Editing South Park: The Stick of Truth (section)

==Behind the Scenes==
Development on '''South Park: The Game''' as it was initially known, began roughtly when Trey and Matt began setting up South Park Digital Studios and began production on [[South Park: Let's Go Tower Defense Play]] for the Xbox Live Arcade system. As big fans of role-playing games, such as ''Earthbound'' and ''Fallout: New Vegas'', Matt and Trey directly contacted Obsidian Entertainment, who developed the latter, to discuss their desire to collaborate. Matt and Trey funded early development themselves, hoping a working demo of the game could be created before they had to seek out a distributor, fearful of possible censorship in a licensing deal. Matt and Trey were eager to retain creative control in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the poorly recieved Acclaim Entertainment game released in the nineties.

A number of tests were created to prove the show's construction paper art style could be mimicked, with South Park Digital Studios animating a piece intended to resemble an idea of how gameplay would work, while Obsidian Entertainment created a suite of the South Park gas station and a simple interactive build of the [[Marsh Residence]], including [[Randy Marsh]] playing [[Guitar Queer-o|Guitar Hero in his underwear]] and a customizable avatar. Matt and Trey were impressed, and convinced they could create a game that made fans feel like they were playing within the show. Trey soon began writing the game's script, and estimated the original script was around five hundred pages long and heavily based on the video game ''The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim'' which had been released in 2011. 

The game was designed on the Dungeon Siege III engine, which was heavily modified from its original form to display the intended graphics, and while Obsidian was granted access to the show's library of Maya assets (everything from [[Season Five]] onwards) all of these elements had to be re-created via Flash for the game's own engine, or reverse engineered entirely, such was walking sequences. To accomodate Matt and Trey's famous re-writes, a system was designed early on to allow mouth animations to be generated live ingame as lines are spoken. Detailed designs for armor and fantasy elements were rejected in hopes of looking "crappier", as if built by the children themselves. 

First announced in December 2011 in Game Informer as '''South Park: The Game''', which suggested a radically different vision. [[Satan]] and the in-universe fictional [[Manbearpig]] figure prominently into the depicted characters, many of them boasting very different costumes to the final release, including [[Princess Kenny]] without her hood. Five classes are mentioned - Paladin, Wizard, Rogue, Adventurer and Jew, and references are made to a mission against the [[Ginger Kids]] to rescue Cartman's doll [[Polly Prissy Pants]] and a mission to obtain [[City Wok]] food. The boys appeared in screenshots to be part of the same team, which looks different from either Kingdom hub in the final game. References are also included to a large, winged monster boss, the return of [[Paris Hilton]] and a "vag blast", 'Christmas Town', a village that [[Mr. Hankey]] calls home, and a 'de-militarized zone' shared by Gnomes and Crab People.

Matt and Trey discussed at some point in development a security system, questioning how the main character would enter locked homes, which lead to the development of the episode "[[Insecurity]]" in [[Season Sixteen]], which dealt with home security systems. A variety of additional audio files related to [[Officer Barbrady]] seem to suggest a possible connected boss fight with him. The season finale "[[Obama Wins!]]" also introduced a joke where [[Morgan Freeman]] explains convoluted things in order to gain a freckle, a joke that would be repeated at the climax of ''South Park: The Stick of Truth'', though whether it was invented for the show or the game, we don't know yet.

The game's initial development partner and distributor was intended to be THQ, which had hoped to release the game in late 2012, but suffered from a variety of financial problems, and after delaying '''South Park: The Stick of Truth''', as it was titled in May 2012, THQ eventually collapsed, and its assets were ordered to be re-sold to other companies. Obsidian and South Park Digital Studios were not informed in advance that the games' distribution rights would be auctioned, and tried to oppose the decision legally, particularly as the distributions rights were intended to be exclusive, but these were still seen as legally transferable. The distribution for ''South Park: The Stick of Truth'' eventually sold to Ubisoft for $3.2 million dollars. 

The [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkZHv-9e2ro E3 2012 Trailer] contains many of the same design elements as the final game, ultimately depicts completely different scenes and suggests a slightly different storyline. The town is destroyed after an apocalyptic event involving [[Underpants Gnomes]], [[Vampire Kids]], [[Crab People]], and [[Hippies]] with the four main boys seeking out [[King Douchebag|the New Kid]]'s help to undo the damage and save the town, with an enormous [[Clyde Donovan]] destroying [[City Hall]] as the trailer's final tease, alongside footage of [[Woodland Critters]] as a summonable, and battles with Vampire Kids, Crab People, [[Ginger Kids]] and [[Stupid Spoiled Whores]]. Almost none of these elements appear in the final game.

During the initial promotion with THQ, it was also suggested that the game would support Microsoft Kinect in a variety of ways, including interacting directly with characters, as well as exclusive downloadable content for Xbox users, such as a [[Coon and Friends]]-themed superhero pack featuring a superhero outfit, weapon, and a special attack featuring [[Mysterion]], as well as a similar pack based on the episode "[[Good Times With Weapons]]", featuring [[Balrog]]. The superhero and ninja/samurai outfits would later be bundled with a spaceman costume as the pre-order bonus "Super Samurai Spaceman Pack", awarding each a buff - superhero for the start of battle, samurai on defeating an enemy, and spaceman for defense. Three story-based campaign missions were also mentioned.

Originally set for release during [[Season Seventeen]] in late 2013, the game was pushed back six months to its eventual final release date in March 2014, and had to be significantly retooled as a result, as Ubisoft found that many of Trey and Matt's original ideas were too complex. Matt and Trey admitted in later interviews that creating the game was much more complex than they had ever intended. 

The final only includes one direct references to [[Season Seventeen]] - a poster advertising [[Corey Lanskin]]'s Minecraft service. [[Jimbo's Guns]] actually retains it's original appearance in the final game, rather than the re-design from that season. Matt and Trey, however, built three episodes, the "[[Black Friday]]" trilogy around the upcoming game as well as ''Game of Thrones'', which lead into the game by introducing the boys' fantasy role-playing game, with many of them in their game outfits (save [[Paladin Kyle]]) and through the boys' plot around next generation video game consoles, gradually introducing game elements such as [[Princess Kenny]]'s claim to noble blood. The story arc conclud with the [[Grand Wizard King]] suggesting the boys don't need video games and could just play with "a stick", before seguing in a promotion for ''Stick of Truth'', which [[Paladin Butters the Merciful]] advises players not to pre-order. (The season ended with the unrelated "[[The Hobbit]]".)

A collector's edition was also made available for pre-order, called the "Grand Wizard Edition" featuring the game itself, a map of the South Park kingdom (distinct from that in the final game) a six-inch Grand Wizard King Cartman figure from Kidorobot, and four unique costumes in the 'Ultimate Fellowship Pack' - the Necromancer Sorcerer with increased fire damage, the 'Rogue Assassin' with extra gold, the 'Ranger Elf' with higher weapon damage, and the 'Holy Defender' to increase defense during battle.

Despite jokes about the game's delays even within the show itself, it was completed by February 12th, 2014, and was finally released two weeks later on March 4th, 2014, although [[PewDePie]] began releasing video play throughs from an advance copy a few days before, revealing the opening scenes as well as the mission to retrieve [[Tweek Tweak]], and the revelation that his family's coffee may contain methamphetimine. This playthrough, and those like it, came to become the inspiration for the next season's episodes "[[REHASH|#REHASH]]" and [[HappyHolograms|#HappyHolograms]], which featured PewDePie as a guest star, and these reactions were an important factor in gauging criticism to address for [[South Park: The Fractured but Whole|future projects, including a sequel!]]

While the game was initially released for the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, and the PC via Steam, a re-mastered version for the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 (or for PC) will be included completely free with the release of the upcoming sequel "[[South Park: The Fractured but Whole]]".