South Park: The Stick of Truth was the envy of all licensed video games. Not only did it capture the essence of South Park, it looked exactly like the TV show, and was backed up by stellar gameplay. With a new co-developer joining South Park Digital Studios, Ubisoft San Francisco replaces Obsidian, Matt Stone and Trey Parker are endeavouring to bridge the already small gap between gameplay and the iconic South Park humour in this year’s sequel, South Park: The Fractured But Whole.

As with its predecessor, you’ll play the “New Kid” (either male or female). As the newest edition to Coon and Friends, you’ll assume a superhero identity to save South Park from treachery. From seemingly noble intentions, Coon and Friends is quickly exposed as Cartman’s scheme to cash-in on the prosperous superhero film trend, and launch an entertainment empire, dominated by franchise sequels and trashy spin-offs. But it soon unravels, as disharmony leads to civil war amongst Coon and his “friends”, leaving you stranded in the middle.

During E3 last week, Lead Game Designer Ken Strickland explained to Stevivor how The Fracture But Whole is going to improve on an already critically acclaimed TV show-turned RPG. Quality licensed games are often one hit wonders, but Ubisoft is determined to ensure South Park, as a game series, continues to out do itself.

“By picking a new target for satire, that’s they way South Park survives,” Strickland explained when I asked how The Fractured But Whole will avoid being too similar to The Stick of Truth.

“It never tells the same joke twice. It tries to find something that’s new and current, and the big white whale to hunt this time around is the superhero genre. Of course there are constants in [the South Park] formula as well, so it was always going to be the foul-mouth kids and you were always going to have to earn your way back into the group – but yeah, new targets keeps it fresh.”

As explained during Ubisoft’s press conference, combat has been tweaked, but remains reliant on the established turn-based conventions. You’ll choose a class and mix and match powers to craft a unique superhero.

“Combat is still very turn-based,” he said. “Turn-based is good, especially when you’re doing something based in humour because it guarantees you have the time to actually let jokes land on their own timing. The second you move to something completely real time, you have the problem every first person shooter has, which is it’s tough to concentrate on important dialogue when somebody is getting their head sniped off next to you.”

While combat is vastly improved, described by the co-creators as “Stick of Truth 4.0”, it’s not how you fight that’s the biggest improvement to The Fractured But Whole: it’s how that gameplay better integrates with humour.

“Instead of moving away from turn-based, what we wanted to do is move towards unifying the gameplay and the humour a little bit more, and also make it so when you’re at hour five and hour 10 that it’s still feeling fresh,” said Strickland.

“That’s why we introduced the concept of space, and tactical movement within a space, because it serves a story need, where now you can actually do things in interesting locations and have that matter; and it also serves a gameplay need in us being able to craft really interesting scenarios that don’t feel the same – that don’t feel like stat-elevated re-treads of what you played in hour one.

“Not just for combat, but in all aspects, we are trying to maximise the chance for interactive humour. If we were just telling a joke in the cut-scene, that’s something they can already do in the show. The value the game brings is being able to tuck jokes inside something participatory as opposed to just standing on its own.”

The Stick of Truth made headlines for finally, after nearly two decades of being on-the-air, forcing Parker and Stone to become cartographers and map the layout of South Park. Most of that remains constant, but there have been a few tweaks.

“The reason they kept the town so loose [before Stick of Truth] was because it was a story-telling device,” said Strickland. “Because the story they wanted to tell was suddenly different this time around, a lot of locations were totally up in the air. We kept a lot of the town constant [to The Stick of Truth], because why throw that wrench in front of players that have already learned it? But in terms of stuff from season 19 and evolutions to the town, those were totally in play, so we’ve made some changes to the layout.

“As the plot evolves, certain things will happen to the town, so when you’re playing through the town in hour 10, it will not be the town you see in hour one. I can’t go further than that without going into spoiler territory.”

The return of crying Koala?

Despite the introduction of an R18+ rating for games a couple of years prior, South Park: The Stick of Truth was still refused classification in Australia and had to be censored – with a crying koala that was actually funnier than the scene the Australian Classification Board deemed inappropriate for adults, which you can easily watch on YouTube.

Will he be back?

“I remember [the koala],” said Strickland, despite not working on The Stick of Truth. “We are always going to deliver unfiltered South Park madness. What we have not done is say ‘it got censored [in Australia] last time, we better be tamer this time.’ It’s funnier when you push ratings boards to try and match your game. I’m anticipating we’re going to have a lot of long talks with them.”

South Park: The Fractured But Whole will be released on 6 December for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Digital pre-orders on the Xbox Store, PlayStation Store or Steam immediately unlock a free copy of The Stick of Truth on the same platform (originally a last-gen game, it’s been re-released on PS4 and Xbox One).

Stevivor was flown to E3 2016 as a guest of Ubisoft to cover the entire event. This relationship does not prevent Stevivor from covering other publishers’ titles, nor does it impact the E3 2016 opinions of any of our authors.