Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores expansion launches tomorrow, bringing an expanded world that takes to the skies and dives deeper on underwater travel, the latter of which was already part of the game. In preparation, Forbidden West has received a 13GB update including several new accessibility features for PS5 players, one of which is called Thalassophobia mode.
Thalassophobia is the fear of the ocean. I don’t have it – I find scuba diving incredibly peaceful and fulfilling, and I’ve always felt at home on the water, but I understand the fear. Playing Subnautica is, for me, a terrifying experience, because it realises the fear that thalassophobes have, which is that the sea is unfathomably big, deep, and dangerous. I was more concerned with the dangerous part (I don’t do well with survival games), but I have plenty of other phobias, which is why I appreciate this accessibility mode so much.
Forbidden West’s Thalassophobia mode improves underwater ambient visibility and allows you to breathe indefinitely. Usually, players would have to unlock the diving mask to swim without fear of drowning, but this feature negates that to take some of the anxiety out of the mechanic. The increased visibility also takes some out of the tension from being underwater, because there’s less of that feeling of not knowing what’s out there.
I love when games do this. It reminded me of Grounded, which I didn’t play specifically because I am terrified of insects and did not want to see gigantic ones, especially spiders. If I saw a giant spider looking at me, I could have a panic attack. Arachnophobia is a fairly common phobia, which is why Obsidian added an Arachnophobia Safe Mode and prompts you to either turn it off or on when you first start the game. Depending on how you tweak the settings, you’ll see anything from a full, terrifying spider, to a legless, still scary spider, to two textureless circles with red eyes. That last setting is the one I would choose.
It’s a good thing when games have options for players to take out things that scare them, as long as those things are just flavour. Horizon Forbidden West’s story and world don’t suffer from their underwater sections being easier to travel through, and Grounded doesn’t suffer from giant spiders not being grotesque, horrifying creatures. A problem does arise when players start to demand the removal of every difficult situation or theme in a game, as they did for Boyfriend Dungeon.
Stacey Henley did a deep dive into the discourse around people wanting a stalker to be removed entirely from the game, but the long and short of it is that people asking for that missed the point. The game warns you that it will contain what it contains in a trigger warning at the top – to me, that is as adequate an accessibility feature as any. The character is part of the plot and message of the game. It is not something that should be skipped, and if it makes you uncomfortable, you are warned about it beforehand. It’s the same thing as playing Subnautica if you have thalassophobia. You were warned!
Issues like this are separate from accessibility for people with phobias, but somehow they still seem to arise when people talk about accessibility discourse. I believe developers should make their games more accessible, especially if they are relatively simple changes like increasing ambient light and accelerating your access to breathing underwater. Accessibility doesn’t mean detracting from the game, it means bringing your game to more people. I’m glad that they’re doing so with Horizon Forbidden West, and hopefully, this prompts other big developers to consider taking similar steps.