South Park: The Fractured But Whole was one of the most surprising announcements of E3 2015, especially since the South Park creators had pretty publicly said they weren’t ever going to do another game after The Stick of Truth. Well, that turned out unexpectedly. Now they’re on board for another round, and the Coon & Friends–focused game looks just as photorealistic as the first one. Only trouble is, the game has gone into total radio silence, very deep cover, since E3 2015... even though Ubisoft's site still promises a 2016 release date. What’s going on?

South Park: The Fractured But Whole Release Date: Deep Cover

Games often pop up at E3 and then go under the radar again… not just vaporware releases like Final Fantasy Versus XIII or The Last Guardian (both thankfully re-emerged!), but mainstream, definitely-happening games like Zelda Wii U. So it isn’t necessarily alarming that The Fractured But Whole hasn’t reappeared since E3 2015… but come on, Ubisoft. Give us at least a dribble-drabble of news.

But let’s be fair: Chances are The Fractured But Whole is a pretty long ways away. First off, it requires intense coordination with the South Park team, and they’re not available during the production season. Not at all. That means any writing duties, not to mention voice recording duties, have to happen in the show’s off-season, the spring and early summer.

That schedule worked out fine for Stick of Truth, and should be a little easier now since the show is on hiatus every spring. That gives Matt Stone and Trey Parker more time to work on projects like The Fractured But Whole. But it means that there hasn’t been all that much time yet for development on The Fractured But Whole. Chances are we saw the game in an early stage at E3 2015, with probably one season of creative brainstorming and one season of development behind it.

And that explains why we haven’t seen anything about The Fractured But Whole since E3 2015. Coding and development is probably moving along nicely, but all the voice recording and any additional writing still hasn’t been done. But now that the excellent South Park season 20 has concluded, the South Park team can resume their incredibly close involvement, presumably a trend that’s continuing with the new game despite the change in developers. So we’ll see more of The Fractured But Whole again soon… probably at E3 2016. But by then, it may well be in very different shape.