Ubisoft’s RPG satire South Park: The Fractured But Whole will miss out on its planned December launch. A retail release for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC platforms is now slated for early 2017.
Ubisoft’s official blog briefly discussed the delay, explaining that “The development team wants to make sure the game experience meets the high expectations of fans and the additional time will help them achieve this goal.”
Revealed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June, South Park: The Fractured But Whole is a console-style role-playing game based on the popular Comedy Central animated series. The Fractured But Whole serves as a sequel to the franchise’s 2014 debut South Park: The Stick of Truth.
The Fractured But Whole pokes fun at superhero tropes and cliches throughout its single-player campaign, singling out Marvel’s many recent films in particular. Gameplay follows suit with the introduction of several new playable classes inspired by comic books and high fantasy, including Cyborg, Psychic, Assassin, Brutalist, and Gadgeteer.
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone demonstrated The Fractured But Whole‘s expanded combat mechanics during Ubisoft’s E3 2016 presentation, revealing that players can rearrange their party’s turn order by deploying “farts [that] are so powerful that you can use them to rip the fabric of time itself.”
The Fractured But Whole is the latest in a string of recent delays for prominent up-and-coming console RPGs. Publisher Square Enix recently announced that its long-awaited RPG sequel Final Fantasy XV had slipped from a scheduled September launch to November of 2016, while the Disney-themed action-RPG compilation Kingdom Hearts 2.8 was pushed back from December to early 2017.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole is now set to launch for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PCs in the first quarter of 2017.
