Have you tried other widescreen resolutions? The disk version will at least play in higher than supported standard resolutions (though opening the map may cause a crash, depending on the system and resolution), but I have not tried widescreen resolutions.
I don't think you can play in a windowed mode in Windows (you can if you can get it going under Linux).
AFAIK there is no way to change the appearance and special move or voice independently, and no way to change portraits or equipment graphics.
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