DeathSpank/Penny Arcade Adventures Interviews

It seems we missed two separate GDC interviews (here and here) with DeathSpank's Ron Gilbert and Penny Arcade Adventures' Joel DeYoung posted at Joystiq earlier this month. I think it's safe to say that we can file this news under RPG-lite:
How does the gameplay compare to that found in Penny Arcade Adventures?

Ron: It's a little bit different in a couple of areas. The RPG that's in Penny Arcade is kind of a turn-based, almost Final Fantasy-like RPG. The RPG in Deathspank is much more like Diablo or Zelda. It's all action-based, and it's about collecting items and growing your character in those ways. The adventure game part of Deathspank is probably a lot more of a hardcore adventure game. People who have played Monkey Island are really going to recognize the intricate puzzle structure that goes into Deathspank.

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How far along is Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness?

Joel: It's very close to done, we're beta on Episode One right now, and because it's episodic and we're gonna release episodes every few months, a lot of the work and content on Episode Two is already done. We've already started started work on Episode Three and so the team is split in working on them in parallel.