The sad story of 38 Studios is closer to its end now; the second and final auction of the studio’s assets will take place later this month, on the 23rd. Naturally, there’s some speculation as to whether any other developer or publisher might try and snap up the rights to (and assets for) the Kingdoms of Amalur franchise and go on to craft Reckoning 2.

That’s mostly a pipe dream, of course, but it’s fun to speculate and relatively harmless to hope. Reckoning was a good game, and deserves a sequel. Here’s hoping it gets one.

On to tangibles! It looks like the upper-ups at 38 Studios, including Curt Schilling, will escape federal criminal charges and prosecution for the bankruptcy, although Schilling may end up having to sell his famous bloody sock to cover his own stake in the losses.

Oh, and Microsoft doesn’t want Rhode Island to auction off 38 Studios’ Xbox development kits. No surprise there.

ArcheAge, the promising-looking sandbox MMORPG, will be getting an open beta in December…in Korea. North Americans aren’t so lucky. Which is a pity; it’s a sweet-looking game.

There’s a lengthy review of Almost Human’s Legend of Grimrock at the RPG Codex, and it’s actually a quite amusing read. Also, the level editor for the game was released today.

PCGamesN got a look at Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition recently, and their comments on the game include quite a bit of detail about some of the new content that Overhaul Games will be adding. Overhaul, for their part, have posted another companion-focused story on their website.

Also, in a chat with NowGamer, Trent Oster let slip that Overhaul needs to sell about 200,000 copies of the game in order to break even on the effort spent updating it. That doesn’t seem a hugely unrealistic goal given the number of platforms they’re publishing it to. Oster also opined on the departure of Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk from BioWare, prompting Muzyka to issue a bit of a rebuttal via Twitter.

Oh, and apparently the open beta for Neverwinter, the upcoming MMORPG that will support and encourage fan-generated content, can now be signed up for.

Torchlight 2 continues to bring in one solid review after another (after another), which is good to see…you’d hate to think the last three years at Runic Games were spent on something sub-par.

Also, this neat little cheat may be of interest to some of you who’ve played the game and would like to re-spec your character(s).

And Ken Levine is evidently contributing his writing talents to PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale.

Right…on to Bethesda.

Dishonored went gold at the end of last month. Naturally, the pace of previews has not slowed. The game still looks very cool, and we’ll know in short order whether it lives up to the promise and hype. This interactive trailer shows off elements of the game very well; the excitement evident in this preview is understandable.

A major graphical overhaul for Morrowind was released earlier this week. OpenMY v0.18.0 was also released; click on through for the complete changelog and a list of bugfixes.

On the Skyrim front, this weird mod just came to light…as did this hilarious photoshoot, which illustrates in great detail just what a high-speed collision between fashion and gaming looks like.

The big news from Bethesda this week, however, is their creation of a new Austin-based studio, Battlecry Studios. Headed up by Rich Vogel (former executive producer of Star Wars: The Old Republic), the studio will probably have an online focus…and are currently looking to hire some free-to-play expertise.

Oh…the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim was released for PC today, and can be obtained through Steam.