Thanks so much for agreeing to tell us a bit more about Carpe Diem. Let’s start with a question on what first grabs the eye, the game’s graphics. The art style seems to be a mixture of medieval realism and cartoony Anime. It seems to work. Tell us a bit about the art team and how this style was decided upon.

Jon Latham (Persistent Worlds):
Thanks, we think it works well. (but then we are biased!).
In creative terms we wanted a game that looked totally different to everything else out there.

I feel at the moment that everyone is trying to get to photorealism, and therefore everyone is ending up looking the same (just take a look at screens of “Commandos: Strike Force” vs “Rainbow Six” for example). Don’t get me wrong, this can be beautiful - just like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. But photorealism is quite a high art to get to and costs a lot. The other problem with it is that the games will only play on top end machines. In choosing a different look, we gave Carpe Diem some personality of its own and it still plays on most machines, even if they are low spec. It was the big argument at the time between World of Warcraft and EQII and it does not appear to have done World of Warcraft any harm at all!