The show's official writing team chipped in dialogue and plot development, as well, and it shows.
Once more, nearly the entire cast is voiced by series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and there is a lot of dialogue here, either in cut scenes, in combat, or while wandering around town.
You have to wander around the town of South Park, which looks exactly like the cardboard cut-out TV show, and complete a variety of quests (primary and side) while getting into turn-based battles. In some ways, the game that unfolds is similar to the Stick of Truth. " We're going to make a zillion dollars," Stan replies before zipping away as his Toolshed alter-ego.) ("We're going to make a billion dollars," Kyle says to Stan at one point in the game while trying to get him back on the side of Coon and Friends. This schism arose, if you're wondering, because the boys couldn't agree on whose superheroes would be first to receive their own feature-length films or Netflix series. You're still the neighborhood's "new kid," and you're now stuck between two warring factions of made-up superheroes: Cartman's Coon and Friends, and their rivals, the Freedom Pals. (And, of course, act like a total sociopath along the way to his hopeful cash prize.) Thus, the game picks up on the TV series' boys-playing-superheroes conceit-which existed well before Stick of Truth came out, mind you-so that Cartman can find a lost kitty and get a $100 reward. South Park: The Fractured but Whole opens with a lingering battle from the last game in which warring factions face off in Tolkien-styled combat, but it doesn't take long for the neighborhood kids to shrug off their swords and wizard hats. Hey, uh, what's Towelie doing over there? This is by no means a bad video game-and effort was absolutely poured into making its RPG elements feel more substantial than last time-but the LEGO bricks of this game's combat, exploration, themes, and South Park-caliber script were all put in the wrong order. But it's still sad how much the series' new developers at Ubisoft missed the mark here. That's quite the bottle of lightning, and there's no shame in the fact that its video game sequel, this week's The Fractured but Whole, doesn't recapture the same incredibly crude magic. More importantly, its power as a video game was used to incredible effect, whether by sending up RPG tropes and traditions or by making its interactive moments nearly as funny as its scripted ones.
In that game, Obsidian Entertainment and South Park Studios took roughly 15 years of South Park material (basically, everything after the Bigger, Longer, and Uncut film), then recapped and celebrated the series' best characters and most NSFW plotlines.
(A major legal-rights shuffling didn't help Stick of Truth's pre-release worries, either.)
Licensed games have improved a lot in recent years, but their quality is never guaranteed, and the South Park license had never been used to solid effect until that 2014 RPG came along. Three-and-a-half years have passed, and yet I still can't get over how good a video game South Park: The Stick of Truth turned out to be. Platform: Windows PC (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4 Game details Developer: Ubisoft/South Park Studios