It's December 2003, and if you're a hardcore post-apocalyptic RPGer from the glory days of Interplay, it could look like The End of the World as You Know It. Not only has famed Black Isle Studios just closed its doors (or rather, had them closed), but the near-sacred formula of a most beloved RPG has been -- oh, the scandal! -- tampered with and tweaked more in the direction of an action game. The game that would be Fallout 3 took the mace-ball with the shutdown of Black Isle, so now it's up to Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel to clamber up from the alternate- 50s radioactive wreckage and carry on the lineage as best it can... with, we can hope, a minimum of unfortunate mutations.