South Park: The Fractured But Whole - South Park RPG sequel from Ubisoft

[Infinitron]

 

[Kem0sabe]

This looks terrible...



At least the obsidian game resembled an rpg, this is just bad.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Background Character]

I'll fully admit it I laughed like a fucking retard at the lap dance and I'm still laughing

 

[Infinitron]

E3 previews: http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/119202-south-park-the-fractured-but-whole-e3-previews.html

IGN:

With this year’s E3 demo of The Fractured But Whole, I started off by farting (possibly more, it sounded kind of wet) in the men’s bathroom of a seedy strip-club. I knocked a condom off of the ceiling and looted the mysterious substance it contained while a very drunk man flooded the urinal behind me. I gave the aforementioned, fart-fueled lapdance, and then went and found another jar full of this mysterious substance, mixed with boogers, and collected some rat poop. After mixing it all together with some gin and tonic, I farted on it, punched a baby, and delivered it to the Strip Club DJ.

A lot of what you actually do in South Park is throw items at shiny objects that are out of reach to get them in your hands, or interact with yellow doorknobs or handles to open things. That’s easy enough, if a little finicky at times, but The Fractured But Whole’s significantly enhanced loot and crafting systems make it much more rewarding than they were in the first game. With most of the jokes and aesthetic already perfected in the first game, Ubisoft have doubled down on RPG elements, including full character customization and classes.
​

WorthPlaying:

The exploration and puzzle-solving mechanics are actually pretty interesting, though. Anything you see in the game's environments that's yellow is something you can interact with, either by walking up to it and pushing a button, or by holding down L2 to enter a targeting mode. That lets you hit distant objects with a thrown firecracker or an explosive fart (it's that kind of game), which can set things on fire, break fragile objects, and startle animals and people. There's a little bit of old-fashioned adventure game logic in there, as well as some nicely detailed environments.

When a fight starts — like when the two drunk guys realize you are not tiny exotic dancers — the game turns into a tactical RPG. You can move freely within each character's range, and use three different special moves to inflict status ailments, knock enemies into other squares, or move your characters quickly. Your character has a couple of different ways to slow down enemies, costing them actions and their spots on the game's initiative meter, while Captain Diabetes is a straight-up bruiser who can plow through several units in front of him at once.​

RPG Site:

What would a hands-on of a turn based RPG be without explaining how the combat worked? At one point of the demo two drunk customers demanded their money back after I was unable to give them a satisfactory lap dance, so naturally, it was time to throw down.

Combat in Fractured But Whole is grid-based, and there’s a strong emphasis on positioning. You need to consider both where your party members and where the enemies are on the grid in order to successfully execute an attack. What’s particularly interesting is you can actually align your party so they can work together to pull off powerful spells and attacks.​

PlayStation LifeStyle:

After getting the information they wanted about a “girl with a penis tattoo,”the two adolescents decided that they had to distract the strip club DJ so they could lure the stripper on stage. To do this, I had to find ingredients so that I could concoct a disgusting drink. This led to a puzzle that felt straight out of an adventure game, as I had to scour the strip club for booze, rat turds, and other nasty things that no man should ever ingest.

Finding these ingredients were a pretty simple task, although it did require me to solve some puzzles along the way. In one backroom, I had to drag a stepladder so I could reach a higher area. Another had me throwing a fire cracker in order to cause a fire, which I then made explode by adding a fart to the mix. Neither interaction was super complex, but I way always engaged with the game.​

Pocket Lint:

There are more dynamics than that too: The stripper Spantaneous Bootay is like a mini boss who will slowly (and we mean ever so slowly, given her mass) move one square across the play grid every time a timer elapses. So you're forced to make snap decisions to escape being eaten up by those giant cheeks.

Which makes for a pretty complicated stuff for an apparent simple toilet humour show. The Fractured But Whole embraces being a proper turn-based game, while not shying from its duties as a South Park title. It's crude, it's rude, it's pretty gross out and if you're a South Park fan then you'll probably love it.​

Stevivor:

From the moment I entered the club — by sneaking through the bathroom of course — its quality was obvious. I almost didn’t spot the used condom stuck to the ceiling because my focus was on an inebriated guest aggressively slurring at me while endlessly urinating. Once I saw the decoration up there I (obviously) had to throw a firecracker to see if I could knock it down and collect it. It worked… but in the end, I decided not to loot the resulting puddle.

Quite literally, that was just my first thirty seconds within South Park and I was already squirming. After entering the main room in the club, my mission expanded. We had to find a dancer with a rather specific tattoo that goes by the name Classi. You know, Classi “with an I, and a little dick hanging off the C that bends around and fucks the L out of the A, S, S.” By that point, I was wishing I could have just misspelled it.​

And New Game Network:

Bootay is a plus-sized stripper whose main attack is to leap in the air and land on her butt, crushing anything beneath it. Again, I find myself wondering what is supposed to be the joke. Is Bootay supposed to be repugnant because of her weight? Is the unconventional butt-attack supposed to be what is funny? It’s all almost bizarre enough to be interesting, if not laugh out loud funny.

Bootay’s butt takes me out, but Captain Diabetes dash attack comes in handy again as he continues to charge through the strippers until we’ve escaped out the back. Once outside, we chase Classi into an apartment and Malkinson knocks on the door, demanding that she come back.​

​

 

[LESS T_T]

Continued from E3 gameplay walkthrough:

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Lurker47]

All of the UI looks really gross to me.

 

[LESS T_T]

Ha: http://www.pcgamer.com/south-park-the-fractured-but-whole-is-a-far-better-rpg-than-the-first/

A Ubisoft studio making a sequel with "deeper" tactical turn-based combat and more side-quests than an Obsidian made one. Who would have thought?

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is a far better RPG than the first

I was listening to an interview with South Park's co-creator Trey Parker recently where he discussed the idea that they're only one terribly offensive episode away from being run out of entertainment forever. "The witch hunt is coming. Our day is coming. One of these days, out of nowhere, we’ll do something and they’ll go, ‘How dare you!’—and we’ll be done," Parker says, half-jokingly. "But what people don’t realise is, we’ve thought this for 20 years. We’ve been ready for it. Our bags are packed in the car and we’re ready to go back to Colorado. And it’s cool, man."

The thing is, though, if that pitchfork-wielding didn't happen when players fought the mutated, aborted Nazi foetus of Khloe Kardashian in 2014's The Stick of Truth, will it ever happen? So much of the wider conversation around South Park is about controversial moments or episodes, but my four hours with The Fractured But Whole dialled in on what's actually appealing about South Park, when it's on great form: the town and its cast are...kind of nice? The shocking stuff is maybe 10% of the reason I enjoy the show, and I'd wager it's the same for most viewers. This is also a highly enjoyable world to step into, full of ridiculous, awful and somehow winning characters. The Fractured But Whole captures that as well as the original game did.

My worry with this sequel was that it'd inevitably feel too similar to The Stick of Truth, being unavoidably set in the same location. But a shift to a more sidequest-led structure, combined with slightly deeper RPG systems, make a significant difference. If the first game was riffing on JRPGs with its light interpretation of turn-based combat, this does the same for tactical RPGs. Positioning is important: all characters have a movement phase, and every attack has an area of effect. Some attacks can push an enemy back a square, causing damage if there's another enemy behind them, and ending a turn on the wrong square can put a party member in danger.

This means that battles take a lot longer than they did in The Stick of Truth, but I was definitely guilty of just hammering the A button on my controller by the end of that game, so I respect any attempt to further engage the player. There are other new RPG trappings here, too: a simple accessory system and some light crafting for health items, new clothes and other trinkets. All of this is accessed via your in-game phone, which is like an expanded version of the Facebook functionality of the first game. Even with these additions, The Fractured But Whole is still way breezier than other RPGs.

The new classes successfully add variety, too. At the start, Cartman as his superhero persona, The Coon, asks you to pick a class: speedster, brutalist and blaster (basically speedy, heavy and ranged). You're then relayed your horrifying origin story by The Coon, which is when your character, the new kid from The Stick of Truth, sees your parents have sex.

There are some oddly hefty restrictions on what I can talk about from my hands-on, mostly for spoiler reasons, including some of the funniest stuff in the demo. The jokes about superheroes and franchises don't really do it for me, but it's a nice unifying theme for the combat classes and story. The expanded sidequest system is where a lot of the bigger laughs come from, since they tend to revolve around one specific character in the world, like Mr Mackey or Randy Marsh.

These quests are very fetch-y—they're mostly an excuse for good jokes and cutscenes, or low hanging fruit gags like priests trying to molest the new kid. The critical path is pretty loose—the game will tell you when you can advance the story, but you're constantly encouraged to meet up with side characters, which I like.

"Because South Park and Matt and Trey had so many great ideas for this game, it really did come down to, 'how much can we get done, and if it's all done, [are we] going to get it in the game'?" explains Kimberly Weigend, associate producer, when I ask about the change in structure. "And that has probably led to not having a very obvious critical path. They wanted to have it be more exploratory, and have you get to know the characters again, but in this superhero persona."

Despite feeling similar to explore, South Park has changed a bit. Some of the results of gentrification in season 19 are apparent in the rebranded Skeeters Wine Bar, for example. There's also a mall under construction, and I'm hoping for more off-the-map excursions like the Canada sequence in The Stick of Truth.

Ubisoft assures me there's lots more content in this one, thanks in part to the way they can put new characters into the game. There's a noticeable upsurge in production values between The Fractured But Whole and The Stick of Truth, helped enormously by the fact that the developers can now import all of the show's assets as is for the first time. As a result, there are references here going right up to season 20.

The Fractured But Whole won't be too complex, trying as it is to please both show fans and RPG players. But the classes and tactical RPG combat is really working out for this follow-up—and even if you're just planning on picking it up to enjoy the jokes, there are plenty of top drawer South Park moments in here.

And about being South Park: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...iculty-slider-changes-the-colour-of-your-skin

South Park: The Fractured but Whole's difficulty slider changes the colour of your skin
"Don't worry, this doesn't affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life."

Ubisoft's comedy RPG South Park: The Fractured but Whole features various levels of difficulty, from easy to very difficult, much like most games. What's different though is the difficulty affects the colour of your character's skin.

During the character creation section of the game, which you can see in the video below (skip to the five minutes and 40 seconds mark), you select the difficulty of the game. What's interesting is the easier the difficulty, the lighter your character's skin. Conversely, the harder the difficulty, the darker your character's skin. It means if you want to play The Fractured but Whole on a harder than normal difficulty, you have to play as a person of colour.

During the process, South Park stalwart Eric Cartman will comment: "Don't worry, this doesn't affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life."

Our Aoife Wilson and Chris Bratt, who captured the gameplay in the video, asked Ubisoft developers about this feature during a recent hands-on event. They were told the difficulty of the game affects the amount of money you receive and the way other characters speak to you throughout the course of the game. It is, quite clearly, a social commentary on racism in modern society, and as far as video games go, a pretty effective one.



Later in the game, The Fractured but Whole asks you to choose your character's gender. In a conversation with South Park school counsellor Mr Mackey (the "drugs are bad MKAY" guy), you must choose from three options: male, female and other. In previous South Park game A Stick of Truth, you had to play as a boy.

Our Aoife and Chris picked female. Mr Mackey ums and ahs before calling your parents, who reinforce the decision.

It turns out, if you pick a non-male character, Ubisoft will use the conversation with Mr Mackey as a smart retconning of The Stick of Truth.

"So the whole King and Stick of Truth thing, she was actually a girl the entire time?"

Mr Mackey then asks you to clarify exactly what you mean by a girl. You're then asked to select whether you identify as cisgender or transgender.

Aoife and Chris picked transgender, and Mr Mackey once again calls your parents. "It still tracks with The Stick of Truth, yes it does. She was definitely a girl the whole time. Yes of course. I get it."

You can see all this play out in the video below, from the 44 minute mark.



So there you have it. South Park the video game very much reflecting the tone and approach of South Park the TV show.

 

[Lurker47]

Our Aoife Wilson and Chris Bratt, who captured the gameplay in the video, asked Ubisoft developers about this feature during a recent hands-on event. They were told the difficulty of the game affects the amount of money you receive and the way other characters speak to you throughout the course of the game. It is, quite clearly, a social commentary on racism in modern society, and as far as video games go, a pretty effective one.

Lol, wut. I mean it just sounds like a joke but the gay journalism makes it seem like the game's a bit tainted with obnoxious leftist shit. That and the tranny thing.
Hopefully it's more just video game journalists being as autistic as ever than anything actually representative of the game.

 

[Deflowerer]

It's going to be more amusing if the hard mode is still piss easy, implying that black people are whining about their supposed hardship compared to white people.

Or even let's say this is considered a jab at right wingers. It pretty much still reinforces the rightist attitude anyway to society: hard work pays off, you nigga juz gutta get gud!

 

[Zombra]

Our Aoife Wilson and Chris Bratt, who captured the gameplay in the video, asked Ubisoft developers about this feature during a recent hands-on event. They were told the difficulty of the game affects the amount of money you receive and the way other characters speak to you throughout the course of the game. It is, quite clearly, a social commentary on racism in modern society, and as far as video games go, a pretty effective one.

Lol, wut. I mean it just sounds like a joke but the gay journalism makes it seem like the game's a bit tainted with obnoxious leftist shit.

Did you actually see the video, dude? PC Gamer is just reporting the facts. Look. Then blame Parker & Stone for doing social commentary for the first time ever in the franchise.

 

[Deflowerer]

Well GOTY 10/10 incoming in any case

 

[Dexter]

Did you actually see the video, dude? PC Gamer is just reporting the facts. Look. Then blame Parker & Stone for doing social commentary for the first time ever in the franchise.

Nah: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...g-dumping-ground.90469/page-2494#post-5289500

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Lurker47]

Our Aoife Wilson and Chris Bratt, who captured the gameplay in the video, asked Ubisoft developers about this feature during a recent hands-on event. They were told the difficulty of the game affects the amount of money you receive and the way other characters speak to you throughout the course of the game. It is, quite clearly, a social commentary on racism in modern society, and as far as video games go, a pretty effective one.

Lol, wut. I mean it just sounds like a joke but the gay journalism makes it seem like the game's a bit tainted with obnoxious leftist shit.

Did you actually see the video, dude? PC Gamer is just reporting the facts. Look. Then blame Parker & Stone for doing social commentary for the first time ever in the franchise.

I know it's in the game but the tone these articles take with everything make it sound a million times more pretentious than it actually is.

 

[Zombra]

Luckily, you're completely unbiased

 

[Severian Silk]

I'm tired of South Park. I would rather watch Bob's Burgers.

 

[Roguey]

Lead Narrative Designer @UbisoftStudioSF on South Park: The Fractured But Whole

I was already pretty sure I wasn't going to bother with this (UPlay, etc), this info just further proves I made the right decision.

Not even totally a "muh sjws" thing, it's that Annie and Zoe aren't funny.

 

[Infinitron]

Making a South Park game with SJW ideas doesn't even make any sense. Matt and Trey are cool with this?

Don't know about the tactical combat but once again it's proven that however bad LA can be, SF manages to be worse.

 

[Lahey]

https://archive.is/FRN6W

Ubisoft confirmed that the difficulty slider in South Park: The Fractured but Whole, which syncs the character’s skin color accordingly based on the difficulty chosen, is purely for cosmetic purposes.

While South Park is known for its political commentary, South: Park The Fractured but Whole surprised the gaming community when Eurogamer revealed that the game uses skin color to address issues on racial inequality. Basically, the game is said to be harder when you play as a black character. “Don’t worry, this doesn’t affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life,” says in-game character Eric Cartman. GamesRadar pressed Ubisoft for a clarification, confirming that the difficulty slider that affects skin color is simply for cosmetic purposes and doesn’t affect gameplay difficulty, which would presumably include monetary rewards.

Ubisoft still has no official statement on the matter. Prior to Ubisoft’s confirmation, the developers told Eurogamer that the difficulty chosen affects money received in-game and people’s way of interacting with your character. Presumably, South Park: The Fractured but Whole‘s political commentary on racism are mostly found in conversations that barely affect gameplay. Whether this was part of the joke, as the monetary rewards appear to be, is yet unknown.

tl;dr typical Ubishit marketing campaign.

 

[GrainWetski]

Making a South Park game with SJW ideas doesn't even make any sense. Matt and Trey are cool with this?

Don't know about the tactical combat but once again it's proven that however bad LA can be, SF manages to be worse.

I don't think Matt and Trey would let some SF hipsters take a massive dump on South Park. They're obviously the ones doing the writing.

 

[Infinitron]

South Park: The Fractured but Whole Trailer and Previews

We begin the previews at the UbiBlog:

After a few minutes of nosing around in people’s houses, knocking over mailboxes, experimentally throwing Snap N Pops at fragile-looking objects, and taking selfies with South Park residents to raise our Coonstagram influencer level, we ran into trouble in the form of a group of sixth-graders who were blocking the road into town. Combat in The Fractured But Whole plays out like a tactical RPG, with characters moving around a grid each turn to line up attacks and/or retreat out of the range of enemies, and taking turns as dictated by each character’s stats.

Initially, we had three attacks – a punch that could knock enemies into other enemies for bonus damage, a ramming charge that also came with a knockback, and an area-of-effect fart stomp that had the added benefit of temporarily grossing out every enemy it touched, making them lose health while vomiting copiously each turn. With each maneuver, we had the chance to boost our damage by nailing a timed button prompt that appeared over our hero. To complement our Brutalist’s abilities, we recruited Human Kite (Kyle), Fastpass (Jimmy), and Super Craig (Craig), each of whom brought a unique set of fighting, healing, and even taunting abilities to the fight. (Super Craig’s middle-finger shield move, for example, is great for enraging powerful enemies and getting them to focus their attacks on the shielded Craig, freeing you up to focus on smaller fry .)​

PCGames N:

A short cutscene plays when I enter a dark room in Father Maxi’s Church: there’s some spooky voiceover, a mooing alien, and then two priests approach under the pretense that they’re just in your imagination and want to get to know you better. I sit up in my chair, poised for the worst. It happens. A battle grid lights up, mood lighting fades into life, cheesy erotic music starts playing. The first attack, Hug Thy Father, is a telegraphed move, giving me time to move before I’m caught in the Father’s supposedly harmful clutches. The next attack is called Mutual Flagellation - alarm bells ring - the second Father moves, turns, and painstakingly eases a thread of rosary-cum-anal beads from beneath his cassock before flogging himself with it. I’m stunned now, sat mouth agape, feverishly scanning the faces of those around me to see if anyone else has reached this point yet. It’s another telegraphed attack, so I obligingly shift out of the way and strike from range. The next attack is also Mutual Flagellation, as is the next one, then another Hug Thy Father, and then a final string of Mutual Flagellations before I’m able to finish them off. Poor choice of words, I know.​

Eurogamer:

Ubisoft's comedy RPG South Park: The Fractured but Whole features various levels of difficulty, from easy to very difficult, much like most games. What's different though is the difficulty affects the colour of your character's skin.

During the character creation section of the game, which you can see in the video below (skip to the five minutes and 40 seconds mark), you select the difficulty of the game. What's interesting is the easier the difficulty, the lighter your character's skin. Conversely, the harder the difficulty, the darker your character's skin. It means if you want to play The Fractured but Whole on a harder than normal difficulty, you have to play as a person of colour.​

Alphr:

Ubisoft’s latest foray into South Park territory starts much like any RPG, with character creation. From there you hit the opportunity to pick specific superhero powers, swiftly tested against gender-furious rednecks, paedophile priests and a lot of strangers’ toilets. The Fractured But Whole carries on directly from its predecessor, with you reprising your role of New Kid. After a brief intro sequence in Stick of Truth’s world of dragons and wizards, things pivot towards rival gangs of superheroes and villains. From there, you’re swiftly given a chance to choose between three starting classes; the nippy Speedster, the tank-like Brutalist, and the long-range Blaster.

The game’s associate producer, Kimberly Weigend, told me that developing the combat involved a lot of back and forth with South Park’s creators – Matt Stone and Trey Parker: “We pitch things back to South Park and say ‘here [are] the powers we’re thinking of for the characters, what do you think?’ Matt and Trey are big gamers. Trey is really into board games. They think there’s a lot of value in making an interactive medium for South Park. It can't just be the South Park wrapper around any old game.” It sounds like a considered approach; I’m not sure the same can be said for 2000’s South Park Rally.​

Shacknews:

In battles with characters like these rednecks, players will have to accustom themselves to some different combat mechanics than the first game. While The Stick of Truth worked with turn-based combat, out of the book of classic Final Fantasy or Super Mario RPG, The Fractured But Whole works with a grid-based system. That means different attacks and spells can only reach a certain range, requiring an additional degree of strategy. For example, Super Craig's punch can not only cause damage to an adversary, but also knock him backwards into another foe, causing a chain reaction. It also means that another character following up with an attack that goes across may not work, since Super Craig will be blocking that attack's path. Players will have a full party to team up with, including Kyle's Human Kite, Jimmy's Fastpass, the aforementioned Super Craig, and Clyde's Mosquito. However, there will be a few situations, such as an unpleasant incident inside Father Maxi's church, where players will have to go it alone.

Attacks will vary depending on the player's chosen power set, which come right out of the best that comic books has to offer. Players can choose from Speedster, Brutalist, and Blaster abilities to start, with an option to add a second set of abilities later in the game. All of it likewise fits in with the player's tragic backstory, capably narrated with pathos by Cartman.​

Metro:

Battles actually take place on a ‘field’ now too. While there’s elements of The Stick Of Truth’s Paper Mario-inspired combat, with timed button-presses for power boosts, the added dimension of movement and positioning on a 3D grid makes fights infinitely more dynamic. Speedster Jimmy for example, can flank from behind by turning invisible and push enemies forward a space. This can, in turn, lead a knockback punch from Super Craig to cause extra ricochet damage if an enemy is sandwiched between two heroes in the same lane.

Coupled with occasional obstacles, abilities to protect lines of sight, super moves and timed bomb attacks which cause massive damage to defined grid blocks, you’re constantly planning movement to best capitalize on party abilities and avoid incoming attacks. While the Stick Of Truth’s combat became slightly mindless with overpowered moves dominating late-game fights, don’t be surprised to find yourself mulling over strategies between turns at length in The Fractured But Whole.​

Trusted Reviews:

The best part about exploring Fractured But Whole’s South Park is the fanservice Ubisoft has crammed in. Wandering into Craig’s house and QVC is heard on the TV, flogging a “52 carat faux-sapphire earrings”. A billboard outside City Hall has posters for Turd Sandwich vs Giant Douche. Randy Marsh has informative murder porn in his bedside cabinet. All these things will make long-time fans of the series chuckle.

One of the issues with Stick of Truth was its relative linearity. I was free to roam South Park and indulge my nerdy passion for the show to my heart’s content, but there was a severe lack of stuff to do beyond the main missions, and looting every trash bag and drawer you came across lost all meaning relatively quickly.​

And then there are video previews at VideoGamer and EGM.