God of War: Ragnarök, the chapter that marks the end of the Nordic saga and the journey between the God of War (Kratos) and his disgruntled son (atreus), was the last major video game “tank” of the year. A narrative that reflects the complex father-son relationshipunbridled action and a full accessibility mode to highlight, so much so that it received a distinction at the recent The Game Awards 2022.

When starting the game on PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, the first contact will be with a menu with different accessibility settings. From this section, the player will be able to choose between visual, auditory, motor aids or for people with reduced mobility.

Accessibility in video games, by encouraging anyone to be able to play despite a functional limitation or disability, is one of the great battles that the electronic entertainment industry is currently facing.

One of the companies that has bet the most on this in recent times with games of the caliber of The Last of US Part I and II or Ratchet and Clankamong others, there was Sony PlayStation with two of its main studios: Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studios.

Its top game for this year’s end and recent winner of six categories at The Game Game Awards, the long-awaited God of War Ragnarok, is no exception to this rule that is gaining more and more ground in the gaming industry.

Why is accessibility in video games so important? Basically, it allows anyone to enjoy the experience regardless of whether they have a functional limitation or a disability.

“The technology behind accessibility for God of War Ragnarok was something we started from day one. We went back to the 2018 game and realized that we were missing many components, things that just weren’t available to players that we’re preventing them from playing. So we brought gamers, you know, community people from all walks of life and asked them: What are the things that are keeping you from playing? Mila Pavlinuser experience manager of Sony Santa Monica, to the Clarin newspaper.

After working with artists with disabilities, Mila Pavlin has found accessibility something that should be exploited in game development. In her early years she worked on educational and even mobile phone titles within the peripheral company Razer.

His main interests, according to his account, were always focused on help people from different communities, understand how people interact with gamesunderstand how hardware and software affect the experience, and study how to make games as fun as possible for as many people as possible.

Therefore, God of War Ragnarok it has 60 accessibility options that the player can activate and which are divided into visual, auditory, motor aids or for people with reduced mobility.

During the development, the programmers are constantly monitored with the aim of integrating various accessibility features so that the designers can include them in the game.

“We started with text size, scaling things down to be easier to read, making sure we had better subtitles, and then working on all sort of core engineering for the different features, like keyboard remapping, which you can probably see for the PC version (2018),” he highlighted.

According to Milan Pavlin, adapting the first God of War into its computer version was a “step forward” in terms of learning the graphics engine to ensure it made the leap to Ragnarok for the next-generation PlayStation 5 console.

God of War Ragnarok: accessibility in combat

If there is one thing that has characterized the video game saga, it is the violence and bloody action. As Kratos, god of war, we’ll have to face all kinds of enemies from Norse mythology, both with the Leviathan’s Ax and with the Blades of Chaos.

At the moment of combat, for example, the player is faced with visual, sensory (the haptic buttons of the DualSense joystick vibrate) or auditory for players with hearing impairments that determine in various ways which button to press at the right moment. .

You can also adjust the camera so that when you fight an enemy it automatically focuses, even when you swing your axe, so the player can’t focus on anything but the fight.

To make it easier for you to navigate through the immensity of the map, the largest in the saga, from the menu of God of War: Ragnarok it is even possible to enable assistance to find all kinds of points of interest and objects that will help you progress through the story.

Similarly, AI can help make puzzles, such as finding a way around obstacles, easier or allow for a longer time to solve.

Contrary to what the average gamer might believe, these accessibility features don’t affect the overall difficulty of the game, they simply “help” make the experience inclusive for all players.

“As I look to the future of accessibility in Santa Monica, we would like to continue to push the boundaries of accessibility. low vision and blind gaming. Players have a whole world here that they want to explore, and we’re only scratching the surface of what we can do,” says Pavlin.

“I would like to get to the point where a visually impaired or blind gamer can explore and have the joy of understanding every moment of our game in the same profound way as a non-disabled gamer. As an industry we will have to work to build the technology, build the engineering base to make sure we can do that,” he summed up.

God of War Ragnarok was released on November 9 for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles. The game has three versions: Standard for PS4 ($59.99) and PS5 ($69.99) and Digital Deluxe Edition ($79.99). 99).

SL