Publisher  Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer  Naughty Dog via the PlayStation Blog released the full list of accessibility features in The Last of Us Part I.

"We’re expecting this to be an accessible experience for blind players, for deaf players, for players with motor accessibility needs," said Game Director Matthew Gallant. "The biggest new feature we have are audio descriptions for cinematics. We partnered with Descriptive Video Works, a professional service whose background is TV, movies and video game trailers, and integrated it into the cutscenes and across all our localized languages. 

"Another, which started as a prototype but ended up being really successful during playtesting is a feature that plays dialogue through the PS5 DualSense controller as haptic feedback. That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is delivered, can feel the emphasis, along with the subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered."

View the accessibility trailer below:

Read the full list of accessibility features below:

As with The Last of Us Part II, many of the accessibility features were built to work in concert with one another. As such, there are three accessibility presets that configure all the recommended settings for vision, hearing, and motor accessibility. You’re free to customize these presets further to better suit your needs. 

You are able to fully customize your PS5 DualSense controller options, remapping every command to a different controller input – including touchpad swipes and controller shake. You have individual options to change every button hold into a toggle, and every rapid press into a hold. There are also camera assistance and lock-on aim options. 

There are options to fine-tune the HUD size, color and contrast to ensure text, UI and gameplay elements are comfortably visible to view and read. The High Contrast Display is a special render mode that provides more contrast for in-game elements. There’s also a Screen Magnifier, allowing you to zoom in on any part of the screen using the PS5 DualSense controller’s touchpad. 

Simulated 3D movement can be a source of motion sickness for many players. To create a more visually comfortable experience, there’s options to adjust camera shake, motion blur, camera follow distance, and even field of view. There’s also an option for a persistent white dot in the center of the screen, which can alleviate the sensation.

Included are ways for blind and low-vision players to navigate the game world. Navigation Assistance can be used to guide you along the golden path of story progression or you can use Enhanced Listen Mode to go off and find enemies or pickups instead. To help you move through the game world, there are options for simplified traversal input, ledge guard, and the ability to skip puzzles altogether.  

Any information that is only represented visually is unavailable to a blind player. There are several options to convey this information through sound and controller vibration instead. Traversal and Combat Audio Cues work alongside the game’s audio to map easily identifiable sounds to commonly used actions (scavenging pickups, jumping across gaps, etc.). These audio cues are cataloged in an audio glossary that you can refer back to at any time. Additionally, menus and other on-screen text can be voiced using the Screen Reader option. For those that have their language set to English and Screen Reader enabled at the console level, The Last of Us Part I will automatically enable Screen Reader for you in-game.

* Screen Reader features available in all supported languages**, except for Thai

** Supported Screen Reader languages include: English, UK English, French, Italian, German, Danish, Turkish, Russian, Czech, Greek, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Croatian, LATAM Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese 

Because combat in The Last of Us Part I should be accessible for all players, there are a number of options that can significantly alter the gameplay experience. For instance, the Invisibility Toggle feature allows you to experience stealth gameplay that might otherwise be inaccessible. If you have difficulty aiming, you can give yourself more time by enabling Slow Motion while aiming. The goal is to provide you with all the tools you need to make the combat experience enjoyable and challenging.

If you’re deaf, hard-of-hearing, or need to play at low or no volume, you may not be able to access gameplay information that is only represented through audio. To address this discrepancy, Naughty Dog has included several options to display this information visually instead. Awareness Indicators allow you to determine when you’re being spotted in stealth; they also can be set to persist during combat, pointing in the direction of high-threat enemies.

Subtitles are an extremely popular accessibility feature, so the studio provided a wide array of customization options for them. You can tweak the size and color, add a dark background for contrast, enable speaker names, and even a directional arrow for offscreen speakers. You can enable subtitles for all systemic enemy dialogue during stealth and combat.

As an extension of the accessibility features, The Last of Us Part I also includes expanded difficulty options. At launch, there are six different challenge levels: Very Light, Light, Moderate, Hard, Survivor, and Grounded. You can customize specific aspects of difficulty to your needs or desired experience. You can individually tweak difficulty settings related to incoming damage, enemy and ally effectiveness, stealth, and resources. Trophies are not limited by difficulty.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo  was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own  YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

ND really pushing accessibility even further than they had with tlou2. The audio descriptions (launch trailer even has this), and that haptics feature copying speech intonation is an incredible use of haptics. Just fantastic all round.

Very cool of them to put this much effort into it. I actually worry sometimes about someday being too old to enjoy certain games, so nice to see some people are already putting in the effort to make sure as many people as possible can enjoy it.

Probably showing my ignorance here. On the ‘skip puzzle option’, its says its highly recommended for players who are blind. How do you play games in the first place if you are blind? I always assumed that was an insurmountable barrier.

I know of one blind person that beat Ocarina of Time. Took him nearly 5 years but his name is Terry Garrett. Searching his name along with Ocarina of Time should pull up some stories. Going to assume it was still real after all these years.

Iirc TLOU2 had detailed audio descriptions of everything in the game, not just cutscenes. It also had an 'orient to destination' function and perhaps some extra audio or vibration cues for gameplay. Presumably this game has the same or similar. It's quite a feat.

The Last of Us Part I

The Last of Us Part I

The Last of Us Part I

The Last of Us: Part II

About Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Advertise | Staff | Contact Display As Desktop Display As Mobile © 2006-2022 VGChartz Ltd. All rights reserved.