I only go back to a previous save when I die, or the game glitches out (usually resulting in one of my companions vanishing).

I reload for silly stuff ~like running for cover, opening a door to escape to the next room, but being pressed against the wall by the door and getting killed, or stepping in a 16" inch hole that you can't escape from; or one time I shot the incinerator down the entrance hole of an ant hill, only to find that the hole was painted on, and the collision geometry was solid across the entrance... setting my PC ablaze :flame: .

Part of my game has always been to proactively keep my NPC's alive... if they die then they die... there is no resurrecting them in the game (like in D&D).

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I never re-load if I get a less than satisfactory outcome in quests, or if I screw things up in that sense. Living with the consequences of what you do is part of the fun in these games.

As for the companions, that depends. If I get myself in trouble, by engaging enemies that are really tough and a companion dies because of that, I won't reload. But if I feel the companion dies because of bad AI (them going after tough mobs that I try to sneak past is the most common one) then I will reload.
Hell, it's nice because the game's ending has a little "R.I.P." slide for the dead companions as well.

Reloading to redo stuff like dialogues just sounds tedious to me.

I don't like reloading saves, but I do pretty often in weird/buggy situations, and I sometimes do it for story purposes. For instance...

For buggy purposes: I walked into a cave full of nonhuman bad guys and started firing my missile launcher with high explosive rounds. Suddenly I got messages saying that the NCR hates my guts. I reloaded from my last save (from outside the cave) and waited a moment ... and suddenly, two NCR troopers from a location I ran past minutes before rush up to me to tell me to stay away from their control room. Guys ... I had no intention of going into your control room. I was just passing by. Don't follow strangers with missile launchers into caves just to chew them out.

For story purposes: Last night, early in my second playthrough, I walked up to a group of Legion and killed them all. I was amazed that I survived. I was also kind of dismayed with what my character just did. That's something I wanted to be able to do with my first character, who was poorly built -- it's something he wanted to do but couldn't. This new character is more nonconfrontational. It just felt wrong. I reloaded and let the Legion guys live.

And yes, I always reload after companion death because companion deaths are terribly anticlimactic. Contrast with Far Cry 2, where "buddy" deaths are pretty dramatic, so I tended to play through them and keep going, guilt and all.

I do it from time to time.

With the past two characters I did reload most of the time when companions died or when I failed speech checks and stuff.
Only time I reload with my current character is if I die.

Sometimes. I lost Veronica early on and took my medicine. However when Rex got killed by some bugs he took off after, I reloaded because dammit I wanted to complete his mission.

I guess for me it's a mixed bag.

I keep on trucking unless I die. I think it makes for a more interesting game when things go to hell once in a while.

I save like a madman, but I almost never revert to them. I think I have only reverted in 2 circumstances:

1) A dialog option that seemed like a stern warning or slightly confrontational conversation option ended up being an actual fight-starting action, and so they go red/hostile and WHAM before I can react, Veronica has punched their upper torso off. I'm OK with it as long as the dialog was clear, but if it was genuinely confusing or misleading on the phrasing basically, I might reload.

2) Sometimes I get this weird VATS bug where the enemy was too close to me and so my five 95% head shots all directed at the foe miss. Every single one of them. Because apparently the enemy was 1 inch too close. Similarly, if I VATS queue a bunch of shots and then Veronica steps in the way and I shoot her 5 times, I might reload. I'll usually live with it, but sometimes it is really frustrating because it was just silly. But I very rarely do this one.

I revert cause I have too.. PS3 is freezing a lot now (about 40hrs) There I am roaming the wastes, helping, killing and doing the mundane tasks that the in-game NPC's are so incapable of doing themselves.. BAM freeze! It's gets tiresome after the 5 freeze in 30mins..

Also, I have a glitched Blind Deathclaw - it's close to Camp Golf. There I was shooting those blind beasts - took down 5 but then realized that 1 wasn't taking any damage whatsoever - no matter what I threw at it.. and for being blind - sure know where I am! even when I'm sitting completely still (HIDDEN) on top of a rock - no problem finding me.. So, I reverted back to an earlier save and I've gotten the same result over and over.. So, now I have an immortal blind deathclaw roaming the wastes between Camp Golf and whatever. Joy!