In the recent months, Ubisoft has been steadily putting out more information about the game. The latest announcement yesterday is one of the most interesting, and very South Park-like, features we've ever seen.
Like most games on today's market, there is a difficultly slider. You can play the game on easy or hard mode, and variations in-between. But here's the kicker: the difficultly level changes your character's skin tone. Eurogamer was given an early copy of the game to review and show off the character customization. You've got the standard stuff. Facial hair. Make-up. But watch the video around the 5:40 mark. When you get to the difficulty screen you'll notice that the easy settings will turn your character Caucasian. As you move up on the scale, your skin will change to darker shades, eventually to Black/African American. During the process, Eric Cartman will explain the sliding scale of difficultly: "Don't worry, this doesn't affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life."
The difficulty level will also affect how a character receives money and how other PC's talk to him/her.
Bold.
Later on when you select your gender, you'll go into a counseling session with Mr. Mackey. If you pick a non-male character (female, cisgender, or transgender), it'll update your Stick of Truth backstory and make your new character canon. The tone and approach of this is just as intriguing as the difficulty slider. I know this isn't the first game to introduce multi-gender characters, but from a big-box studio like Ubisoft, this is an amazing step forward.
So yes. The internet is flipping out about this newest feature. And most of the reactions have been positive. There will be the few naysayers who want to be a white character on the hardest setting, but the social commentary is appropriate for this game. It's part of the South Park ideology to tackle these type of issues head on and not give a flying flip about the response. It's also very much in line with the superhero/comic book saga, which The Fractured But Whole is focusing on. POC superheroes are few, and usually badly stereotyped. Being a POC hero in South Park could mirror the journey of a POC hero in a comic book - a difficult trek to reach the top, or even just to be noticed!
I'm anxious to see what else this game has in store for us. This feels like a game that I will be streaming a lot of, and holding discussions on.
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