14 DAY TRIAL // The South Park role-playing game is one of the biggest titles in THQ’s portfolio, but the experience was under development for about one full year at Obsidian before the publisher became involved in the creation process.
Danny Bilson, who is the leader of the core games division at publisher THQ, has told Ripten that, “This game came to us. Matt and Trey wanted to do a great game. They had even contracted Obsidian themselves before we came in and, I believe, there was work going on for about a year.
“They were looking for a publisher to get it involved and pick it up and drive it the rest of the way. That’s what we’ve been doing since the end of last summer; somewhere around there.”
Apparently, Obsidian has been pushing forward pretty quickly with the development process, with a number of gameplay sequences already completed and ready to play, with the full voice cast involved and writing from the show creators.
Bilson says THQ is also willing to give the development team all the time it needs to polish the South Park role-playing game, adding, “It’s going to be very close. We can’t afford to ship it until it’s perfect.
“Matt and Trey won’t ship until it’s their vision of this ultimate role playing game, where you’re the new kid in town and it’s like being in a South Park episode.”
At the moment the South Park RPG is set to launch during 2012 and such a high-profile title would help THQ push up its bottom line, which has been recently under threat.
The company announced that it was closing a number of studios and abandoning licensed titles in order to focus on core games like Dark Millenium Online, Dawn of War and Darksiders.
The South Park game will allow gamers to control a number of characters from the game, and it is mainly written by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of the television show.