a lot of time has passed.
There’s even one or two turns in the story that play out very differently from how it would have played out in the first two games because the overarching theme is a bit different. You can tell it’s still Max though.
I remember originally being disappointed how Mona survived a shot in the the head from the first game, then Max survives a shot in the head in the game and then if you beat the game on the hardest difficulty she survives yet again.
Plus I prefered the looks of both Max and Mona in the first game.
But I’ve grown to appreciate the second game on subsequent playthroughs.
You might enjoy this video if you haven’t seen it. Ross is awesome.
Speaking of Ross being awesome, I have to plug this initiative.
I need to reinstall the VR version and do a run like that.