South Park RPG in the Works for 2012

Comedy Central’s golden-boy franchise South Park has dipped its toes in the video game pool a few times before, but always on the fringe of things, and never with good results. The demographic overlap of gamers and South Park fans has got to be pretty huge, so it’s kind of sad that all that’s come out of the match-made-in-heaven crossover so far is a steaming pile of shovel-ware.

The South Park video game experience, to date

Hopefully all that disappointment will be a thing of the past, because Gamma Squad reports the show’s co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are working with THQ and Obsidian on a brand new game, scheduled for a 2012 release on PC, XBOX 360 and the PS3. This will be the first time Stone and Parker, who’ll be writing, voicing and overseeing the production, have actually participated in the development of one of their games, which is a good sign that the quality might finally be up to snuff.As far as details go, all Gamma Squad can confirm so far, is that the game will be an RPG, and will “[…][let] you play as a new kid in South Park, befriending the well-known characters and protecting the town.”

Game Informer‘s January issue will feature an in-depth look at the upcoming game, and an interview with the two masterminds behind the long-running series. It’ll also be sporting this nifty tease of a cover:

In addition, someone at NeoGAF claims to have an advance issue of said magazine, and listed these “unconfirmed” details:

• Parker has always preferred silent protagonists in RPG’s, so the player’s character will be silent.

• The player’s character will be fully customizable.

• Your character has a smartphone that acts as the primary game menu and has a facebook-like app show the number of friends you have and your current standing with the various kid factions.

• There are five classes, which are wizard, paladin, adventurer, rogue, and a fifth unannounced class.
• Obsidian is using the Dungeon Siege III engine.

• Obsidian developed a dynamic lip-syncing tool to accommodate changes to the script.

• Parker and Stone gave Obsidian 15 years of assets used during the show and a detailed list of approved textures and colors.

• Critical hits, cash rewards, experience, and consumables are in the game.

• Parker hates unskippable cutscenes.

• The humor will be more focus -[sic] on the games they have played in the past but Parker mentions that games have lampooned other games before so they don’t want to do exactly that instead they are focusing more on RPG’s on how big and bombastic they can get sometimes.
  

All in all, things are looking good for the gaming South Park fans out there. With any luck, I’ll get my hands on it around this time next year and lock myself in a room with it until I look like this: