The topic of race and how one is treated based on race has always been a fiercely debated topic, one that seems to be even more talked about in this day and age. Perhaps as a form of social commentary, it seems that the developers of South Park: The Fractured But Whole has introduced a very interesting difficulty slider to the game.
Now games offering up varying difficulty levels isn’t new, but what the developers have done is introduce a difficulty slider that changes based on the skin color of your character. Basically during the character creation process, gamers get to choose how their character looks, and skin tone is one of them. By sliding the slider to a lighter skin tone, it makes the difficulty level easier, while sliding to a darker skin tone makes the game harder.
This difficulty comes in the form of how much money your character can earn during the course of gameplay, and the way other characters speak to you/treat you during the game. It doesn’t just stop at race either and it seems that the game touches on the topic of sexuality, where gamers can choose to play as a male, female, and it even goes further where you get to identify yourself as cisgender or transgender.
This definitely reflects what’s being talked about today, although whether or not you think social commentary has a place in video games is an entirely different debate, but for those who are open to the idea, South Park: The Fractured But Whole is set for a release come 17th of October. In the meantime you can check out the “Let’s Play” videos of the game in the videos above and below.
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