Twice in the last two hours I've had to hard reset my PS3 because the game hangs during an eternal loading screen, eventually locking up my console. It happened once when exiting a building and again when I loaded an autosave. It happens roughly 50% of the time I play the game and I'm getting sick of it. Is this something Bethesda is going to fix in the next patch? I'm playing an 80gb fat model which works just fine with other games.

I wish there was a positive answer to provide you. Unfortunately, there isn't one. Bethesda Studios is well know for their games crashing. It just goes with the territory.