South Park: The Fractured But Whole – making life harder

The new South Park game is more difficult to play depending on the colour of your skin, and if you’re a transgender character.

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The South Park TV show has been making uncomfortably accurate social satire for years, but this is the first time it’s done so through the medium of video game difficulty levels.

As revealed in our preview of South Park: The Fractured But Whole the game has a difficulty slider, just like a lot of games, but the harder you make it the darker your player character’s skin gets.

As Cartman helpfully points out: ‘This doesn’t affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life.’




Specifically, it changes how other non-player characters react to you, and how much money you get for ordinary tasks in the game.

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Once the game starts you also get the chance to pick your character’s gender, from the options male, female, and other – even though the first game only let you play as a boy.

This is all done through a conversation with South Park school counsellor Mr Mackey, who if you choose girl asks whether you mean cisgender or transgender.

If you pick ‘other’ then Mr Mackey warns you that things are going to be tougher on you, and in the demo we played as soon as you leave the school you’re set upon by a group of rednecks.

Video games usually run a mile from any kind of social commentary or satire, and are often criticised for their lack of race and gender options, but it looks like South Park is going to take on all those issues in its usual blunt fashion.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is due for release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on October 17.

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