Naughty Dog has detailed a whole range of accessibility options for the Last of Us II – and it’s a lot. Over 60 settings can be enabled and tweaked to suit the needs of a good deal of players, with factors like hearing, vision, and mobility issues the core focus.
A selection of presets are on offer out of the box for the general requirements around sound, vision, and mobility, so straight away these options can be toggled for things like text-to-speech, a large-scale HUD, awareness indicators, subtitle directions, lock-on/auto-targeting, and navigation and traversal assistance.
The hearing accessibility preset can includes elements like pointers for where sound is coming from
That’s by no means everything – it’s a fair few things, and you can find the full list here to find out just what needs Naughty Dog is catering to in its drive to make everyone as sad-confused as they did with the original Last of Us.
Of course, you don’t have to rely on these presets and those 60-plus options can be tweaked on and off as you might require – or not. There’s also a focus on opening controls up to as wide an audience as possible, with completely reconfigurable control schemes available.
While the motor accessibility preset can help players with a physical or mobility disability
It’s not just a case of shifting what button you have to press – swipes of the Dual Shock 4’s touchpad can be configured, as can a shaking motion. Additionally the requirement to hold buttons down can be modified, to say a rapid-tap, or a toggle function.
Camera assist, auto weapon swap, a sliding scale for the strength of your reticule’s lock-on – it appears Naughty Dog has learned a lot from previous titles, Uncharted 4 in particular, and is putting those lessons to good use. More of this, please.
