retooled stuff that we didn't like and we worked on the game longer than other people would've liked us to". Design During early discussions with Obsidian, Parker and Stone were adamant that the game should faithfully replicate the show's unique 2D-style visuals, which are based on cutout animation. Obsidian provided proofs of concept that they could achieve the South Park look; Stone and Parker were satisfied with this. The show is animated using Autodesk Maya, but Obsidian produced the game assets and animations in Adobe Flash. Skyrim was the game's initial influence and further inspiration came from the 1995 role-playing game EarthBound. Parker and Stone said that the blended 2D/3D visuals of Paper Mario and the silent protagonist Link from The Legend of Zelda series also provided inspiration for the design. The characters' costumes and classes are taken from the 2002 South Park episode "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers". Obsidian created various fantasy-styled items, armor, and weapons but Parker and Stone told them to "make it crappier" to create the impression that the children had found or made the objects themselves; weapons consisted of golf clubs, hammers, suction cup arrows and wooden swords, while bathrobes, oven mitt gloves, and towels worn as capes served as clothing. South Park studios provided Obsidian with access to the show's full archive of art assets, allowing Obsidian to include previously unused ideas, such as discarded Chinpokomon designs. Actors from the show provided voice work, and Obsidian was given access to South Parks audio resources, including sound effects, music, and the show's composer Jamie Dunlap. Describing the writing of a comedy script for a game in which lines of dialog may be heard repeatedly and jokes could appear dated, Stone said: We write jokes, and the jokes are funny. With a game, the fourth, fifth, sixth, 80th, 100 millionth time you've seen that joke it becomes not funny, then you lose faith in it, and then you question it, and you go round this emotional circle ... We've always liked fresh-baked stuff a little better but, with a video game, it doesn't work that way. But the game isn't just a collection of funny South Park scenes, hopefully it's more than that. Like the show, The Stick of Truth satirizes political and social issues including abortion, race relations, anal probes, drug addiction, sex, extreme violence, and poverty. Creative