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

[Bocian]

Shitty sequel to a shitty game about a shitty show that jumped the shark almost a decade ago.

Aged well.

 

[Background Character]

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

Well if we're talking about things we want then I'd rather have another season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force BUT I NEVER GET WHAT I WANT

 

[Roguey]

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

Something that seems to have gone by a lot of people is that South Park did acquiesce to PC Principles to some extent. Not completely, but it's far more, let's say aware (I hate the word woke) than it was before.

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.

A good deal of it, sure, but not all of the ~narrative design~. Eric Fenstermaker certainly didn't do nothing instead of working on Pillars of Eternity.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[DragoFireheart]

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

Something that seems to have gone by a lot of people is that South Park did acquiesce to PC Principles to some extent. Not completely, but it's far more, let's say aware (I hate the word woke) than it was before.

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.

A good deal of it, sure, but not all of the ~narrative design~. Eric Fenstermaker certainly didn't do nothing instead of working on Pillars of Eternity.

SJW cancer infects everything.

The good news is when it's obvious it's also a red flag that the product/service is going to be shit.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/gam...y-Parker-Matt-Stone-censorship-Stick-of-Truth

South Park: The Fractured But Whole - Ubisoft on censorship, superheroes and future games
UBISOFT San Francisco is preparing to release South Park: The Fractured But Whole next month, but the team found time to tell Daily Star about the foul-mouthed sequel and how ratings boards have changed since the release of The Stick of Truth.

Ubisoft's next South Park game is going to be a lot different to its first entry, The Stick of Truth.

The superhero-themed The Fractured But Whole is not only a shift in terms of tone (from a fantasy setting to a superhero-themed quest), it's also a huge alteration in terms of mechanics, too.

The first game focused on making players equip items to change the way they'd inflict damage on enemies; a deep but ultimately unbalanced gear system forming the crux of the title's gameplay loop.

Whilst this system was fun and captured some of the chaos South Park fans crave in a video game tied to the cult TV show, it, unfortunately, lead to an easily broken game - an experience that was fun, but lacked the immersion that developer Obsidian Entertainment and publisher Ubisoft really wanted to create.

The second game has taken big steps to ensure that the player really does feel like they're in the world of South Park - that their experience is as authentic as possible.

Ubisoft San Francisco is working very closely with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to ensure the game meets the high levels of quality South Park Studios has for the game - and a change of engine (from Flash to Snowdrop, which The Division is built on!) means the developer has all the tools it needs to make a better, more accurate version of everyone's favourite Colorado town.

Associate Producer Kimberly Weigend and Animator Stephanie Dowling sat down to talk to us about exactly what is changing i the game this time around, how the studio is dealing with censorship issues, and what future plans for the South Park gaming might be.

You can read the interview in full below.

The combat is massively different this time around - has moving to a more tactical setup helped with balancing the game?

Kimberly Weigend: So combat was a big thing that we really wanted to focus on here - we knew that from The Stick of Truth we wanted to change it. We wanted to enhance certain aspects of it. The Fractured But Whole has an added grid, and though it’s still turn-based so you still have time to strategize and figure out what you want to do, it’s certainly more involved.

Making it more tactical as well as adding more buddies into combat so you can have bigger fights - that’s really added a level of fun and hilarity to the game.

The buddies and the synergy between them has replaced the gear system from the last game - can you explain the thinking behind that?

KW: When you think about the superhero genre, you think that superheroes tend to have their innate abilities - something that comes from within that they’re able to do rather than equipping things and getting stat boosts from gear. So we really wanted to decouple the character creation setup from the powers - and that’s very in line with the genre. And it’s a different element from the Stick of Truth - another change we wanted to make.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is built on Snowdrop - can you talk about how different that’s made the development process from the previous game?

Stephanie Dowling: On the first game, Obsidian used Flash: so that meant all the assets had to be recreated [for the game], and they had a lot less flexibility in what they were capable of doing. There were certain limitations that slowed them down. Now, we’re using Maya - the same software the team on the show uses - so we’re able to take assets directly from South Park Studios, and we can animate on those characters, on those models. Getting them into the game is much easier, and they look exactly like they do in the show.

The result is noticeable, too.

SD: That was one of the main things that [South Park Studios] wanted to accomplish - they wanted to immerse the player even more than the first game: to make it feel like you really are in South Park. And I know people felt like that in the first game, but this one really blows it out of the water.

Do you feel that in shortening the pipeline like that, it’s made the development process easier for every aspect of the team?

KW: Absolutely: there are less hoops to jump through, and there’s a lot more flexibility. We’re in contact with South Park Studios every day - that means that if we need something right away, South Park will send it to us and we can add it to whatever it is we’re working within 30 minutes.

There were pacing issues in the first game - have you taken on feedback regarding the narrative of the first game?

KW: The Fractured but Whole has about double the content of the first game, so it is a massive story and there is a lot to do inside South Park, there’s a lot to do in the main story and there’s a lot to do in the side missions. What we want to do here is really open the game up at some key points: we want to tell the main story, but then there will be parts where you can do what you want in any order, but then you can come back and tell more story points.

It’s very exploratory in that sense - the narrative really is enhanced as you discover little things in town and you interact with some of the well-loved characters in the game.

The new progression system is tied to your Coonstagram account - a system where you gain followers after fulfilling certain criteria for them. There are many conditions for achieving these followers - how did you figure out the ecosystem for that?

KW: It was interesting, and it’s definitely something that’s gone back and forth through development. There were so many characters we had to consider - we had to make sure they were in the right spot and that it always made sense where each character was located… certain people you can’t get as followers until you’ve achieved certain tasks for them (which is a very RPG mechanic!) and South Park had fun with that and we had fun with that - it was very iterative.

South Park would say ‘here’s our list of characters we want to include’ and we’d say ‘well here’s out list’ and we realise we both had the same characters we wanted to use so we’d say ‘well let’s do all of them!’ It was really fun! [laughter]

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are used to a lot of freedom, and are infamous for being pretty direct in what they want to achieve - did you find it easy fulfilling their vision in this game?

KW: So I think there were a lot of lessons learned on The Stick of Truth from both sides and now it’s streamlining that process. There was some work in making sure we were using the show assets [and making that relationship work] but after that was established, a lot of the relationship was just streamlining our process.

We knew going into this that they work very fast on their end, and they want feedback almost immediately, and they want to see things almost immediately… they learned on the first game that game development really does take a long time and it’s impossible to make a game in 6 days, unlike the show [laughter]. So there was a lot of back and forth and saying ‘here’s the build, these parts aren’t done yet, but you can get the gist of it, play it, see it, see where it’s going’. This meant they could say ‘yeah, I like where this is going’ or ‘let’s take it in a different direction’ because they’d realise the vision they had wouldn’t fit in a space or an aspect.

And are South Park Studios as focused on how the animation of the game comes out, too, since the show has had such a specific style for so long?

SD: They care so much about what it looks like, we work hard to make sure they enjoy what they see. Having worked on the first game I’ve developed a pretty good idea of what that style is, but we also have two other in-house animators that are very familiar with the style. So everything comes through us, and we make sure everything is on point - but if there’s ever a question, all the animators at South Park are just an email away.

It’s been amazing working with them - they’re fantastic people and fantastic animators and we’re all on the same page.

Games often lack comic timing - South Park seems to have it, though, and pull it off really well. Is that down to the input of Trey and Matt? Will they say ‘we need a longer pause here’ or ‘this needs to be a quicker comeback’ and so on?

KW: Exactly that. They’ll send us a script, then they’ll send us a storyboard and things and then we’ll implement that, and from there we’ll look at things like framing - maybe we’ll pull the camera back, or push it in, and we figure out when these things hit.

That’s the most fun part, too: producers or Trey and Matt themselves will come to our studio and they’ll sit with the developers and they’ll say ‘OK can we move the camera?’ or ‘can we try this thing?’ and they’ll go back in and try a variety of things. It’s really fun seeing them come from the film and TV side of the industry because comedic timing is so important to them, and it’s very important to us, too.

You don’t get a lot of cross-media in video games at the moment - is the hybrid TV/game the vision that Ubisoft sees, too?

KW: I think so. A lot of [the studio] has backgrounds in both TV and film, so there are certainly cinematic directors that know cameras and things like that - it’s great to work the people that make the show for that reason: they know exactly what’ll make sense and seeing how they do things on the show working in the game is great.

Sometimes even the South Park guys will laugh, too: it’s like they made a thing and then they see it in the game and they laugh and it works and that’s just awesome! [laughter]

Were there any specific games you looked at when considering the combat for The Fractured But Whole?

KW: I don’t think there’s any one specific game - we had a lot of ideas for what to do with combat… and not all of it panned out because we know we have to adhere to the look and feel of South Park. So we try a lot of different things and we took a lot of things out because we wanted to stay true to the 2.5D look and feel.

Can you talk about anything that didn’t make it into the game?

KW: I wish I could… we had some really, really good ideas that didn’t work quite yet… but you may see them in the future.

The Stick of Truth suffered censorship issues, resulting in a different build of the game shipping in different regions - did that impact how far you were willing to push the humour in this game?

KW: No. We’re going as far as we can [laughter]. That’s down to Matt and Trey - nothing will deter them. They even made a joke about being censored in the first game: nothing is off the table for this. They’re going to tell the story they want to tell and we’re going to help them tell it.

We just got our ratings back: there are no content issues across all countries. Everyone around the world will play the exact same content. It was such a bummer that certain people couldn’t play certain parts, but this time it seems to be more progressive and the ratings board must’ve been like ‘this isn’t so bad, let’s just go with it’ [laughter]

South Park: The Fractured But Whole releases on October 17th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

 

[aweigh]

guys i just got the subtitle

 

[DragoFireheart]

guys i just got the subtitle

It took you that long?

Weep, for you can never be saved. Vodka is your salvation.

 

[Grimlorn]

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.

Yeah if in game Cartman is quoted as saying that, then that means Matt and Trey would have had to voice it I think. Unless they've figured out how to have other actors voice their characters. Means they've finally been brainwashed completely by Hollywood if they are talking like SJWs.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah if in game Cartman is quoted as saying that, then that means Matt and Trey would have had to voice it I think.

What's the quote, for those of us who haven't watched everything?

 

[Grimlorn]

Yeah if in game Cartman is quoted as saying that, then that means Matt and Trey would have had to voice it I think.

What's the quote, for those of us who haven't watched everything?

Top post on this page.

 

[Zombra]

I'm confused. People think that Cartman is the voice of racial equality?

 

[Background Character]

Who cares about your low tier skin color I wanna know more about the classes

Give me the netherborn

 

[Gav391]

I really can't wait for this. The stick of truth was expensive, but the experience was like an entire season for southpark. I have the same hopes for this one.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/119606-south-park-the-fractured-but-whole-previews.html

We begin with GamesIndustry.biz, where there is some commentary from associate producer Kimberly Weigend, too:

"When we submitted to the age ratings boards, we didn't know what was going to happen, but we're really happy to report that they're letting everything through for all the countries so every country that plays this game is going to get the same experience," she told us.

The implication is that perhaps the new game is tamer in its humour than the previous outing, but Weigend assures us that this is not the case.

"We really didn't hold anything back with The Fractured But Whole," she says. "We worked very closely with Matt and Trey to tell their story - and they obviously don't hold back as well."

IGN:

That is to say, it seems to take everything The Stick of Truth did well – namely, making you feel like you were playing a 12-hour version the brilliant two-decade-old Matt Stone and Trey Parker-scripted animated series – and fix the areas that needed improving. Those areas are, primarily, the combat system and the class system.

In The Fractured But Whole, whose premise involves the kids of South Park Elementary pretending to be Marvel-vs.-DC-style dueling superhero cinematic universes, the Paper Mario-style turn-based combat has been given added depth, primarily in the form of a grid system that governs both movement and attacks during battle. The tutorials do a good job of walking you through the finer points without feeling overwhelming – no doubt with an eye towards catering to The Stick of Truth players who are otherwise not RPG die-hards – and they don’t drag on overly long. The fact that I’m currently playing Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, another turn-based strategy offering, no doubt helped make my transition even easier.

PC Authority:

The real joy in The Fractured But Whole doesn't come from the RPG dressings themselves, but the way they've been built around the universe of the TV show. For example, one of the first tasks you're given is to add followers to your Instagram-like Coonstagram account. This involves pestering people to have a selfie taken with you, and results in a feed of characters' posts and comments on each other's pictures. It simultaneously provides an impulse for exploring and “collecting” various people in the town; serves as a communication hub for quests; and is a funny pisstake of the social capital given to Likes and follows.

The player is free to wander into almost everyone's home, and much of my hands-on time was spent poking around for environmental jokes in people's drawers and bathrooms. You're also able to use their toilet via a thumb-pad-twiddling mini-game, which is diverting but gets old quickly. There also isn't a great deal of variety in the homes, at least in those opening hours, so it will be interesting to see how The Fractured But Whole mixes up its environments later on.

Gamereactor:

All jokes aside (not for long), we were under the impression that the character customisation was a bit limited at first glance, with a selection of basic clothing and appearance options to select, but it turns out this is just a starting point, as you'll be finding more gear and customisation options as you go on your heroic journey, so it's just a case of being patient.

After we kitted out our character with the attire we wanted, we headed out as the king of the realm (those who played The Stick of Truth will be familiar with this), with incredible powers to match, and got a quick taste of the new grid-based combat before we enter Cartman's back yard. At this point, Cartman enters as The Coon and informs us of a terrible crime wave of cats going missing, at which point the theme switches to superheroes, the gang go into the Coon Lair, and we're left at the bottom rung again. That's life.

Critical Hit:

What’s impressive is how The Fractured But Whole locks everything so neatly to its boosted, more overtly RPG structure, right down to how your guy manages his life via numerous apps on the smartphone. The game finds cool ways to twist familiar ideas from the real world and meld them with gameplay features, such as the Fidget Spinner that serves as a performance enhancing artefact. It rewards exploration and experimentation with an ever-evolving hero that reflects playstyle, avoiding the monotony that might otherwise creep into the combat.

Turn-based brawls served South Park style are never likely to be boring, of course, but to further enhance their potential there are allies to recruit, each one bringing unique talents to the fray. Super Craig, Human Kite (Kyle), Mosquito (Clyde) and Fastpass (Jimmy) bring more tactical options to take down Sixth Graders and members of the Raisins gang. Human Kite, for example, can place a protective shield over a buddy, while Fastpass speedily intervenes.

Game Revolution:

The buddy system has been expanded too. Before most fights, you can pick up to three allies, each with their own distinct stats and movesets. Since it no longer locks you into one class, I picked a mix between the offensive-heavy Brutalist and element-driven, well, Elementalist and made sure to select party members that would fill out my personal weak spots. Choosing my abilities and crew was extremely liberating and opened up a ton of possibilities and I hope it continues to expand and evolve in the later hours of the game.

The buddy system was not only added for the combat, Weigend told me, but also to more aptly fit the game’s superhero motif. Trading in Game of Thrones for The Avengers, South Park has been overtaken by the infatuation of comic book films and the culture surrounding them. While Cartman sees this as a way to get his movie and TV franchises off the ground, it serves as a way to get the kids of South Park to dress up and fight as their favorite characters as they follow each other on Coonstagram to recruit people. However, like The Stick of Truth, a larger, more insidious plot was hinted at, but I’m assuming that part of the story won’t start developing until a little later on.

And then GameSpot has this "priest fight" gameplay video that you might find compelling.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Infinitron]

Crowdfarting.

 

[Background Character]

Fucking hell this is actually real, I think this got really ouf of hand. You could say it's too big to be contained

Why contain it?

It's cool

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I really can't wait for this. The stick of truth was expensive, but the experience was like an entire season for southpark. I have the same hopes for this one.

 

[Hobo Elf]

This is some high level trolling by Matt and Trey again. Get people to make internet videos of themselves farting.

 

[Background Character]

Infinitron didn't post this BUT I DID

EAT IT

 

[Infinitron]

Some details about this game's development hell, and also Stick of Truth's: http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10...duction-hell-work-for-the-fractured-but-whole

HOW SOUTH PARK MADE ITS BRAND OF PRODUCTION HELL WORK FOR THE FRACTURED BUT WHOLE

Last-minute deadlines have never stopped South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker from getting things done, even when their own bodies won’t cooperate.

TV show executive producer Frank C. Agnone II told me the story of being nearly finished with The Fractured but Whole, the sequel to 2014’s outstanding South Park RPG The Stick of Truth, but the TV team’s usual last-second process left Parker with 10,000 lines of dialogue to record just one week ahead of a big deadline. As if that wasn’t a tall enough task on its own, Parker then got very sick and ended up having emergency surgery to remove his gallbladder. Following the operation, Parker somehow convinced his doctor to let him temporarily leave the hospital to go get the dialogue laid down, and on the way back to the hospital, an exhausted Parker said to Agnone, “I just want this game to be sweet.”

Stone and Parker’s unique eleventh-hour production methodology was well-documented in 2014’s fantastic “Six Days to Air,” and publisher Ubisoft has been careful to try and not have the same deadline-killing mistakes from The Stick of Truth derail The Fractured But Whole. But the South Park TV team also learned valuable lessons, as I discovered from talking to the creative leads on both sides.

"[In] the Stick of Truth, originally, there was a branching out of factions," Parker told me. "So you went and did a whole thing with the goth kids, you did a whole thing with Ike and the pirates. It was all about all these factions and it just started to get completely unwieldy in terms of writing it and everything. If we understood the DLC concept well enough..." he said with a laugh.

"But we also were making the wrong game," Stone interjected. "We tried to make Skyrim starting out. That was not the right game to make. So it got molded down into more of a linear story."

I visited South Park Digital Studios’ Marina del Rey headquarters to interview Stone and Parker and play a bit more of the imminent South Park RPG sequel, The Fractured But Whole. But I’ve done a lot of that already. The more compelling story was the inside look I got at how the game was co-developed with the showrunners at SPDS; I’ve been lucky enough to see how a lot of video games have been made over the course of my career, but I’ve never seen a game made like this. In short, the developers at Ubisoft San Francisco had to adapt to the South Park TV team’s infamously insane eleventh-hour workflow, one that probably shouldn’t – and almost certainly couldn’t – be applied to any other show.

Production on Season 21 of the show was underway in a very low-key fashion while I was in the building. In a large, glass-walled conference room, I could see the writers – including Stone and Parker – pacing and tossing around ideas for the season premiere. Various names and concepts adorned a white board on the wall behind them. Friend of the show and occasional collaborator Bill Hader was taking a break, talking with a South Park staffer outside.

“Because of the dysfunctional way we go about producing the TV show,” Agnone explained, “the collaboration with Ubisoft on The Fractured But Whole had to be tight. We got better at it as we went along.” As a result, SPDS producer Adrien Beard noted that Fractured will satirize things that happened just two or three months prior to the game’s release. “Matt and Trey wrote the equivalent of four or five feature films [for this game],” Agnone said. Thousands of jokes got written, but they were edited down to the very best.

The writing, however, was only part of it. “Letting Matt and Trey go hands-on [with early builds of the game] was key,” Fractured But Whole lead narrative designer Jolie Menzel said. “It helped them know exactly what they wanted to do.”

That allowed the game to move forward at a relatively (for South Park) fast pace – a workflow that was smoothed out by Fractured’s switch to Ubisoft’s own Snowdrop engine (yes, the very same one that powers The Division). The Ubisoft San Francisco team wanted to mimic the show’s pipeline so that they could iterate and implement Stone and Parker’s inevitable last-minute changes late in the development process, which couldn’t be done in The Stick of Truth because it had to emulate the pipeline rather than import it directly. Snowdrop, conversely, was able to bring in the exact show assets.

And so The Fractured But Whole will ship on time next week. As for the show? It was close – as usual – but they made it. “We’re 10 days from air,” Agnone told me during my September visit, “And we have zero pages [finished].”

 

[santino27]

And so The Fractured But Whole will ship on time next week. As for the show? It was close – as usual – but they made it. “We’re 10 days from air,” Agnone told me during my September visit, “And we have zero pages [finished].”

Wait... in what universe is this shipping on time?

Parker and Stone originally announced a release date of December 6, 2016, during Ubisoft's press conference at E3 2016 on June 13, 2016. On September 15, 2016, Ubisoft announced on their blog that the game was delayed to the first quarter of 2017 because the development team wants to ensure that the game meets the high expectations of fans. It was also announced that those who pre-order the game will be able to download The Stick of Truth free of charge. On February 9, 2017, Ubisoft announced a further delay for the game, with its new release window Ubisoft's 2018 fiscal year (April 2017–March 2018). PSN has refunded all South Park: The Fractured but Whole pre-orders. PSN also removed access to the South Park: The Stick of Truth for people who got it as a South Park: The Fractured but Whole pre-order bonus. In May 2017, Ubisoft released a new trailer for the game, announcing the release date as October 17, 2017.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_The_Fractured_but_Whole

 

[Zombra]