When I was 14 years old or younger, my brother 2 years younger: Some time after Fallout 2 released my brother for some reason had bought the game, but hadn't played it very long and was stuck on his shelf.
It was in his shelf in his room at the time and just out of curiousity I asked to install his game on my MAC computer, as MAC computers didn't have that many games at the time. I remember my only other game I was playing at that time was Caesar III RTS game, there was another RPG puzzle game at that same time called Full Throttle. We played both of the RPG games a bit but not very long, as we got stuck in some puzzle & we didn't really like the combat that much.
1 year later I had some spare time (I had to study my exams & felt I had so much time over) & asked my brother to reinstall that game on my PC, so I did. Now this time I stuck to it a bit longer, I got to the first town & my character started to make some progression. I solved more puzzles too, but somethimes it became frustrating and I got stuck. This is also when I discovered the word "Walkthrough" which I used when I got stuck too long at a certain point that it became frustrating, then I completed Full Throttle game as well & the Fallout game.
I was astonished by the creativity, the dark humour & the tons of possibilities, the very creative more complicated factions, politics, ideology, dialogue, multiple options RPG-dialogue tree, maturity, GREY MORAL CHOICES, controversial choices (pornstar, shotgun wedding both gay & not gay, killable kids, ...) design that it really really was a game that no other game had topped since. And now almost a decade after, still no game seems to have.
Every other game didn't come to the knees of Fallout, because it lacked depth. It lacked that complete package. They didn't have the complicated factions, they didn't have grey moral choices, only black and with. there were not multiple paths to solve a quest (never more than 2)
At that time I remember I was reading books over my age category too, as the books for my age didn't seem to be as good. It s a similar thing I noticed with this video game, this was a video game for adults while most video games are made for children (Fallout 3 is a prime example of a game made for children)