Santa Monica Studio has announced more than 60 different accessibility settings in the upcoming God of War Ragnarok. They’ve brought some of them across from the PC version of God of War following player feedback. These settings focus purely on the user interface, controller settings, and combat and interaction systems; there are more to come for other aspects of the game.
How God of War Ragnarok accessibility has been improved
God of War PC came with features like an auto sprint, always on reticle, and options to turn off aim stance and shield stance. All of these will be included in Ragnarok, but plenty of new features are also included. God of War featured options for players to change the size of the in-game text, but these options have been improved for Ragnarok. There are now Default and XX-Large UI Text sizes to make it easier to read the text from a distance, while icon size can also be adjusted. Santa Monica has also “invested heavily” in improving the game’s subtitles and captions, and these options include:
- Subtitle and Caption Size: We have increased our minimum text size and added new scaling. This includes an extra-large text size to make subtitles and captions more readable. We have also dedicated a larger text area to match TV and movie subtitle standards.
- Subtitle and Caption Colors: You can adjust the colors of speaker names, subtitle body, and captions individually. You will be able choose between seven different colors.
- Speaker Names (Retained options from 2018): As in God of War (2018), you can show or hide speaker names. You can set this size independent from the UI text size.
- Captions: With expanded sound effects captions, we’ve added several new ways to understand in-game sound. We’ve added captions to both cinematics and gameplay to provide a rich understanding of the soundscape of the world. You can also enable captions for critical gameplay information to assist with puzzles and narrative understanding.
- Subtitle and Caption Background Blur: We’ve included options to allow for blurring the background behind subtitles and captions to make them more readable over complex scenes.
- Subtitle Background (Retained options from 2018): In addition to blur, we’ve included options to darken the background behind subtitles for better readability on snow. High contrast backing includes multiple opacity settings for you to select from.
- Direction Indicator: Critical gameplay sounds now have an optional direction indicator which shows the direction a sound is coming from. To assist with puzzles that have sound cues, this indicator will help you orient towards the source of an important sound.
There’s also a high-contrast color mode for the game itself. Players can choose to add a distinct color to targets, enemies, NPC characters, traversal paint, special effects, and several different item types to make them more distinct against the background. The environments can also be desaturated so objects of interest are more obvious.
Controller options will feature a “wide range” of preset layouts but also the option to swap out individual buttons, including alternative configurations for complex actions that need more than one button, like Spartan Rage, Navigation Assist, and Quick Turn. Navigation Assist is a feature that will orientate the player towards their next objective. Actions like gap jumping, vaulting, and mantling can be automated. Finally, there will be the option to turn on audio cues for when the player is near an interact icon.
Santa Monica has promised more details on their accessibility features for other aspects of the game like combat/aim assists, puzzle/minigame assists, HUD adjustments, camera tuning, and auto pick up soon.
In other news, Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams is now narrative director on Marvel’s Wolverine. Elsewhere, Playstation Network results in more than $14 billion in sales.
