Sony’s first-party games have been applauded for their accessibility features and God of War Ragnarök is continuing that trend. To celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Santa Monica Studio detailed some of these new features, which far surpass the 2018 entry.
God of War Ragnarök Accessibility Features – Highlight Thread ?
SUBTITLES AND CAPTIONS
❄️ Subtitle and Caption Size: Increased minimum text size and added scaling up to XL size.
[1/16] pic.twitter.com/85z1QxAZb5
— Santa Monica Studio – God of War Ragnarök (@SonySantaMonica) May 19, 2022
Lead UX Designer Mila Pavlin spoke about them on the PlayStation Blog and Santa Monica Studio also tweeted a thread with the big highlights, starting with the features that were in the PC version. This includes an auto sprint, persistent reticle, and a toggle for blocking and aiming.
Most of the post, however, was filled with new features (with some returning ones peppered in). Caption and subtitles will be vastly improved this time around. Users can customize the size and color of them (and even assign one of the seven colors to certain characters) and blur the background behind the text for readability’s sake. There will also be a direction indicator that shows players where a sound is coming from and a toggle that gives an audio cue when the character is by something that can be interacted with. Text in general in the user interface can also be heavily customized.
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And speaking of visual assists, high contrast mode has made its way to God of War and adds options that paint characters all one color so that they stick out more easily. These colors can even be customized for each character, making certain faces even easier to spot, and also be toggled to only come on during gameplay. The background can even be further desaturated to make this contrast even more stark. Traversal paint, items, and special effects are also other parts that can be individually colored. This option has been notably included in games like The Last of Us Part II and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
God of War Ragnarök also has a few gameplay-oriented assists, too. There’s a navigational assist that points the character to the objective and traversal assistance that automates jumping over gaps, vaulting, and mantling, as well an additional setting that also applies to climbs, crawls, and times where the user has to squeeze through a crevice. There will also be a rebuilt controller remapping system that also allows for traditional button remapping as well as presets and complex moves that can be relegated to touchpad shortcuts.
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This is quite a lot and not even all of it. Santa Monica Studio that there are even more features that will be in the final game including various assists regarding combat, puzzles, the camera, the ability to automatically pick up items, HUD adjustments, and more and that more information will come later on. The team then concluded its list of accessibility options by rereleasing the game’s first big trailer with an audio description.
