I greatly prefer to play games as blindly as possible, knowing only the base nature of the game. When installing a game for the first time you need to know which version to use, what the latest patch is, if there are any (un)official fixes, what ease-of-use mods you might need, like widescreen, HD, spelling fixes, etc.

However, looking all this up for each game can take a good deal of time and is likely to expose you to all kinds of spoilers about the game's content. Does anyone know if there's a site where you can just type a game's name and it will tell you what basic files you need during installation? Not a list of optional content, just what basic files are considered "necessary" to play the game?

- PCGamingWiki is usually a good one for "stuff" deemed actually required to play. Here's an example for Deus Ex.

- WidescreenGamingForum specialises solely on widescreen / ultra-wide

For Bethesda games though, "needed to play" can be more involving as I can't play Oblivion at all without the de-consolization mods like Darnified UI. The two biggest general Mod Sites are Nexus and ModDB.

The second doesn't seem that helpful but the first is, I guess, what I'm looking for. Thank you.