You, Sir, Are A Vulgarian

As of late, in between bouts of failing to order my thoughts in a manner so as to make a decent thesis chapter, I've been consoling myself over the demise of Black Isle and subsequent cancellation of Fallout 3 by playing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel on the XBox.  (Not to be confused with Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, which is an entirely different game, and one that I never could get into.)  It's not great, and if I really wanted to visit the Fallout universe I should play Fallout 1 or 2, but I just don't have time to start a game that took me over one term and part of a summer to complete the last time I played it.

So, instead I've been playing Interplay's latest attempt to milk the success of the Fallout label (see Tactics for further reference), as well as the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance game model.  (Readers are directed towards Dark Alliance 2 and D&D Heroes for further reference in the latter category.  Actually, no, they aren't, because, quite frankly, those games weren't very good.)

Anyways, I've been playing it, and something seems just plain wrong.  Gone is the classic tunes, replaced by heavy, distorted guitar chords. (Contrast that to Fallout 2, which used Louis Armstrong's 'Kiss to Build a Dream On' as its opening theme.)  Gone is the ability to talk your way out of a fight, but, given the game model, I'm not entirely surprised.  There's still tons of pop culture references, but they're thrust at you, instead of hidden away in the game.  There's still gore, and bottlecaps as currency, and they don't seem to out of place, but it's the language that really seems to do it.

Now, Fallout always had vulgar options in your conversations.  It had a M rating, and it deserved it.  But, not only were they far between (or at least, I remember them beign so), you also had to work at it to get those options.  They weren't there staring you in the face as the only option you had, and that's where Brotherhood of Steel seems jarringly wrong.  Every conversation, short of 'Hey, want to trade?' involves swearing on the part of you or the other party.  I'm not talking occassional words either, I'm talking sentences, where roughly half the words would result in getting your mouth washed out with soap, as the only option you have.  Now, maybe it's just the character I chose, but Fallout was never this bad.  You could, if you wanted, have been a sweet talker who could con the legs off an Arcturan Mega-donkey and then convince it to walk afterwards.  In BOS you're simply rude, uncouth, and ineffective at carrying on a conversation.  Maybe I'm outside the target range, but it's just not that amusing, and, after the first conversation, it's not that shocking either.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for these games, dag-nabbit!.

One point for the title.  Another point if you can give me the correct response to it.