So no snow for Piestrider then.
I find Arx Fatalis one of the best cRPG Iīve ever played actually. Itīs got a straight but good story line, itīs somewhat realistic(!), and itīs good gameplay with nice surroundings. It has 1st person view though, which you are not very fond of.

It beats the h--l out of Devine Devinity for instance. You could of course try the demo version first, available
here. Itīs a 157Mb download from .at (Austria?), so it may take a while to download.
Some other notes: the spell system is very nice, you have to draw the spells (runes) yourself. And the tech support is
excellent. It requires you to sign up for another forum though.

But if you do have a problem, sign up, post the nature of it, and youīll have a solution the same day. All the programmers are on that board.