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(Image: UBISOFT)

Ubisoft's second South Park RPG - The Fractured But Whole - is due to release in October this year on PS4, Xbox One and PC.

But some fans were worried that the game would suffer from the same issues players found in the first game - that there won't be an awful lot of content and that the overall experience will be quite short.

In an interview with The Daily Star, Associate Producer Kimberly Weigend confirmed there will be twice as much to do in the game: Ubisoft took on feedback from the first game and worked closely with South Park Studios to ensure the game would be as dense enough for players to enjoy.

"The Fractured but Whole has about double the content of the first game," Wiegend explained when asked about the size of the release.

"So it is a massive story. There is a lot to do inside South Park, there’s a lot to do in the main story and there’s a lot to do in the side missions."

This should allay fears from fans that were dubious about the game's length. Wiegend went on to explain that the game has been built and paced differently to The Stick of Truth, providing more variation for players and offering more to do overall.

"What we want to do here is really open the game up at some key points: we want to tell the main story, but then there will be parts where you can do what you want in any order, but then you can come back and we'll tell more story points.

"It’s very exploratory in that sense - the narrative really is enhanced as you discover little things in town and you interact with some of the well-loved characters in the game."

Wiegand explains that a lot of the game's progression is tied to a Coonstagram account: a social media app that you'll need to fill with followers. But to gain followers, you need to perform specific actions and complete certain tasks around town.

Gaining followers will work alongside traditional side missions and main story missions. There will also be collectables to find in the world and hidden items scattered around the map, too.

On the development and iteration of the Coonstagram mechanic, Wiegand explained:

"It was interesting, and it’s definitely something that’s gone back and forth through development.

"There were so many characters we had to consider - we had to make sure they were in the right spot and that it always made sense where each character was located… certain people you can’t get as followers until you’ve achieved certain tasks for them (which is a very RPG mechanic!) and South Park had fun with figuring that out, and we had fun with it, too - it was very iterative.

"South Park would say ‘here’s our list of characters we want to include’ and we’d say ‘well here’s out list’ and we'd realise we both had the same characters we wanted to use. So we’d say ‘well let’s do all of them!’ It was really fun! [laughter]"

You can read the full interview with Kimberly Weigend and animator Stephanie Dowling here.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole releases on October 17th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.