The New 'South Park' Game Gets Harder When Your Character Is Transgender or Darker Skinned

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, have always been genius when it comes to satirical critiques of politics and society.

In their newest South Park video game, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, skin color and gender identity correlate with how difficult the game mode will be. This was revealed by journalists who played the early-access demo of the game. They reported that players get a "difficulty" slider on the character screen. Picking 'easy mode' gives the character pale white skin while picking 'very difficult' mode gives them dark skin.  

Additionally, you can choose to be a nonbinary or transgender character. If so, the game is more difficult. Your character will actually have to deal with homophobia and transphobia throughout the entire game.

PinkNews perfectly describes what happens if you don’t pick a cisgender character:

In a scene early in the game, school counsellor Mr Mackey asks the player to pick a gender  for the character – either ‘Male, Female or Other’ – despite the same player character being exclusively male in a previous game.

The counsellor explains: “As your counsellor you can talk to me about anything. I understand you want to talk about gender.

“I’m highly trained in sex issues, you don’t have to be afraid. It’s really simple. When you want to talk about your sex, you can start by simply saying I’m a boy or a girl or other.”

If the player picks ‘female’, Mr Mackey is confused, as the main character in the previous South Park video game was a boy.

The player then has to pick whether they are a ‘cisgender’ or ‘transgender’ girl.

If ‘transgender’ is picked Mr Mackey explains: “Well, this is a shock. Perhaps we should clarify exactly what you mean by a girl.

“Someone like your classmate, she’s what we would call a cisgender girl, meaning she was born a girl. There are also some people in this world who identify as something different from what they were born with, and we call those people transgender.

“Do you identify as being cisgender or transgender?”

If a player picks transgender, the counsellor adds: “That’s fine, I didn’t know you were in the middle of a… can you hang on a minute? I need to call your parents.”

Speaking to the parents, he says: “I know she’s a girl, but she just let me know that she’s a transgender girl. It doesn’t matter, of course, not… no, you’re right, she was definitely a girl the whole time [in the previous game.”

If ‘other’ is picked, the counsellor says: “This is a shocker, but there’s nothing wrong with not identifying as a binary gender. You can be whatever sex you want, OK, even if it’s none. That’s fine!”

If a player picks one of the trans or nonbinary options immediately after leaving the office, the player is attacked by ‘rednecks’ in a truck.

They scream “well, well, well, if it ain't a transgender girl[ or ‘one of them gender neutrals’]? We don’t take kindly to your types around here. Let’s welcome this thing to our town!”

The battle does not happen if you pick a cisgender boy or girl.

Given how South Park has always been known to make political commentaries, this is far from a surprise. Though they made some transphobic comments in the past, it is really nice to see them critiquing gender norms in a humorous way without being offensive.

Watch the moment this character picks their gender below.