Respawn Entertainment and EA have revealed a slew of accessibility settings that will ship with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor when it launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC later this week.
“By embracing the disability community mantra, ‘Nothing About Us Without Us,’ accessibility champions from Respawn gathered direct community feedback to inform their accessibility design choices and options,” explained EA’s programme lead for accessibility Morgan Baker in a blog post on the company’s website.
“We realise that creating accessible player experiences is a never-ending journey though, and I am proud of the team’s progress and ceaseless dedication.”
“We realise that creating accessible player experiences is a never-ending journey though, and I am proud of the team’s progress and ceaseless dedication.”
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has five difficulty options, ranging from Story Mode to Jedi Master, that can be switched on the fly as long as the player isn’t locked in combat. The game’s controls will also be entirely remappable, allowing gamer’s to alter controller inputs to best suit their needs.
Respawn has also included an option that allows players to slow down the movements of the protagonist, enemies, and the game world, in order to make both combat and platforming more accessible to those with different reaction times,
“The Slow Mode has been a particularly exciting feature to work on because of its versatility,” said Respawn’s senior director of development Jonas Lundqvist. “It primarily started out as a feature that we thought would be helpful in combat, but quickly realised that it could be beneficial for anything that had a timing component.”
On top of that, players will have the option of turning on an auto-targeting system for the camera, and a navigation assist setting that makes use of an audio pings.
Further customisation settings targeted towards players with visual impairments will allow users to scale the size of the HUD, and alter colour profiles and colour blind settings. Both field of view, and the level of camera shake experienced during gameplay are also adjustable.
“The game offers accessibility not just through options, but also by conscious design choices,” said Baker. For example, artists were mindful of their colour palette for certain experiences, and key elements within the map are dual-coded to visually convey the same information in several ways.”
Players will also be able to toggle on and adjust the level of detail present in subtitles and closed captions, which can be customised to include directional indicators.
Moving forward EA and Respawn intend to bring further accessibility options to Jedi: Survivor, including menu narration, and a high contrast colour mode. “We are far from being finished,” concluded Baker, “but these types of design choices Respawn made are illustrative of how we want to approach making games for all our players.”.
The game launches on April 28, and IGN’s review will arrive a little earlier on at 8am Pacific on April 26. Respawn has already shared some details about what fans can expect, of course, including the tease of a beloved Star Wars planet.
In our preview of the game, IGN said: Our “main takeaway from roughly five hours with the upcoming sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, is that it felt like [we were] systematically crossing off the issues I had with Fallen Order.”
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
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