With the caveat I dropped this after only about 5 hours, this really didn't grab me. May have been better at the time and the combat isn't bad, but the intro area has incredibly MMO-ish design in terms of questing (linear, self-contained, minimal reactivity). New Vegas came out two years earlier and the team worked on Morrowind, so I have to assume this is either pointless filler content that isn't signposted or just the way the game works. The thing that ultimately turned me off can be explained in a small anecdote:

After hearing mention of the situation from another character, I organically find an undelivered letter informing a woman in town that her husband has perished in the war. I go to bring it to her, and while I can ask her about the same 7-8 keywords everyone else can talk about, I can't give her the letter.