Obsidian Entertainment were contacted directly by South Park Studios.

Obsidian Entertainment's gaffer Feargus Urquhart has revealed that the developer was coveted by the licensor itself — as opposed to a big publisher — in order to get the upcoming South Park: The Game RPG tie-in off the ground.

“When the South Park project came up, it was kind of a big surprise,” Urquhart told Game Informer magazine. “What was interesting about it was we were contacted directly by South Park. Normally, how it works, is usually that a publisher calls us and say, ‘hey, we have a licence, we want you to make a game.’

“But this time, it was the licence holder themselves. And it was exciting because it’s great to work on licenced product, but to actually be working initially straight for the licensor, it meant that the guys who it was their baby were the ones who were going to be telling what they want. And on top of it, it was great once we started working with them was finding out how much into games they were.”

The studio quickly teamed up with series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

“When we first met with Matt and Trey, it was really first figuring out what do they know, what do we know, what do they really want from a game? And they ended up talking about games in general. They both play a ton of games, Trey’s put 80, 90, 100 hours into Oblivion and things like that.

“And so a lot of it was saying, ‘what’s their vision for South Park in relation to all the games that we’ve played?’ And what was interesting, and what it came down to, was really talking about what’s that first step? What’s that first thing we need to do to make sure that this can really be a South Park game? And by the end of the meeting, it just came down to if we can’t make the game look like South Park, then why make it.”

South Park is known for its outrageous tone, but Urquhart said that Obsidian is not worrying about ratings boards just yet.

“The first thing is this needs to be South Park, it needs to be outrageous, it needs to have crazy crap in it, it needs a lot of swearing, it needs a lot of children dying, it needs things that happen that are just crazy. And then if we have problems, we’ll deal with them," he continued.

"But the goal is let’s not restrict ourselves right now, let’s make it South Park, make it nuts. And then, as they say, cross that bridge when we come to it.”

You can learn more about Obsidian's take on South Park in the latest issue of Game Informer magazine.