Obsidian CEO talks South Park RPG's style

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“This needs to be South Park,” insists developer

What would a South Park game be without dead kids, swearing, objectionable humor and a healthy dollop of gratuitous violence? Not a game worth making, says Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart. In a recent chat with Game Informer regarding the just-announced South Park RPG, Urquhart shared his studio's excitement for the upcoming collaboration, the joy of creating South Park from scratch, and Obsidian's strategy for staying true to the Cartman brand.

“When we were looking at approaching this game, it was sort of like: 'Who are we making this game for?' Are we making it just for South Park fans? Are we making it for Obsidian fans? Are we making it for Call of Duty fans? Or are we making it for Peggle fans? Who's really the person that we're making this for? It really came down to, ultimately, we're Obsidian and we make role playing games, so it has to be for someone who enjoys playing role playing games. That doesn't mean we wanted to just eliminate South Park fans, because they are the target group.”

To that end, Urquhart insisted South Park fans will be given plenty of opportunity to explore a comprehensive recreation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's world, and that the RPG elements will not impede exploration. Thematically, Urquhart added Obsidian will not shy away from the show's adult tone, noting, “I'll be honest, we're not exactly sure how the ESRB is going to react to a lot of these things, but the first thing is we're not going to worry about it. This needs to be South Park. It needs to be outrageous, it needs to have crazy crap in it, it needs a lot of swearing, it needs a lot of children dying.”

Urquhart also touched on the game's design, saying the simplistic nature of South Park is one of its biggest strengths, and that it will allow Obsidian to do a lot more than it typically has time to do with its more visually intense titles.

“A girl and a boy character in South Park is literally differentiated by the voice and the hair, and that's pretty much it, so we can kind of create all this unique stuff, and that's what I think is great. It means we can just cram this game full of all these unique things,” he said.

An unofficial summary of Game Informer's South Park RPG preview has also appeared online. Posted by NeoGAF member flashbandit16, it indicates Obsidian is indeed staying true to the 2D look and feel of the TV series, while incorporating a ton of RPG elements like the ability to pick character classes, form factions with other South Park residents, and employ a variety of special moves in combat, which itself is described as something similar to the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi Games. The post also notes Obsidian is being given full access to the series' extensive asset library, and it working very closely with Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create the most authentic South Park video game experience yet.

You can read flashbandit16's the spoilery (and unconfirmed) details here, or check out Game Informer's full sit-down with Urquhart on its official site.

Matt Bradford

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.