South Park: The Fractured But Whole’s Crazy Difficulty Slider Was Actually A Joke

You may recall last week how we reported on a neat feature in South Park: The Fractured But Whole where the darker your character's skin became, the more difficult the game would be. It was a neat idea, but it turns out it was all for naught, as Ubisoft has deemed the whole thing "a joke."

The skin tone slider is still in the game, where you can go from lightish white to dark tones with just a few movements on the controller, so that's still the same. However, it's not tied in to difficulty in any way.

Cartman even addresses this within the game, noting that the choice you make "doesn't affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life." But it won't have an affect on how you play.

Ubisoft didn't offer an official statement regarding the difficulty slider, but did confirm with GamesRadar that it was nothing more than a joke. It's simply a cosmetic change, at best. This conflicts somewhat with what the developers told Eurogamer; originally, they stated that the difficulty would change how much money you earn, and how other characters talk to you, so we're a little confused.

The feature was at the center of much debate last week, especially within the WWG community, so why Ubisoft doesn't actually go through with it is beyond us. I mean, you can probably still adjust the difficulty to make the game tough if you prefer, no matter what your skin tone is. But it would've been pretty cool to keep it in place, just to see how much your character struggled.

Nevertheless, South Park: The Fractured But Whole continues to be coming together nicely, with a character customization system that offers thousands of possible character variations, as well as various hero types that you can choose from, each with their own unique gameplay tropes. And we have a good feeling that adjustable difficulty will be included somehow, so if you want a challenge taking on the likes of Cartman's hero (or Professor Chaos, obviously), you can do so.

We'll see how the game fares when it ships on October 17th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. We're eager to see what choices we can make in the game – even if they don't always have consequences.