South Park: The Fractured but Whole will have perfect use of the show’s brand of comedy thanks to the heavy involvement of the show’s creators.
The game’s senior producer Jason Schroeder recently sat down for an interview with the PlayStation Blog at E3 to reveal what it’s like working with South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker on the new sequel.
“They’re really, really involved,” Schroeder says of Stone and Parker’s connection to the project. “We have daily calls and I’m down there a few times a month just constantly trying to make sure that they’re getting the comedy they want into the game and making sure that it all makes sense moment to moment.”
One challenge that the team has encountered is identifying what works for a television show and what works for a video game, which Stone and Parker found out are created very differently.
“They’re both gamers, so there’s a really easy common language,” Schroeder said. “However, deadlines and pressure are actually some of the best ways they get their comedy. Separate from the game, they truly make each episode of South Park in just six days. It’s from that pressure that they get their really relevant, really timely jokes. The video game cycle, by comparison, is brutally long for them.”
The predecessor to The Fractured But Whole, South Park: Stick of Truth, was released to wide success, both critically and commercially, and Schroeder believes the comedy genre has the ability to expand.
“Comedy games definitely have room for growth,” agrees Jason. “One of the things that we’ve discovered is that you can really make people think with a comedy game because you’re able to subvert their expectations. Even the typical way they might do things on a PlayStation controller: we say ‘Pull the triggers and start rotating the analog sticks’ and then they see on screen that the kid is moving his butt around.”
“My aspiration is to make sure every South Park fan gets an unedited Matt Stone and Trey Parker experience.”
South Park: The Fractured But Whole launches on consoles and PC on December 6th, 2016.