From the very beginning of the game, which is incidentally your beginning as well since you are being born, Fallout 3 is a clever well written game. 

I’m not going to spoil anything for you on this, but the story starts with you as a child and jumps from time period to time period, allowing you to do some things at each stage. Specifically you get to create what you look like in the game at your birth, determine your skills in the next two instances and also learn basic game mechanics. 

All of these things are integrated in the story quite well and make sense in the context of the world created. None of the things so far seem contrived or out of place which makes for a very believable reality.

While I have only played the game for about 40 min, I am almost at the point where I have to escape the vault and I will leave out the why and how you do this. Sufficed to say, it will all make sense when you play the game. 

I am looking forward to playing through this game as long as possible since I have Gears of War 2 sitting out there on the horizon... mocking me.