1. At the moment I agree that the world is likely to be continuous. I think Bethesda prizes exploration too much to have a separate travel screen and random encounters like in Fallout. I doubt the world will be infested like Oblivion, where you can't jump over a log without falling over a dungeon, but I do think the setting lends itself to having weird/cool stuff out in the wastes and off the maps, like raider camps, city ruins, and abandoned vaults. I believe that they will likely try to take on the geographic span of the game, that is, hundreds of miles of Southern California, instead of the comparatively claustrophobic Cyrodiil, but at the moment I don't see how they'll fill in all that space, since I believe they'll let you First Person foot it across. Maybe you get a humm-vee or something.
2. Combat will be realtime. However, you will have a wide aiming recital that represents your accuracy. This way players will aim with their own skill, but your actual ability to hit will be determined with player skill. The visible wideness of the recital is important to prevent frustration like apparently players felt when "hitting" things with their swords in Morrowind. They need to understand and see why they miss. I doubt that your firearm skills will determine damage as they do in Oblivion, though melee weapon skills will. Since there isn't an easy visual means for conveying why you miss in first person melee, the developers probably won't let you.
4. The plot will consist not of a single quest like to recover a chip or GECK, but to make something of yourself in the post-apocalyptic world. There will be no strong, unifying, central narrative. You will have post-apoc-equivalent guilds to join, quests(missions) to take, and ranks to rise. Interestingly, the post-apoc setting justifies the kind of go-anywhere, kill-stuff-for-loot gameplay than a medieval fantasy world. And since Bethesda "knows what [they're] good at" they'll stick to that formula, rather than go a more Bioware route.
The things I question are whether you will have NPC companions. If combat is realtime, will you have any means of controlling them, such as giving them a strategy before combat? If it is phased then I bet it will be like Mass Effect, where you're able to switch control to another character and plot his actions, then resume play. But since I think combat will be straight-forward realtime, perhaps they'll make the horrendous decision to not let you pick up party members. Instead, they'll probably let you have NPC companions, but implement their AI so horribly as to render them nothing more than useless bullet shields or
sources of humor. They will be so dumb and useless in combat that boards will be filled with criticism of the terrible AI. "Ian keeps trying to knife the deathclaws why?!11" "Sally keeps hitting me with her throwing knives." "Dog keeps humping my leg lol." Oops, did my cynicism slip out?
