One of the more exciting booths at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo was over at the Hothead Games area where we seen Morgan Webb of G4’s X-Play interviewing this year’s PAX keynote speaker Ron Gilbert about his new game DeathSpank. Ron’s storied experience in the video game industry, coupled with his status as an adventure game pioneer and legend, made him the perfect choice to address the tens of thousands of PAX attendees.

DeathSpank is being developed by indie developer and publisher Hothead Games and created by Ron Gilbert of LucasArts adventure game fame. DeathSpank will bring to life the hilarious adventures of the game’s unusual hero. The unique art style uses 2D elements in a 3D world and boasts that you will roam the world without ever encountering a load screen.

Described by top scientists as Monkey Island meets Diablo, DeathSpank's gameplay is divided between uncovering the epic story via conversations, solving complex puzzles, equipping your character with over 100 different types of weapons and armor to maximize his dispensing of justice, not to mention his charming good looks, plus battling just about anything that moves. As DeathSpank vanquishes evil and heroes the downtrodden, he will collect loot, level up, collect loot, acquire new abilities and of course, collect more loot.

DeathSpank features witty dialog, improbable scenarios, unexpected villains, and a robust collecting system for weapons, armor, items, and abilities. The action is easily accessible for short bursts of unsupervised fun, but the story is revealed to be over 15+ hours of gameplay. In addition, you can choose to search out rare items and tackle DeathSpank’s many side quests.

XBLArcade.com also found out that Klei Entertainment is working on the cutscenes for DeathSpank and that the character first appeared on Ron Gilbert's Grumpy Gamer web site in a series of animated comics. What we didn’t find out was an exact release date, or other details that are still unannounced at this time. In fact, the game wasn’t available for PAX attendees to demo.

Though DeathSpank was originally developed as an episodic title in it’s first year, dating back to PAX 08, those ideas were scrapped and the game ended up morphing into a full game. And if you're wondering how one could purchase the now not-episodic DeathSpank, you're not alone. "I think that's all up in the air at this point," Ron Gilbert admits. "I don't think we've really decided all the distribution for it." DeathSpank will work much like Hothead's Penny Arcade Adventure titles: "It runs on everything, but we've not yet decided on official platforms."

If you want to know more about the game, check out www.deathspank.com