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Ten Ton Hammer: You’ve mentioned that players can only have one ‘active’ nemesis at a time, but once they’ve been defeated will you be able to revisit them later on?

Bill Roper: We’ll definitely have ways you can reactivate nemeses where they break out of Stronghold and you’ve got to go stop them again. We know that players will want to be able to go back and revisit some of their old enemies which is the reason we wanted to have these galleries so that you won’t be making these villains that are just gone; they’re there to be used again and again as players want or as we come up with clever and evil ways to do so.

Ten Ton Hammer: You’ve been doing some pretty cool things with social networking so far. With the Nemesis galleries, will there be a place where players can go, for example a page on your website, to show off their various nemeses to other players?

Bill Roper: That’s an awesome idea. I don’t have any empirical knowledge of it, but I would not be surprised if the web team already has that kind of stuff planned. The Nemesis system uses the same kind of character data that your characters do when you show them off, so we should be able to do that with your nemeses as well. That’s probably something that, if they haven’t already started on, will be on their list of things to get done.

Ten Ton Hammer: How intuitive will the Nemesis system be overall? Will players be given in-game alerts or be prompted in some way when Nemesis missions become available?

Bill Roper: There’s tons of ways we let you know. There are Perks associated with Nemesis, so not only are they in your Perk chain, but you’re also getting notifications on-screen. We also use classic in-game missions with the question marks and exclamation points, and we even use your in-game email, so don’t be surprised if you get a piece of mail and it’s someone talking about your nemesis.

Once you’ve created a nemesis, we also bring the action to you by ambushing you with your nemesis’ minions and then sometimes when you defeat them, the minions might have clues that push you further down the story chain. So there are a lot of different ways we give you that push down what’s happening with Nemesis, keeping players easily informed.

Ten Ton Hammer: One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the game is the way many of the major systems and gameplay mechanics all link together in some way to form a cohesive experience. Do the Nemesis and Omega systems share that type of direct link at all, or are they wholly separate aspects of the game?

Bill Roper: They are mostly separate but we do have plans moving forward for how to tie those together to have some cool Omega/Nemesis stuff, although that’s more a case of being something for once we get out the door. I think the way that they’re the most directly linked is the fact that they’re both designed to be repeatable systems, so we anticipate players going through and doing a lot of the Omega stuff in a way that it’s something they’ll want to come back for every day and I think the Nemesis system is going to be the same way. But in terms of direct tie-ins between the two, I think that is definitely on the plate.