The new game ‘South Park: The Fractured But Whole’ features various levels of difficulty, like most games do. Nothing out of the norm there.

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However, of course it wouldn’t be South Park if it didn’t stir up some kind of controversy and what makes this game different is that the difficulty of the game depends on the colour of the character’s skin.

During the character creation section of the game you select the level you want to play at, and the easier the game, the lighter the character’s skin and vice versa. You can see an example of this on the video below (skip to around 5.40):

Obviously there are going to be people kicking off about this new feature. But it is quite clearly supposed to be a social commentary criticising racism in modern society, which is backed up by Cartman saying:

Don’t worry, this doesn’t affect combat. Just every other aspect of your life. 

Later in the game it also makes a commentary on gender and in a conversation with Mr Mackey (Mkay) you have to choose from three options: male, female or other. After choosing one of these options the players can specify if they’re cisgender or transgender.

‘South Park’ is known for its political commentary and it appears that this is spilling over into its gaming releases too. If you’re interested in having a go, check it out on October 17^th.

In the meantime we’ve got the 21^st season of ‘South Park’ coming out next week. It looks like Trey Parker and Matt Stone are taking a back to basics approach.