At Playstation’s State of Play yesterday, God of War Sons of Sparta was shadow dropped to the excitement of many including the blind community. I have not finished the game, only just started so this is not a review but more of an accessibility look for my friends who have been asking. If you would like me to answer any questions about the game and any options for your accessibility needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I am here to help but unfortunately at this time due to real life, I am not at my normal setup and cannot provide screenshots of the accessibility menu like I normally would.
The biggest oversight I feel for the blind is a screen reader. There isn’t one. At all. This affects being able to even turn on what’s there for the blind to use such as audio cues which are off by default and the puzzle aim assist which I haven’t even encountered yet to see how it works. If we can’t turn on accessibility, we can’t use it. Nor can we use the audio glossary that the devs provided or switch our gear, change our skills or upgrade and enhance anything at campsites.
There is a volume mixer, which I feel is always good accessibility. We can turn down sound effects or music so we can hear things better. However, the audio cues in the glossary are so low I could barely hear them and without messing with the audio mixer at all, I couldn’t hear them in the game very well. Maybe they might have sounded better on headphones but not all of us play on headphones all the time. I chose not to mess with the sound mix to see what the cues sounded like naturally in the mix. My room is quiet, nothing going but the TV and I still had trouble hearing the cues even with the cue volume all the way up. Some of them absolutely need to be turned up.
After I went through the settings I hopped into the game. it’s your typical 2D platformer which used to be an absolute no for my blind friends. In this case it’s still an absolute no unfortunately unless some features are added. It is a platformer so indications for when to jump or climb are an absolute must. If you’re going to have multiple places to go on a floor or multiple ways out, the blind player needs a navigation assist. I’m sighted and I felt lost, I can only imagine how frustrated my blind friends would be playing this. Some of you all have the patience of saints though so I’m just waiting for someone to be like “Hey! Look! I wasn’t lost at all.”
Maybe the intent is to play on “Boy” or easy setting where story is more important but I really feel that we couldn’t even play on that setting without a navigation assist and traversal audio cues. Having easier settings was what Brandon always called “Great accessibility, just not for the blind player.” The blind player wants information! All you can give us. If a sighted player gets it we want it too. If that ladder is visually there, we want an audio cue for it.
When I got my first spear head, I decided it was time to look at skills and changing my gear out. This is not accessible due to lack of screen reader but other than that it is in list form and the tree for skills isn’t as branched off as most games so if a screen reader is implemented this should become accessible. I would like to say this though. Blind players do not always have someone sighted to help them with their games. I will say this every time I see something like this. Please keep this in mind. I beg of you all.
So unfortunately I’m going to have to tell you all that this game is not playable as it stands right now. Some of the audio cues that are there are too soft. Traversal audio cues need to be made, a navigation assist needs to be created and a screen reader implemented. It’ll be fun for you to watch someone else play like your favorite Twitch streamer as it’s fully voiced, but I know that’s not the experience we want.
If I encounter a puzzle, I will update this more with notes on the puzzle aim assist. That’s all I got for now! Until next time! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!
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