Is it possible to run Penumbra: Overture in Widescreen or in a higher resolution than allowed in the options menu?
Yes it is, the screen resolution options in-game have been limited to the most common settings. But you can configure your own specific setting by doing the following.
Locate your My Documents folder. The path to it should be something like C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents
If you have run Penumbra: Overture at least ones before you should find a Penumbra Overture folder here. In it you'll find an Episode1 folder and in that folder you will find the file settings.cfg.
Open settings.cfg in a text editor, WordPad will suffice. Locate the entry:
<Screen Width="800" Height="600" FullScreen="true" Vsync="false" />
You can change Width="X" Height="X" to any values you want, enter them and save the file. Next time you start Penumbra: Overture it will use your specified resolution.
To know what resolutions you can have, right-click on the desktop and select properties. Go to the settings tab and by moving the slider in the Screen Resolution area you can see the various resolutions your monitor supports.