SOCIAL JUSTICE WORRIERS
South Park: The Fractured But Whole has a strange, tense relationship with progressive ideology. There was a lot of controversy surrounding its ”difficulty setting" options, wherein difficulty is represented by the color of your skin: The darker your skin, the higher the challenge.
As it turns out, this option doesn't affect combat difficulty, but it does lead to some harsh comments from random characters. I chose the darkest skin available for my character. At one point early in the game, I walked into the police station and a cop shouted out, ”Who let this thug in here?" At another, a person sitting on a bench commented, ”South Park sure is getting urban," as I walked by.
Later in the game, a meeting with school counselor Mr. Mackey leads to you choosing your gender identity. You eventually get to define your sexual orientation, your race and your ethnicity. I was able to play the game as a pansexual agender black American, which is pretty stunning compared to what's possible for player choice in most games.
Of course, it's South Park, so it all has to come back to jokes — and those jokes sometimes cut in the wrong direction. The Fractured But Whole attempts to keep responses to these choices light and positive. For example, Cartman told my character that they ”don't look like a boy or a girl; you're kind of like Prince!" That's ... cool, I guess!
But the game was constantly jabbing at me for even caring about this stuff. The aforementioned meeting with Mr. Mackey balloons into a lengthy question-and-answer session where he tries to get every detail about your gender and sexuality right while seeming exasperated. And elsewhere, the PC Principal grants you ”social justice certification" and teaches you how to spot microaggressions in battle, which he then explains in detail. It feels like there was a tug of war in development of The Fractured But Whole between being surprisingly accepting and forward-thinking, but also making sure it's all still one big joke.
After all, you can't care too much. That wouldn't be cool.
h I see someone mentuioned 30 hours...man that's way too long. I thought Stick of Truth was just about to overstay its welcome and then it ended. If it's twice the length that could really end up hurting the game for me.
