10 Amazing Video Game Moments Created By Fans

6. Fallout: New Vegas' Hardcore Mode

Bethesda is no stranger to relying on players to do a lot of the heavy lifting for them: practically every single game they publish has performance-boosting fixes released by fans long before any official patches come out, and fans also have a penchant for creating mods which are then adopted into a subsequent game.

For instance, modders introduced weapon modifications to Fallout 3, so Obsidian was smart enough to include them in Fallout: New Vegas, while Fallout 4's base-building mechanics were clearly inspired by similar mods for both Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

But the most significant adoption of fan input was unquestionably the addition of Hardcore mode in New Vegas, where stimpaks only heal players over time, players have to make considerations for dehydration and sleep deprivation, ammunition has weight, and recruited companions have perma-death. Yikes.

Hardcore mode was inspired by the several fan mods for Fallout 3 which introduced similarly punishing mechanics, most famously the Wanderer's Edition of the game, which comprehensively allowed players to tailor the difficulty and "realism" to their own preferences.

Given that Hardcore mode is now viewed by many as the definitive way to play a Fallout game, it's a shame that Bethesda simply included the watered-down Survival mode for Fallout 4, though of course, it didn't take long for fans to just make their own Hardcore mode.