Ok, I remember there being a third person option in Oblivion so I figured they'd have it in this game.

My game has frozen three times in the last 20 hours or so. Twice today, once at the loading screen, and then once about 10 minutes into the game.

The Xbox had been off for a good 8 or 9 hours before I turned it on again. It's fairly new about a month and a half old. I do play Fallout 3 for 4-5 hours at a time (it's that addicting) but I am not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of the 3rd person mode either.

Normally I don't mind 3rd person, but in this game it's "Watch yourself bump into things" mode.

I've had a couple of freezes as well, but on the PC version. Usually when trying to load a saved game.

I did some searches, and it appears that even Bethesda said there were freezing problems. Their solution was to clear the cache (not the system one, the game specific one) by holding both bumpers and the X button. Several people are claiming it helped them by not only curing the freezes but by increasing the frame rate.

I tried it three different times to no avail. My character is in Megaton, and it's 5:30 am. I wait for a few hours, and head up the ramp to exit the town. My game has frozen five straight times in nearly the exact same place, right before I get to the gate.

This could be a game breaker for me, as you can't fast travel unless you leave town. If I can't leave town, I can't play the game. With 38 hours invested in the game, and level 14, it'd be a bitch to start over now.

I am going to do some more searching, and then try playing again. This time I won't rest, maybe take a different path, or equip a different weapon. I shouldn't have to do that, though. So disappointing.

Another thing I noticed is NPC's disappearing or turning up dead. I have been looking all over for the water treatment guy in Megaton, and now people are saying he has disappeared without a trace in their games, along with a few others, some vital to quests.

This game has gone from an A+ to a C- with me. Total bullshit.

I had a similar problem with Oblivion with freezes on certain missions. I ended up going back two or three saves and doing different quests in different orders. The problem seemed to go away even when I went back to the quest that was causing the freeze issue.

I tried clearing the cache of the Xbox and the game, and I still freeze right before I can exit Megaton. No matter what I do, save, rest, whatever. I cannot escape the town.

Unbelievable.

I've been told to avoid finishing the main quest until I'm good and ready to do so, as doing that actually finishes the game - it's not open-ended like Oblivion.

So proceed with caution and take care of all your exploring and side-missions before finishing up.

You can't? I just tested it right now on my PC and was able to skip ahead from Megaton elsewhere.

If you're inside a place, I believe it'll tell you that you can't fast travel from there. If you're outside a settlement or town or whatever, you can.

Try it from inside Megaton.

Yeah, I heard once the main quest is done, you're done. I hope they'll change that with a patch. I like to wander around and I accidentally found part of the main quest that I hadn't started yet. I think there are 8 or 10 main quests after you get out of the vault, and they are supposed to last a few hours each. I have done maybe 4 of them so far.

does dogmeat level up with you?
also, does he take away experience from you?

I am inside Megaton. Like I said, I was able to go from there elsewhere; tried both skipping over to Sprinvale and the Super Mart.

Well if that works, it may solve my problem for a little while. Until I have to go back to Megaton

The water guy is still dead, though. Somewhere.

I haven't had any freezing problems. I haven't been to Megaton much after the initial quests however.

I've been having major freeze problems with this as well. Sometimes where the screen just locks up and I have to shut the 360 down manually, other times where it gives me a disc read error and kicks back out to the dashboard. I'm glad there are quite a few auto-saves, as it'd be enough to completely sour me on the game if it kept undoing significant amounts of progress.

My game didn't freeze at all but I did get a few unreadable disc errors. Not too annoying with the amount of auto saves the game has.

I'm not sure about the leveling question, but it does seem that you don't get experience from his kills, even if you're hitting the same enemy - look's like it's "killing blow-only experience." I wish I could train him to cripple people and then back off.

Ya, I've had about 1 dirty disk error a session. Pretty on par with other games though.

i havent had any freezing issues at all.

i wish they would make the corpse glow after you kill them.
because of the dark background, they blend into the ground and i have a hard time finding them to loot.

Is everyone that is having freezing issues having them on the 360? I hope it hasn't affected the PS3 version. I haven't had any problems with freezing so far (keeping fingers crossed).

so I was over encumbered and found out that I had a 420 weight and I could only carry 220. I had to drop a lot of junk!

I haven't had any freezing issues. I have the PS3 version.

Haven't had any freezing or crashing issues on Xbox so far. Currently lvl 12.

Quick question - came across Relay station KX-B8-11. I can hear the transmission on my radio, but I can't figure out exactly where the guy says he is (can't find anything in the vicinity of the signal either) - no subs on radio broadcasts - but I can figure out that he wants a reply on a specific channel. Is this what the Ham radio sets are for that I've seen lying around different areas? Trying to activate them before did nothing, but now that I've been given a set frequency to use, will they activate?

Oh, and the alien blaster is bad-ass. Awesome use of the radio for that baby as well.

Also, just one more warning (if folks didn't say it already) - be careful who you randomly talk to about certain issues. I accidentally bypassed the Galaxy News Radio Quest because I spoke to someone in Rivet City while on the research quest - I have no idea how many portions of the main quest it caused me to skip (hopefully I only bypassed one person) - but I'll watch my step in the major inhabited areas from now on.