Overall the game is great to play, but there are a few small hiccups that make me put it down occassionally and just stop wanting to play.

Also, related to what someone else mentioned, the gunplay is NOT based on statistics when not using VATS. If you aim at something and fire at it, then odds are you're going to hit it unless the weapon itself is a factor (no long range headshots with a shotgun). That means until you get the stats and perks to make VATS effective at long range you're better off looking down the sights yourself. What your stats will affect are how crippling/damaging your shots are and how often and awesome your critical hits are.

Some of the odd disjoiners I find annoying are how it seems like several side quests/tasks were designed and just dropped before they were finished. An example I'm sure everyone ran into is the former hooker outside the vault. I don't consider it a spoiler since the house is rather obvious in a bunch of ruins and its probably 20 feet from where you emerge. She talks at length on the assumption that you've been sent to deal with her, but you have no clue whats going on and the person supposedly out to get her never even mentions or hints about her. Its like the 'quest' to deal with the situation was cut out and automatically skipped further along so it no longer has a begining and end, but a middle piece that nets you free bottlecaps.

Another is a 'living world' in a world filled with death. I've mentioned it in the other thread with the spoiler alert, but having people you want to/need to talk to die of natural causes/stupidity without a clue of how far back you need to reload before they kill themselves is rather frustrating. Just because they accidentally walked off a high ledge and fell to their death while I was finishing a few quests a few miles away I suddenly return to see their corpse floating in a pool of raidiated water or crumpled in the middle of the city. Ugh

They did tone down the 'adult content' from the original Fallout and Fallout 2. I remember playing Fallout 2 had prostitutes and even perks related to how often/how well you 'performed' that opened up options when dealing with the opposite gender. Fallout 3 seems like it was going to have that, but it was cut in order to save it from an AO rating. If you've played the game and know what I mean when I say "WORSE 120 BOTTLECAPS SPENT!" then you know how things just seemed to have been hacked off from development with puzzling results.

Another gripe people seem to have are with the apparently inept repair abilities of NPCs. You, the player, can repair anything as long as you have the parts (or a duplicate to take apart specifically), but the NPCs can repair things without that limitation. That becomes very important when you start getting gear that's unique and thus unrepairable. Getting 'special' weapons and armor soon loses its luster when you realize you have no way of getting those unique pieces repaired and the NPCs will only take it to a level below stock gear you can poach off respawning enemies in random encounters and repair yourself to full.

Yet another problem is Mods in Fallout 3. While the backbone is there since it uses the Oblivion engine, the developers have announced they have no intent on releasing modding tools anytime soon. This means user created content will be slow/nonexsistant until they change their minds. Also they are going to lock certain aspects of the game like textures and sprites because of the experience they had with both Morrowind and Oblivion modders being intent on adding adult content to the game. That means adding new weapons/enemies/items and areas will be almost impossible unless you want to recycle what comes packed with the game.

The other cavet with the above problem is they might go the same route as Oblivion with developer created 'installments' that you buy to add to the game. While Fallout 3 is great as it is, I'm not sure the promise of 'new buyable content' makes it worth shelling out the extra cash for.

On a side note I added that user content would be 'slow' because it does use the Oblivion engine, but a modified modding system that people are trying to crack right now. You can access the information by jumping through proverbial technical hoops and work around that may let diehard modders add content using the Oblivion mod tools, but lock out the casual modders who have the "wouldn't it be cool if..." moments.

Amendments: Yes, adding more to the wall of text.

For people experiencing crashes once leaving the vault: I suspect your problem is with how your system is trying to handle the cutsceneish visual you get when you enter the world outside. Because there are quite a few graphical special effects at that moment, its the equvilant problem to Medal of Honor:Airborne's plane breaking scene from the last level. Too much going on for the system to handle so it crashes on a great number of setups.

1. How fast is the pace of the game?

Its as fast or as slow as you take it. As an 'open world' RPG you can meander around and explore or dive right in on the main story with laser precision. Combat also exhibits itself this way since you engage things from a variety of ranges and methods and if things get tough you can always run away and reengage. There is a graphical limitation to the range at which you can engage enemies however. If you use a long range weapon like a hunting rifle or sniper rifle the distance you can hit your enemy is determined by how far your system can draw and how steady your hand is. You can score headshots on dots in the horizon with a steady hand and a good understanding of the sights.

2. Are the choices you make in quests logical (lots of people complaining about this)?

'Logical' is relative, but the canned responses you can make are amusing. It might not be the exact fit for you, the player, would want to say at that particular moment, but at least its entertaining. It does follow a dialogue tree though so there are some interesting parts that are glossed over or were missed during the QC phase. Some of the answers you can give may suffer from dramatic irony where what you say and the conclusions you've made and seem blindingly obvious from your observations miss each other by miles.

3. What are the weapon classes, and how many weapons are there (real weapons not put together sci-fi crap), I mean smg's, revolvers and such?

Its been covered before but basically things can be broken down into 3 catagories. Your 'main guns' all fall under the "Small Guns" class and cover all manner of guns that fire bullets and don't require two hands and a grunt to heft around. Then you have the 'special guns' which are broken up between "Large Guns" and "Energy Weapons" and are very unique and 'cool' but suffer some drawbacks that mean they probably won't serve well as your main armament. Lastly you have 'melee' which is broken between "Melee" for things you swing and stab and "Unarmed" for things you put on your hands and punch with. While there are plenty of 'melee' weapons and they come in a wide variety that are satisfying to wave around, the number of 'unarmed' weapons range from 'super cool' to nonexsistant as its probably the most underdeveloped weapon class in the game.

Beyond weapon classes there are also weapon/damage types. Melee weapons can crush/bruise or cut depending of if its edged like a knife or blunt like a sledgehammer. Ballistic weapons obviously put small metal objects into the target at high speeds, but energy weapons depending on the type of ammo and shot they use can range from precision penetrating to pulse energy burn types. Then of course you have conventional explosive, nuclear explosive, fire, and a host of other types. Each of these 'damage types' express themselves in how they work on different enemies and the criticals you get. A cutting critical in melee may send an head flying while a crushing critical will make it explode.

Hell, the "Rock-IT Launcher", a craftable gun you can make in the first town, alone rivals the Gravity Gun from Halflife 2 for sheer physics calculations since you can lauch any piece of trash out of it and aside from using your big guns stat for damage also calculates the range, speed, weight, size, and flight of the object you fire. You can kill people by loading TEDDY BEARS into the gun and pummeling them to death with stuffed toys or make it swift and clean by slicing off appendages with a lawn mower blade. Death by butterknife is also amusing, but I wished I could find a spork lying around.

4. Is there much to visit and do that is not obvious at first glance?

Looks are decieving and what you see when you first look at the world map with your Pipboy to what you walk around is vastly different. The world is huge and there's a lot to see and do around it.