Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (2012) (PC) (Big Huge Games)
6Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a new open world roleplaying game, and it distinguishes itself by having unusually fast-paced, skill-based combat mechanics which are much closer to what you'd find in a semi-technical third-person brawler á la God of War than the clunky realtime controls in most other action RPGs. While not exactly the most advanced system in the world, the speed and precision of Reckoning's combat feels like a breath of fresh air in a subgenre too long dominated by an unsatisfying mix of hidden stats checks and more or less imprecise attack commands. In fact, the only reasonably close comparison to Reckoning that I can think of within the RPG genre itself is a hardcore title like The Witcher 2, which similarily places a strong emphasis on the player's own ability to time attacks properly, string together combos and rapidly move around on the battlefield.
Another important element in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is its dynamic class system, which promises to let the player freely pick and choose from three different skill trees without worrying too much about min-maxing. The initial race selection determines very little of the character's inherent strengths and weaknesses, and the game encourages the player to explore both magic, stealth, melee and ranged approaches to combat (there's also a lot of non-combat skills - such as blacksmithing, sagecraft and persuasion - to improve by levelling up). It remains to be seen if this supposedly emergent class system is balanced enough to work well in the long run.
While the overall structure of Reckoning is not quite on the grand scale of a game like Skyrim (there are a lot of straight corridors even outside of dungeons), this is still for all intents and purposes a proper open world game, in which the player can wander off the beaten path whenever he or she pleases and spend more time with side quests than the actual storyline. I haven't played enough yet to know if there are any proper guilds and factions, but there sure seems to be a lot to see and do in the game.