Yeah, if you're getting black bars it means your video card is set so as to not scale the image. If you don't want black bars but you want a lower resolution so objects in the game are bigger, try changing your graphics card scaling options. My favorite setting is "preserve aspect ratio" which will scale the image to fit your screen but if the image has an aspect ratio that does not match your monitor's aspect ratio, there will be black bars introduced so that the image isn't stretched. For example, playing a 4:3 game on your 16:9 monitor would have black bars on the sides, but playing any 16:9 game, no matter what resolution, would fill the screen completely.

So if you set it to that, then choose a lower 16:9 resolution, you should be able to find a setting you like. The high res patch is nice because it allows any resolution, including strange ones. Some options you could try include 1200x675, or 1024x576. When I played Arcanum I still had a 4:3 monitor and I liked the game at 1024x768. If for some reason you have trouble using the non-standard resolutions, you can try 1024x768 but you'll get black bars on the sides.

Graphics card scaling options should be on your card's control panel settings, usually under "flat panel scaling" or similar.