South Park: The RPG

There’s this South Park episode where Stan’s dad accidentally swaps the rental cases—comes home with a copy of Lord of the Rings and the hardest porn he could find, and somehow the kids end up with the porn while trying to recover it dressed as little medieval characters. That’s the kind of chaos that lives in your head forever. It was the first thing I thought of when I heard they were actually making a proper South Park RPG.

By proper I mean proper. Not another hollow licensed game churned out to sell copies before anyone realizes it’s garbage. Obsidian’s building this—the people who made Fallout: New Vegas—so they know how to make an RPG that doesn’t feel like it was assembled by a committee. Dungeon Siege III engine, five classes including something Cartman invented, supposed to play like Paper Mario with Final Fantasy’s combat and leveling system. It’s a weird combination but it sounds right for South Park.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are writing the story themselves. You’re a new kid who just moved to South Park, some quiet nobody who gets adopted by the main crew and immediately swept into whatever insane adventure they’ve dreamed up. That’s genuinely exciting. Good writing could make a mediocre game worth playing, and they’re not going to phone this in.

Every previous South Park game was hollow in that specific way licensed tie-ins are hollow. Five minutes of playing and you can feel the emptiness underneath—made by people treating the property as a checkbox rather than something worth making interesting. This one feels different. Feels like someone actually cared about getting it right.

It’s coming before Christmas next year on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. 2D action, Christmas levels, Parker and Stone doing what they do best. I’m looking forward to this one. Not the vague hope it’s decent forward—genuinely looking forward to it. That’s rare for a licensed game.