New World: Aeternum Review and Blind Accessibility Overview

Note:  This is a review on the open beta for New World: Aeternum and does not reflect the final state of the game.  If anything changes, I will absolutely update this review.

When New World came out in 2021, I put a lot of hours into it.  I put a lot of hours into the beta before that.  It was safe to say I loved the game.  An RPG with crafting and survival elements?  Count me in!  I didn’t mind that the game dropped us in the middle of a story that seemed to already be in progress and needed to be figured out.  Over time I felt like I got behind my friends, behind to even be able to survive in PVP and when my group left, it was boring to play alone.  I tried to come back with the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, but I still felt the same way.

When New World: Aeternum was announced, I told myself I’d participate in the beta and see what was different.  Maybe it would re-ignite my love of the game.  Here I was dropped into a fully fleshed out story where we know something is going on from the start.  We also kinda even know what it is!  It felt smoother and I had an easier time investing myself.  It felt as good to play alone as it did with a crew!

And then I saw the expanded accessibility menu!  I’ve since found a lot of these options were added with the Rise of the Angry Earth but I haven’t seen anyone in the accessibility community talk about them so I’ll go over them here.  But first let me provide screenshots of the accessibility menu from the open beta as well as a text version.  All of these open in new tabs.

Accessibility Menu Screenshot1
Accessibility Menu Screenshot 2
Accessibility Menu Text Version

Character Creation

Character creation is part of what the game calls Game Entry Narration Assistance.  It will automatically start and will read popups and text to you as you go through character creation and all the lead in stuff to the game.  For example.  It tells you during the introduction cut scene what button to press to continue.  It will also tell you at times to press escape to go back.  It reads the tabs for character creation but not what’s under those tabs.  The game does have a random character creation, but I believe that blind and visually impaired people should have a narration assistance that allows them to create their own character!  Hopefully that’s something they are working on.

Name and Server Confirmation

New World does read your name you’ve typed in and tells you if it’s in use or not.  When you have a name that’s not in use and you’re ready to go it will confirm your server information. This is all narrated and is followed up by a loading screen that actually narrates it’s loading!

Tutorial

Unfortunately, that is where the Entry Narration Assistance ends.  A popup is read that says the tutorial has no narration and asks if you want to continue.  Beyond this point the only narration in the game is world chat and a short little post on how to use chat and proximity voice chat.

So it’s at this point I have to say that while New World Aeternum is clearly working on it’s accessibility, it’s not there yet as even the Entry Narration Assistance needs work and seems to be at almost the same state it was when it was originally put in the game.  Still, there are many features that can be useful to the blind or visually impaired player.

Volume Controls

( Note – The Options Menu is not read in the game.  To change anything you will need sighted assistance as of the time of this review. )

There are separate volume controls so you can set your mix however is best for your play style.  I love this because sometimes I just want to hear the environmental noises and not the music.  Or maybe I want to play my own music.

Dialogue

New World Dialogue is voiced!  Unfortunately, your options are not.  However, the game does not time your responses and this leads me to believe that you might be able to OCR them.  I have not had a chance to get someone to test this at the time of this review though.  Also, if you leave narration on for the world chat, it will talk over spoken dialogue.  I had to turn mine down so I could even hear what was being said.

Target Lock

This is a wonderful addition!  It works like target lock does in most games both in the main game environment and PVP.  You lock on one target and if you need to change it you hit another button to do so.  For me on PC it was scroll wheel click for lock on and roll the wheel to switch.  Any of these options that are bound to a key press or mouse can be remapped.  You will need sighted assistance for that.

Movement

There are a lot of accessibility options for movement!  Not all of them are in the Accessibility Menu either.  Some of them are in the Game Menu!

Freeform Movement – This option turns the character in the direction of your movement button input.  No walking into a fight backwards!

Smartcast – Has a bunch of options about who and how to heal but the ones that stood out to me was use aimed abilities with a single button input instead of one to aim and one to cast.  Also, you can set the style where you cast on press or release of a button.

Mount – Your mount also has some stuff that is helpful.  Like mount auto follows roads while you’re mounted and auto running!

These options can be helpful down the road but there’s a lot that needs to be done first before we get there.  First off, things you need to gather are not labeled nor are read by text to speech.  Inventory, crafting menus and many other things in game would have to be read by it also before you could even really play.   There needs to be a navigation assistance that I already have ideas brewing in my head about.  Not to mention some expedition mechanics would have to be made accessible.  I believe that could be done with audio easily.  Would have to be on a per expedition basis as each one presents its own story and runs differently.  Also PVP which we only got to see the 3 versus 3 version and not the 20 on 20 large scale war in the beta.

Can I say New World is playable? No, not yet.  But I think that it absolutely could get there.