Skyrim [..] only western open world RPG worth mentioning.
What's the point of realism? RPGs aren't about reallism! They're games. And historically, they're turn based games. What you're making seems (but we don't know much about it yet) just like an action game where player skills matter more than character skills. That's the very opposite of what an RPG actually is. Nothing wrong with building an action game. But don't claim it's an rpg simply because it's open world and in a medieval setting.
That being said, I like your comment about how castles and Middle Ages are most often incorrectlly represented in video games. I don't know if it's really because of the nationality of developers or simply because they simply have no interest in history and never did any research on the subject (it's not that hard to check what a real castle was like in medieval Europe ; just open wikipedia ffs!)
As you said, "RPGs aren't about realism", I don't think most developers particularly want to recreate a likeness of Western Medieval Europe in their games. If they wanted to, there would be templar knights and crusades and there wouldn't be magic and dragons and shit. One of the reasons castle walls were so thick for instance is because they should ideally hold against being bombarded by trebuchets and/or cannons (and they were usually built on hills/near cliffs/water to be harder to reach), have you seen these types of weapons used in the likes of Skyrim?
Personally, the more abstract and "off" our reality a setting is, the more I usually enjoy exploring it and its concepts (e.g. Planescape), see also:
http://poisonedsponge.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/impossible-architecture/ or
http://nnm.ru/blogs/flimmern/daniel_dociu/
To boil it down, the article says that designers are ultimately only limited by their imagination in the kind of world they can depict or the kind of games they can make and they are often "bogged down" in those endeavours by trying to make everything look "realistic", while exploring those "unrealistic" concepts that might not even be bogged down by the rules of physics, much anything else might end up being a lot more rewarding in the end.
Also this:
This whole realism discussion is all over the place. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FANTASY WORLD AND THE REAL WORLD. I get it that most western RPG's take their influences from the western medieval era in many things but I dont think the goal was ever to make a game that was realistic and historically accurate to the real world. Daniel made a comment sounding like he knows better how to make castles than an American developer because he lives close to them which is silly, its not like they cant be researched and studied by anyone in the world and made accurate in a game, I just dont think most RPG developers are trying to do that.
"Realism" shouldn't be an end in itself.
yes you have to do it with your controller,
Dumbed down/popamole console RPG detected.
-My character still has lots of stats that affect the combat (strenght, agility, stamina, perks....)
Okay, but what input do the plyer have on these stats? There are stats in every videogame. In mafia, I'm sure that some cars had better speed and some had better stability. That's not what makes an RPG an RPG! What does the player can do to increase his stats? How different two characters can be? If the game is skill based, a player with good strafing/aiming skills will be able to play as an archer while if the game is a real RPG, only a character with good archery stats/skills/competences/equipement will be able to play this kind of role.
I think your problem is, you don't recognize that a "fighting system" or similar doesn't have to be entirely abstract and detached from player skill to make it an "RPG". I loved the way (again) for instance Gothic handled this or to some respect Dark Souls. The player character at lower levels of swordfighting only had a few certain moves that he could make with his sword. Just basic attacks from left/right etc. that every idiot would be able to make if you put a sword in his hand, and through character training the
player got increasingly more possibilities and unlocked moves, like riposte/counter/power attack and several other forms of attacks as your character improves in learning swordfighting. All the while stats like strength or dexterity also improve damage output and the likes. You don't have to look at a game "from above" like chess from the outer most level of abstraction to consider it an RPG, but can integrate those mechanics of character improvement in different ways into the gameplay. And chances are that the player won't learn sword-fighting from being able to memorize that double-click is a "heavy attack" while a simple click is a "light attack". There were also abilities like "Acrobatics" that would improve/supercharge your characters movements and opened more possibilities in combat by being able to move faster and unlock even more moves and there can also be penalties for using weapons or "sizes" of weapons when your character hasn't learned how to use them yet (see Dark Souls). At the end of the day, computer games aren't tabletop RPGs and even in ye' olde' party-based RPGs there's quite different (tactical) considerations to make by controlling all the characters yourself and there being no DM, than you would in a tabletop game.
Daniel.Vavra Are you developing your RPG for next-gen or this-gen consoles? (If you are at liberty to disclose this.) Sorry if it's been asked before.
From what we've seen of the game so far, it would be pretty safe to say "Next Gen".
Yup, but it was still developed with a console release in mind, thus we have a crappy gaypaddy interface.
There's many more (possibly less obvious) design choices that can be relegated to designing primary for consoles in Witcher 2, e.g. the use of DirectX9 as a primary renderer, no Open-world, interface and controls optimized for controller and not M+K etc.
Regarding the article:
Just a little less hair and on that pic he looks like a prototypical german skinhead, complete in a set with attack dog
I am ok. Hell I even kinda like entertaining flame 
