Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians are enjoying one hell of a popularity surge. Several games have already been developed around ancient history and mythologies and even more are in the works. But the first of them to move into the MMO space (where the jostling is getting intense and elbows are flying) is Perpetual and Sony Online's Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, which we had the chance to check out a pre-E3 event thrown in San Francisco.

Set in a myth-heavy Roman environment, Gods & Heroes will put players into the sandals of an up and coming hero in the ancient world. The game is still very early at this point, so Sony Online and Perpetual were not hot on letting us dirty the product with our hands, but we did get to watch the guys play for a bit and capture some footage. Design Director Steig Hedlund was also nice enough to grant us an opportunity to film him (very sorry for the hot sweaty lights) so the video team cut together the interview with some of the nifty bits of video from the game. Click that link right under this paragraph that appropriately says "video interview" and you'll be magically transported to the media section where you can view the interview in one of several different formats. Keep in mind this is still a very early product so what you see reflects that. Even so, it's already visually pleasing.