I was checking out the official forums (because Pete mentioned earlier that there was going to be an update today), and he's posted a link to an interesting new interview

Interview with Gavin Carter

Lots of technical details and juicy info in it. For example, the NPC count appears to have grown to over 1500.

I won't summarize all the comments there - go read the original

Edit: added a hyperlink to the forum thread where Pete announced the interview.