JonC, you're clearly right that for industry-scale game development, C++ (or possibly C) is the only game in town for good reason, that no other language provide its level of performance or up-to-date OpenGL and DirectX libraries.
Baring the possibility that you are (or aspire to become) a professional game developer, I don't see why aesthetic considerations can't take precedent over performance ones. As an example, DF2 on today's machines clearly doesn't require all the performance advantages C++ has to offer, and I think that hobbyists have to be allowed to focus on the fun of things over all else, or interest is lost (I briefly looked at the Sith2 code and my first reaction was to be overwhelmed). Just look at the success of basic on the Commodore 64.
The matter is ultimately academic, as a good programmer will transcend his/her language (so long as its limitations don't get in the way). And who knows, perhaps some people consider C++ to be a beautiful language (or perhaps merely the only adequate one).