South Park: The Fractured But Wholes’ difficulty slider will change players’ skin colour. As reported by Eurogamer, the game’s character creator will have an effect on gameplay, altering how NPCs respond and affecting how much money characters will make.
Gameplay captured at a preview event shows that creating a South Park character with lighter skin is classified as “easy”, while dark skin is “very difficult”.
“Don’t worry, this doesn’t affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life,” South Park‘s resident troublemaker, Eric Cartman, tells the player.
Characters will also respond to the player’s gender identification, which includes male, female and “other”. After choosing one of these options, players can specify if they are cisgender or transgender.
South Park is a series known for political commentary, and South Park: The Fractured But Whole continues this trend within character creation. Players will get to see how this all plays out when the game releases on October 17.
Comments
14 responses to “New South Park Game Gets Harder If You Play A Black Character”
Holy shit haha! These guys don’t give a fuck about anything.
They do give a fuck … that’s the whole point.
This in essence was my point, albeit delivered with perhaps not enough context. I’m coming from the angle of the vast majority of creatives completely avoiding anything remotely controversial. The fact that their bold enough to do something like this is what I meant when saying ‘they don’t give a fuck’. They clearly do care about the issues to make this sort of statement, albeit satirically.
What’s really interesting about this is that a game mechanic becomes a political argument. They have made their point not through some authored part of the story, but in the design of the game itself. It’s also a case where the mechanic has a real world explanation, so it’s all kinda neat and tidy. Makes sense.
And remember when the Rust guys made the character skin colour random and fixed? Remember all the people that got really annoyed because they might have to play a black character? I feel like these people will be very annoyed by this. So that’s cool.
Yeah, our ratings board is gonna have a field day.
Why? It seems like they’re trying to make a point about racism and inequality. If the game got harder for white characters instead, maybe they would have a problem with it, but I don’t think its going to upset them as it is.
Oh yeah, i see the commentary, but will our draconian ratings board pull a random Pauline Hanson and say “I dont like it” like they have before.
Already has passed with an R18.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this game might be going through a review.
It’s strange that the games rating isn’t on the classification website yet but the new Wolfenstein and Evil Within games, which were rated later are.
Brilliant.
Yep, total genius from the game designers, and possibly Matt/Trey. Very clever twist on the ole game difficulty setting. It can only work with a South Park game, though. Can’t see other games adopting the same idea. 😉
hahaha, i like these guys now
*Head Asploded*
Seriously brilliant, and brave.
Australia will let you play the CENSORED R18+ version of the game. DERPITE DERP DURP DURRRRP………………………….