The gaming industry continues to do right by gamers with disabilities by putting accessibility features in upcoming games, including The Last Of Us Part I. Naughty Dog has given us an overview of the accessibility features that will be included in the remake of the 2013 classic PlayStation 3 title.
As Sony wrote in the PlayStation Blog, the studio took most of the features that were available in The Last Of Us Part II and expanded upon them. The two features that stand out the most are audio descriptions for cinematic cutscenes and haptic feedback for dialogue. Game director Mattew Gallant said the studio expanded upon those features to make the game even more accessible to blind and deaf players than in the original game.
Gallant explained that Naughty Dog worked with Descriptive Video Works, which has a stellar background in film, television, and even video game trailers (see God of War Ragnarök), to integrate audio descriptions into cutscenes and localized them into several supported languages to help blind players understand what is going on in the game’s story. Haptic feedback for dialogue, which started out as a prototype, emits vibrations through the PS5 DualSense controller so that players who are deaf or hard of hearing can feel the noise. In other words, they can feel the emphasis of the line’s delivery in conjunction with subtitles.
Gallant also touted other accessibility features that would greatly benefit players with vision needs. These include traversal audio cues, which alert players about an object they’ve come across that will help progress the story, and an enhanced listening mode that lets them scan for enemies — both are demonstrated in the accessibility trailer. Some of the other accessibility features include visual aids like the screen magnifier, which allows players to zoom in on any section of the screen with the DualSense touchpad, and motion sickness controls such as camera shake, motion blur, and a persistent white dot that can be adjusted to help alleviate the sensation. The PlayStation Blog post contains the full list of accessibility features.
The Last Of Us Part I will launch for PS5 on September 2.
