Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and to celebrate the occasion, PlayStation's Santa Monica Studio has emerged from its development of God of War Ragnarök to discuss what they're doing to make John Kratos more accessible to players. According to lead UX designer Mila Pavlin, God of War Ragnarök will have over 60 gameplay adjustment options to suit any player's needs.
"Not only have we redesigned our UI to allow for more flexibility and readability," wrote Pavlin over on PlayStation Blog, "but we have also rebuilt controller remapping from the ground up and added more customization to our combat and interaction systems. We have retained all our accessibility features from 2018’s God of War and expanded upon them to include more than 60 ways to adjust gameplay to best suit your style and needs."
Some of Ragnarök's accessibility features will return from the PC release of the first God of War. Things like auto-sprint, persistent reticle, and options for aim and block style all make their appearance in Ragnarök, but that's merely the start. Ragnarök will also add a massive collection of subtitle and caption improvements that will allow players to adjust text size, color, add specific colors to identify speakers, add captions for sound effects and cinematics, and even change the size of in-game icons.
Controllers can also be completely remapped in Ragnarök. The game will come with several preset layouts, but custom mapping for every button is available as well. For certain complex actions, Ragnarök will have a list of alternatives for players to remap to.
High contrast mode will make an appearance in God fo War Ragnarök, which changes characters, items, and enemies to appear in solid colors that can be adjusted to user preference. There's also a setting to disable high contrast mode during cinematics so it doesn't ruin the movie-like experience.
And to honor Accessibility Awareness Day, Sony remade the original reveal trailer with audio descriptions.
God of War Ragnarök arrives later this year.