Thanks, Fenixp, though the I'd have told ya for the asking. :)
As far as I can tell it is very similar to the previous Fallout games (played them?)
Various stats have an effect on what dialog choices you will be given, and dialog choices you make (rude, aggressive, friendly, etc) have an effect on what responses you will get. Also, it seemed in at least one case, asking the same question over a couple of times pissed off the person and they wouldn't talk to me for awhile. Sometimes you will be presented with dialog choices with a percentage after them (like Speech 15%). The percent is the chance you have with that stat of a positive response that will get you what you wanted or open further dialog choices on that topic. Failing means that person won't talk about or give what you wanted.
Anybody else wanna add?

Exactly the same way they are handled in Fallout 1 and 2.

Oh, no! :(
I had no idea they added this to the game... I absolutely hated it in Oblivion!

I read in PCzone that it DIDENT have this adaptive deviancy.
But yeah it was pretty bad in oblivion

Uhm, no: Fallout 3 uses the damn SecuROM, even if the only thing it does is a CD check. Furthermore, the game is incompatible with Deamon Tools, requiring to uninstall it (or fake the damn DRM) in order to play the game.

Fallout 3 runs just fine and I have Daemon Tools installed and running in the background... maybe the Steam version has different DRM than the retail/pirated version.

http://www.vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=19885&sid=ae6cb0eb8384938c50337117924f0635
I think the Steam version use the Valve's Steam own nasty DRM. For the differences between the versions dunno, as I've not (still) purchased the game by myself. But that Fallout 3 would have used SecuROM talked about the folks of Bethesda themselves....

*sigh*
"Words. Nothing but sweet, sweet words that turn into bitter orange wax in my ears."
I'm really not dying to play this game since I don't do really make progress in huge open world RPGs. I have a few random saves here and there in Oblivion, but was just too daunted by all the freedom. But Fallout 3 sounds like it might actually immerse me in its world. We'll see...

Well so far I have mostly good things to say about it.
The graphics are superb, mine defaulted to High Quality on setup, and I'm running an AMD X2 6000+, 4 gigs of ram, 8800 GT 512 (OC'd), Windows Vista 64 bit.
The story is compelling, and last night I had trouble falling asleep because I wanted to play the game some more. Suffice it to say I fell asleep, but I knew I should have played another half hour or so before calling it a night.
The thing about the bonus options such as Speech is that even if you fail with that skill, you still have your basic dialogue options to use that you would normally get based on your skills. So if you fail with the Speech option, there might be a similar option that will get you similar, but not as good as, results.
My complaint with the game is that the enemies hit very hard, but I think that's because I heard it's not like Oblivion where everything scales to you. If that's true, than that makes sense because I did some quest chains that were probably advanced for me to do, and I've noticed I'm chronically short on Caps (money). Ammo is very scarce in this game unless you're looking to stockpile ammo you don't have the gun for yet, but it's still scarce because it's limited, and if you buy a store's stock of a specific ammo they don't get more for sale until they get a new shipment in.
I had one issue with a crash, but that was because I was broadcasting on xfire to my friend. Everyone knows xfire is quirky sometimes, so I don't think it's an issue with Bethesda's code. The code seems very good, and I am happy with its stability. Oh yes, one other problem I ran into was that since I got my game on Direct2Drive it won't let me log into Games for Windows LIVE. It gives me an error code that translates on Micro$oft's site as me having a prerelease game.
I contacted Bethsoft about it but haven't heard back yet, but I figure D2D will probably release a patch for that before too long, or bundle it in with 1.1 if 1.1 is even needed.
There really isn't much to bitch about with this game unless you don't like open rpg's, in which case you won't like it. There is a clear path to take for the main quest, but you're given a variety of side quests to do and they take you all over the map.
It does have fast travel like Oblivion, so if you didn't like that feature you won't like it here.
My personal rating: 10/10 - I'm giving it my first perfect rating because despite the npcs being heavy hitters on the quests I did, I like the challenge. I like not having unlimited ammo. I love this game in general. And I figured I'd give my concerns about it so this doesn't seem like a random fanboi post, even though to me it does lol.
Good luck for those of you looking into this game, you'll either love it or hate it, but so far all of my friends who have gotten it love it.
And if you're thinking of torrenting it... not a good idea. My friend said there were 3k people DL'ing the torrent and there were only 20 seeds so yeah... gonna take them a while to get their free game. Anyway no offense if you torrent, just saying it's gonna take a while if you choose to do so on this one.
-Cym

Christ you're hard to understand. So you haven't actually bought the game and you're arguing with me? Looks like you're just accusing Steam of things you've heard around the net.
What I do know is that there have been no issues between the version of SecuROM they used in the Steam edition of Fallout 3 and Daemon Tools. It's likely that because you can't really check for a CD with the Steam edition, they removed SecuROM altogether. As for the retail version, I can't really say but it seems like there's a toned down version of SecuROM that just does a CD check and may be incompatible with Daemon Tools and the like, but there's some kind of patch available on SecuROM's site to fix this.

I just have to say I am in the exact same position and I hate everybody who got Fallout 3 and is playing it.
I specially hate those that got the Amazon edition with the pip boy clock. I really wanted that.
*sigh*

Actually, if you look over at the Bethesda forums, a LOT of people are having problems even running the game because SecuROM has decided their legit DVD-Rom is a Virtual Drive, or they have multiple games with different SecuROM protection schemes which are starting to clash with each other. They aren't having as many issues as Far Cry 2 (and it doesn't hurt that, while Bethesda seems to be trying to find workarounds, Ubisoft's response is frequently, quite literally "It's your hardware, talk to the manufacturer, not our problem." Is it wrong to hope for a company to go out of business?).

If you look a little closer, you'll note that's a torrented DL of Fallout 3 and not the legitimate DVD version. I don't think sblade was aware of that when he posted it.
Still though, Fallout 3 does have SecuROM and it is causing many legitimate users a lot of problems. SecuROM and its ilk need to be abandoned by game publishers. It's completely ineffective and it only causes problems for legitimate users. And exactly what gives publishers the impression they have any right whatsoever to dictate what software the end user can and cannot have on their machine?
Luckily, I haven't run into any issues with my copy of the game. But you can be damned sure they'd get an earful from me if I did have problems after spending almost 100 bucks on the Collector's Edition.

lol utorrent in the screenshot