[GDN] As you play the game you gain persistent benefits for your player character. How is this going to affect the balance of online multiplayer battles if someone has a far greater level than their opponent?

[HM] A player that just started the game with a new character will be at a disadvantage when playing against a fully developed character. Fortunately, it is not very hard to develop your character to maximum level and you can do it both by playing the campaign and by playing multiplayer games.

We hope that players will develop many different characters to experiment with different "character builds". If a player is not happy with his character, he will be able to redistribute his talent points after winning a special mission.

[GDN]  IR2 is set for a March ’09 release. So what’s next for Haemimont Games? Perhaps a non-Rome related title? Some add-on content for IR2 maybe?

[HM] Before working at Haemimont, some of us were game journalists. Far too often we heard from the developers "We are very sorry, but we are unable to discuss our future plans at this time". Now, sitting at the other side of the fence, we regret that we have to say the same.

The only thing that we can disclose at this time is that we are working at two unannounced projects, and they are both very different from every game we developed so far. For starters - neither of them is related to ancient Rome [winks] .