E3 2012: South Park look took ‘months of R&D’

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker spoke of the many challenges in bringing the world of the hit animated show to life in an RPG.

The pair opened with a joke about Microsoft’s earlier reveal of their Smart Glass mobile tech, which allows users to control their TV and game devices via a tablet.

"How many times have you been watching an episode of South Park and thought, ‘I’d like to be able to watch this on by television, while hooked into my mobile device, which is being controlled by my tablet device, which is hooked in to my oven, all while sitting in the refridgerator?" asked Parker, mocking Microsoft’s new mobile tech.

But it wasn’t just the laughs that drew attention.

Parker outlined the difficulties in making a South Park game with the look and feel of the show, as well as logistical hurdles like mapping out the fictional town.

"The funny part was writing it and saying, ‘Ok, maybe you’re here, and then you’ve gotta go from Stan’s house to Kyle’s house,’ and after fifteen years of doing the show it was the first time that Matt and I were like, ‘where is Kyle’s house?’"

But the pair are confident that the game will live up to the goofily rugged asthetic of the hit cartoon, allowing the player to become "the new kid," and join the four boys of South Park in the mock-RPG.

"The only thing that really interested us was if we could make a game where it felt like you were in an episode of South Park," said Stone.

"To do that you had to get the look right; it had to look like an episode of South Park- which is pretty crappy. So we worked with Obsidian, and we said we wanted to do this, and you would not believe how hard, how many hours of R&D, how much work went in to really making that distinctive, crappy South Park look, but they did it."

The two left hurriedly as the trailer began, saying that as usual, they were doing everything last minute.

"So we’ve got to go work on it right now. Seriously."