Skyrim rendered in text
OP, check out the Fabled Lands gamebook series (there's a fan-made Java app which has the six books currently published of the planned 12-book series, which also nicely handles all the bookkeeping). It doesn't solve your "interesting combat" problem, but it is the only case I know of where traditional IF (paper books, no less!) has done a truly open world RPG.<p>You can for instance become a sailing merchant just by buying a boat and trading at the various ports. Or you can pursue various quests. I ended up being a street ruffian because I found a loop that involved me getting jumped in an alley and beating my attackers which was surprisingly lucrative and repeatable.<p>There are also some quests which actually change the state of the world (this is done in a book by having you write a word on your character sheet and then directing you to different sections depending on the words you have on your sheet).