It was with some astonishment that the world greeted last year's announcement of a South Park RPG. This would be no jokey mini-game collection, but instead a full, epic adventure developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a genre veteran with titles like Fallout: New Vegas and Neverwinter Nights 2 under its trusty belt.
In November, US magazine Game Informer ran an exclusive preview of the game, revealing that the player would control a new character arriving in the town and determined to make friends with the local kids. Your mobile phone provides the in-game menu system, while a Facebook-like site records the characters you've met and befriended.
And now we have the first screenshots, revealing the authentic vision behind the project, which has apparently been written, and closely overseen, by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And these screens do show a remarkable similarity to the long-running show.
They also reveal some of the genre choices Obsidian has made. It seems from the preview article that the game will take – and twist – plenty of elements from traditional JRPGs. There will, for example, be five classes to select from: Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric and... Jew. "The Jew is going to be our paladin/monk type character," designer Matt MacLean told the magazine. "The current design is that he's a high-risk-high-reward character. The closer he is to death, the more powerful his abilities become. So you're strongest when you are at one hit point, but you're also just about to die." Okaaaaay.
Combat will be turn-based and viewed side-on in the classic style. It seems that you'll be in a small party (with the likes of Kyle and Butters), fighting against two or three enemies at once. Naturally, your foe will reflect the obsessions and prejudice's of the cartoon's cast – hence 'gingers' and 'stupid hippies' figuring highly. Apparently soda pop will be present as a magic potion, while coffee can be drunk to increase speed during fights.
The look and feel of the series has been perfectly captured, then, and we're looking forward to seeing how the handdrawn animations add to the authenticity. According to VG247, the studio also created its own dynamic lip-syncing tool so that script changes could easily be incorporated into the game. Furthermore, they were supplied with 15 years worth of art assets and a style guide indicating the correct colours and texture to use.
So, yes, it looks like South Park the game will be utilising and no doubt lampooning plenty of RPG archetypes as well as parodying games in general – a la the famed Make Love, Not Warcraft episode. It's definitely the interactive comedic cartoon tie-in that's interested me most since the awesome Simpsons Cartoon Studio, released on the PC back in 1996...
South Park: The Game is due out in the second half of 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
