‘South Park’ Creators Trey Parker & Matt Stone Talk New ‘Fractured but Whole’ Game

Of course.

Of course Trey Parker and Matt Stone would follow up their incredibly successful video game, The Stick of Truth, with a sequel. And of course the South Park creators would give their newest game a punny & inappropriate title like “Fractured But Whole.”

However, the way the guys tell it, deciding to make a sequel wasn’t as automatic as one might assume. The Huffington Post caught up with them to ask about the game’s production and its place in today’s world.

“When we finished Stick of Truth we were kind of like, ‘Well, never again,’ but that’s what we always say when we finish something new,” Parker said, citing the difficult of creating the first one. “For us it was all new territory to figure out and we did so many things wrong that it just took a long time because we were learning how to do it. But then we felt when it was done that, y ouknow, it would almost be a shame not to, because now we know what we’re doing.”

“It just felt like we’d finally got into a groove at the end of the last game, and we felt like that last game fell short in some ways of our dream,” Stone explained. “But we’ve done movies and stuff too where you always have your vision of where you want it to be and it always falls short. In the middle of it it’s really painful but then you get on the other side of it and you release the game and people really like it.”

Now that they have a formula that works, making a sequel should prove to a bit easier. “We decided to make a game that just continued the story from Stick of Truth because we loved that we’d created this new kid and we wanted to get more into that character,” Parker continued. “It sort of takes place literally right after the first one and it gets more into you as that kid.”

And make no mistake, when Trey & Matt say they’re making the game, they really are personally involved. “We said we’d never make a video game unless we really did it hands-on,” Parker said. “We’re both gamers, we both grew up as gamers and we both respect gaming as an art form, just like musical theatre – so to us it wasn’t just, ‘Oh go and do something like that’. Once we’d finished Book of Mormon, Stick of Truth really was our other big project, and right now it’s this.”

“What we really learned with Stick of Truth was that we’d be like, ‘Okay, here, we wrote a bunch of funny shit now you guys go make the game,'” he continued. “We kept doing this before we realized that, okay, we’ve all got to get in a room together because the jokes can’t just be written down they’ve got to come from the gameplay.”

“It’s a pretty narrative intense game, that’s just what it is so it had to come from us,” Stone said. “I think this time we did a better job at working with people who really know video games.”

Especially since writing for a video game is quite different than writing for a TV show. “With TV comedy you’re in complete control of the timing and you can really build a very fragile house to get to a point because you’re building it back the way you want,” Stone said. “Whereas in a game, the player is running around and the timing is not totally in your control.”

Which makes it less likely the boys would tackle any video game other than South Park. “I think we’ve got such freedom with South Park and we’ve got those characters and I really like the concept that we’ve come up with,” Stone said. Besides, why mess with a hit? Especially one that was so popular, even amongst those that never played it.

“It’s just so crazy because last season we were doing the show and we still had in our minds that you know, the show is everything,” Parker said. “But then you see how many more people played the Stick of Truth and then how many more people watched videos of people playing the Stick of Truth than watch an episode of South Park, it was insane! More people in the world are going to have exposure to South Park through PewDiePie playing the game than they are from whatever we do this week, so it really made us just want to take all this stuff that we’ve worked on for 20 years now and have it reach this new audience.”

He continued: “It was frustrating because it was so much of trying to get the two sides to work, and that’s why I feel like at the end of it we had this feeling of ‘Fuck, well now we have the blueprint, we made a good game, we have a blueprint for a great game,’ and well, that’s what we got.”

Trey & Matt also had some commentary on the current state of video games and how it relates to entertainment in today’s society. (Deep stuff, amiright?)

“When you play a South Park video game – or indeed any video game – you can’t be doing something else,” Stone said. “Yesterday I was on the plane and I was sitting like every asshole now who’s watching some movie that I’ve downloaded, and I’m on my phone – and in video games you can’t do that. You can tell when people aren’t used to having to concentrate and do that level of engagement and your friend’s on the couch. That passive viewing of television is just really different.”

“Grand Theft Auto is actually a good example of where they tried to draw that line of seriousness and comedy, and I find that the serious stuff actually works for me better than the comedy,” Stone continued, before getting another thought. “Also, it is funny that the big, big video games are — with some exceptions — tackling more interesting subject matter than big movies. I mean most $150M big budget movies are really, really dumb, and they sort of have to be – if you know what I mean – because they have to sell across the world. They have to work in South Africa, China, and the US, and I don’t know, gaming is in this sort of weird pocket right now where the games are kind of more interesting. It’s hardcore and bonkers in a way that you’d never fucking do it in a movie, and there are just very few movies with that big of a palette that just go crazy. Or that audacious or that uncompromising. I just don’t think that’ll continue forever, but it’s just something that’s happening right now. I mean those big games are working and maybe that’s one of the reasons that kids are more drawn to them, because if you just go and see a big Avengers movie right now, like, even when they’re good, they’re not like Grand Theft Auto – which is just pure ‘HOLY SHIT.'”

[via Huffington Post UK]