On Sunday I watched the ending credits. I had beaten the game, but I had played it wrong. Maybe "wrong" is the wrong word. I didn't play it through the way I imagine it was intended on somebody's first play-through. Nope, "wrong" was the correct word.

To explain in detail my actions would be to spoil the game for others. I will do my best to leave details vague. The game is good, so I don't want to ruin the experience for would-be players, even if the game is 11 years old.

While the game is non-linear, there still is an order to things. It is possible to skip over missions, items & even whole towns (never did visit the Boneyard), but the game does nudge you to finish the main quest. I apparently decided to skip half the game.

There is a point where a leader of one group asks you to take out a gang of mutants that have been bothering them. As I approached my assigned targets, one of the mutants started to talk to me. My choices in dialog got me captured and taken to the mutants base. I started to notice that the game had gotten a lot harder then it had been, but yet my escape didn't seem unattainable. Through many save files and reloading I was able to make my escape and in the process I unknowingly finished a major story plot.