Why the South Park RPGs Are Some of the Most Faithful Licensed Games
Licensed games have a peculiar relationship with not only video games as a medium, but also the people that play them. On one hand, they are the source of many cases of nostalgia. If a child grew up appreciating a particular work in pop culture in the last 40 years, the likeliness of them owning a video game based on said work is rather high. On the other hand, licensed games are infamous for being their tendency of being promotional products and not being ambitious beyond that. Some of them, like the South Park RPGs, challenge this common conception.
Released in 2014 and 2017 respectively, the two South Park RPGs, The Stick of Truth and The Fractured but Whole, are recognizable for being among the most well-received licensed games of all time. They might not have reached the level of acclaim of games such as Batman Arkham City, but they are nonetheless appreciated by both South Park fans and people that are only passively familiar with the show. One of the reasons these two games succeeded is the faithfulness to their source material. As a result, the two South Park RPGs are games that developers of other licensed games should seek to emulate.
Two More South Park Specials Are Coming This Year
When South Park first became a cultural phenomenon in the late 90s, it became one of the many victims of poorly made video games, with the first-person shooter sharing its name with the show being the most infamous of its kind. The games used 3D models for character designs that are recognizable for their cutout-like simplicity, making the characters look like cheap polygonal figures. Additionally, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the show, had little to no involvement in the games’ development cycles aside from providing
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