I have always had a fondness of the Paradox Game, Victoria 2. I purchased the base version back in may and expanded it to A House Divided and to Heart of Darkness. After I logged in a decent amount of playtime, I felt that I wanted more out of the game. I perused some Paradox forums and found out that I could download mods that can place the game outside of its normal timeline (1836 to 1936) and add new nations not accessible in the vanilla game. Such mods included the Modern Day mod, Pops demand mod, and Ultimate mod.
I also got a good run out of some mods, but I still felt that I wanted more. Recently, I went back through the Paradox forums to look for new mods. I found an interesting mod called "Realism Mod" which was posted by a user whose name was those boxes you get when your computer can't render foreign symbols. I was hesitant, but bored, so I clicked on it. The post said that it would take gameplay to a whole new level. I was skeptical of that fact because I knew that Ultimate Mod could not be topped (It had actual nuclear weapons).
I decided to download the file the mod was in. When I extracted it in WinZip, I got an error message saying "Are you sure?" This was unorthodox, because normal errors would not say that (obviously). I ignored it because It could have been a little joke the modder put in. After a while, another error popped up which read "Don't say I didn't warn you!" I again ignored it and dismissed it as a joke.
After I extracted it, put it into the game's mod folder, and loaded the game, I noticed something awry immediately. During loading in a normal game, you see a compilation of Victorian era like pictures of armies, navies, etc... But this load screen had pictures that made no sense. One was of a plain desk chair, another was of a lamp. I also dismissed this as a joke and continued to wait for the game to load. But the pictures progressively got more disturbing. One was of a skull, another was a still frame from "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" (don't know why that was there), and another was of a decapitated Barbie doll.
When the game loaded, I knew right away that this may be more than a joke. The background picture that was usually army or navy related was replaced with a frightened looking gingerbread who was cut in half on the waist, with the word "Realism" written in crayon on the wall behind the bisected cookie. I was starting to contemplate leaving the game, but I was gripped with curiosity and proceeded.
When the map loaded, there was something way off. The names of a few countries were replaced with some disturbing phrases. The United Kingdom was replaced with "Warned", The United States was called "Why?", France was called "Torture", and Prussia was called "End". The other countries remained unchanged.
I decided to try The United Kingdom (or Warned) because it is the most powerful nation at the game's start.
Immediately after starting, every nation in the game world declared war on me. The wars section of the game called it "The War to destroy Warned" and the goal of every belligerent against me was to dismantle the nation and cut me down to size. I tried to get help, but all my allies and satellite nations abandoned me. Knowing that this war would be impossible to win, so I resigned.
I decided to play again as France (or Torture) instead. But when I started, my economy and prestige fell to zero instantly, all the nations declared war on me in the same way as when I played "Warned", and I had rebel uprisings in all my colonies.
I resigned again and decided to play as a nation without a changed name, so I randomly picked Argentina. At the start on this playthrough, I had no pops to build armies and had "Why? pan nationalists" rise up in all of my provinces.
I came to the conclusion that this game would be unplayable as any nation, so I decided to quit.
But when I clicked on the game menu, it said that it wouldn't be advisable. I had enough of the game's creepy B.S by this point and I skipped the game dialogue box. I later found out that it would be the biggest mistake of my life.
After I skipped the dialogue, The screen went white and I felt light headed. I was hypnotically fixated on the whiteness of the screen for some strange reason. The longer I stared, the more drowsy I felt. It eventually got to the point where I could no longer keep my eyes open and I fell asleep.
When I woke up, my house looked normal, like noting had happened.
But I heard the Victoria 2 sound track playing in the sky. I thought it was just a result of me playing it a lot, so I payed it no mind. When I turned on the news, the anchor man was talking about how a war justification using acquire state by Russia against Ukraine was detected today and how China declared a "War of Containment against Russia. I knew something was up because that lingo was never used outside the game.
Once I stepped outside, my strange feelings were realized. The grass was blue like how the United States was blue in the game, and the music really was playing in the sky. I then heard the sound effect that played when rebels rose up in your nation coming from the sky. The next thing I saw was a soldier with a waving red and black rebel flag hovering above him whilst the ground beneath me had grayish black striped form on top of the blue.
The next thing I saw motivated me to write this because it is the only way I can logically cope with the information given to me. The thing I saw was in my living room when I re entered my house. It was a sign that read...
"Welcome to your coma dream loyal Paradox customer!"