South Park The Fractured But Whole Gets Harder if Your Character is Black

South Park The Fractured But Whole Controversy!

South Park has never shied away from causing or creating controversy. The grass is also green. Yes, not exactly a massive revelation, however, one perhaps just worth reminding yourself of before you read any further.

I vaguely recall an episode of South Park where the running theme was ‘I’m not touching that with a pole’. I kind of feel the same way about this.

South Park The Fractured But Whole is one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Following the highly successful (and much better than any one expected) Stick of Truth, the hype has been building around the sequel since.

We did report a little while ago that the developers were expressing a concern that the new game wasn’t offensive enough. Well, if this new rumour is confirmed to be true, they don’t have to worry too much about that.

So, how exactly is picking a black character harder?

Well, apparently, the developers have decided to base the game’s difficulty on the colour of your characters skin. Yes, if you pick a white character the game is set to easy and if you pick a black character it is set to ‘very difficult’.

This is a rather ‘unique’ take on a difficulty scale and one would imagine, a rather satirical one. I am, at this point, being very careful in picking my wording to elaborate any further on the point. I did check to see if the report, via Kotatu, appears to be genuine. Yes, it is genuine or at the very least, bears little to suggest it isn’t.

The bottom line is that it has people talking about the game and from a sales aspect, that’s never a bad thing. Let’s face it too, who is left for South Park to offend?

The irony as I see it from a critical stand point is that it’s a double-edged sword. If you complain about the use of skin colour as a difficulty measure, you could be accused, by proxy, of denying that the colour of your skin changes anything in life. If you find the concept comedic, then the social justice warriors are going to be labelling you a racist of some description.

It’s deliciously contrived and I love it.

For those of you intending to play this on PC, here’s a link to the specifications.

South Park The Fractured But Whole is set for release on October 17th. May God have mercy on your soul!