South Park: The Stick Of Truth Won't Be Delayed Again

Believe it or not, South Park: The Stick of Truth is finally finished. Obsidian Entertainment announced today that the RPG has gone gold and will arrive in stores next month as scheduled.

In Stick of Truth, the player takes on the role of a new kid who just moved to South Park. They have to help Stan and his friends recover the titular stick from the forces of evil. The enemies they'll encounter include hippies, underpants gnomes and gingers. TV series creator Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote the script and are voicing several of the characters.

Stick of Truth's journey to stores has been a long one. The game was first announced for a 2012 release, then pushed to April 2013. Before launch, though, publisher THQ went bankrupt. Ubisoft saved the game from cancellation by purchasing the rights.

The game's delays didn't stop under the new publisher, though. Ubisoft decided to postpone the launch from December 2013 to March 2014 so Obsidian could have more time to polish it.

"Within three weeks after acquiring the game, we sadly realized we had to turn this thing upside down if we hoped to deliver the experience everybody wanted," Ubisoft North America’s president Laurent Detoc said at the time. "It’s been such a major overhaul to get to the point where we are that we couldn't let it go, even if that meant missing December."

The long wait for the game is finally drawing to a close, though. Stick of Truth will launch on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on March 4th. The European release will follow on the 7th.

I honestly expected this game to be delayed again. As a fan of South Park and Obsidian's other role-playing games, though, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Now I just have to wrap my head around the idea that this is a game that's actually going to be available in stores and not just some hypothetical project getting kicked down the road by publishers.