pretty soon i'll have played new vegas more than i played oblivion, which is quite a feat, and i realized how easy it is to just get entwined in this game. i saw somebody here mention once that the game seems to be designed more for multiple playthroughs than one super long extended playthrough in FO3. initially i thought i liked that better, and while i do prefer the overall size of the FO3 and the random encounters and constant robobrain vs. giant radscorpion battles from that game, theres something about this game that svcks me in. anyone else here just think the overall vibe and feel of this game are more conducive to role playing? i guess its all personal preference but what are your thoughts?

Better writing and NPC character development goes a long way w/ me - it makes it much more enjoyable to actually RP rather than just play through.

FO3 characters seems so two dimensional to me and the plot/writing was at times painful to read. Really, my only interest became seeing how many mods it would take to make the game so difficult that I couldn't play all the way through on very hard level w/o dying at least once. Yes, the vanilla very hard level was that easy - I had multiple vanilla play throughs where I never died. FWE helped fix that.

With FNV I'm eager to try new characters w/ different backstories, different alliances, and different stat combinations that better reflect that character's strengths and weaknesses. Plus I love the fact that you can't create a god character w/ maxed out stats across the board over time. I want to go up against enemies that can overpower me in a straight on fight at lvl 30, but w/ a little strategy I can take on and after a long battle still may lose but have fun doing so.

I feel the opposite actually. Obsidian really limited the places you can go in NV to the point that it's almost semi-linear. It's either "go east to New Vegas" or "go north through the deathclaws to New Vegas." Other than that, there's not many other places to go just to explore. I hope this makes sense because I'm having trouble conveying exactly what I mean. I guess it just seems like everything important is packed in towards the middle of the map and then all the outer areas are pretty empty. To top it off, everywhere you needed to go for a lot of quests basically had one linear path to get there, and every other direction was blocked by mountains or invisible walls (usually both).

FO3 on the other hand was more spread out, and there was more room to go to different places and find interesting stuff. Everywhere you went, no NPC could really tell you what to expect there, and there was always multiple ways to get there, and you'd still usually find something of interest.

That said, in most other departments besides exploration, NV was a superior game.

I agree; Bethesda should leave the writing, quests and general game set up to Obsidian for FO4.