You know how real life016 Archivesbe more difficult for people of color? Well now you can experience that "realism" in Matt Stone and Trey Parker's next South Parkgame, too, I guess.
The upcoming South Park: The Fractured But Wholegame correlates your character's skin color to the game's level of difficulty. Yup.
Eurogamergot its hands on The Fractured But Wholeand published a video of a play-through of the beginning in the game, including the character creation process where you pick your character's hairstyle, clothing, makeup, and skin color.
Skin color is tied to how you experience certain aspects of the game -- the lighter your skin color, the more money you can make; the darker your skin color, the harder it will be to earn money, and non-player characters in the game (NPCs) will respond differently to you. It's the most South Parkmove of all South Parkmoves.
SEE ALSO: Superheroes arise in 'South Park: The Fractured But Whole'Here's what it looks like in the game:
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Ubisoft confirmed (and the character Eric Cartman tells players while on the skin color page) that changing your character's skin color affects how characters interact with you and how much money you make, but doesn't affect combat.
"Skin color does not affect combat difficulty or any other aspect of gameplay difficulty," a Ubisoft spokesperson said. "It’s a joke."
The developers' intention is clear: it's social satire on what life is like for minorities, as compared to white people. Although this is a salient piece of social commentary, it still detracts from any person of color who might want to play as a character that reflects how they look.
The appeal of video games, especially role-playing games, is the agency it allows players to feel. They get to embody a character similar or different from themselves and experience a world with the same options as everyone else.
Some Redditors responded to the news of this feature by echoing that sentiment.
The reactions of Eurogamer's Wilson and Bratt to the skin color/game difficulty portion of the game can only be described as uncomfortable. They get to it around the 5:40 mark.
Eurogamerreports that later in The Fractured But Whole, players get to identify their gender with the options male, female, or other, and then have to specify whether they are cisgender or transgender.
This isn't the first time South Parkhas had your character's appearance and identity inform interactions in the game.
This may be a part of South Park's desire to make fun of everyone and everything equally -- known to fans as the quintessential South Parkneutrality stance -- regardless of political correctness.
At the moment, we don't know the extent of how your character's skin color and gender identity affect the game, but we'll find out come Oct. 17 when the game releases to the world.
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