Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Accessibility Features Detailed

UX director Jonathan Bedard says the open-world action RPG’s accessibility options aim to “elevate [the] experience to higher standards.”

With a new story trailer and a chunk of new details, Ubisoft continues to fan the flames of hype for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. As part of that rollout, the company has revealed what to expect from the upcoming action RPG’s full suite of accessibility features.

According to UX director Jonathan Bedard, with Shadows, Ubisoft took the opportunity to retool, enhance, and improve its accessibility suite in various ways.

“Having changed the way we built the game, we had to redo many things, and it allowed us to revisit some elements that weren’t working as well as we’d hoped,” he said. “Certain features benefited from this by being retooled or by simply changing the interface itself – or in some cases, the functionalities – to elevate our offer and experience to higher standards.”

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ accessibility features will range from basic options, such as aim assist, subtitles, and HUD customization, to more elaborate options. There are modes to simplify combat and exploration, and four separate difficulty options for combat and stealth each.

You can also expect plenty of camera options, audio descriptions for cinematics, screen narration, visual assists like colour blindness options, tutorials in the Codex section, and fully remappable controls. You can check out the full list of accessibility features below.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Its release will be accompanied by the launch of the Animus Hub.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST

Visual

Colorblind options – Ability to change colors for certain gameplay elements from a list of presets
Screen Narration – Not only most menu items but also many HUD modules and time-sensitive elements can be narrated
HUD Customization – Ability to turn all HUD elements on or off either all at once or individually, either with a shortcut or using presets – increase opacity, resize text, resize Icons or add background to increase readability
Screen shake on/off toggle

Audio

Subtitles – Better color modifications, speaker directions and speaker emotions
Gameplay Captions – Surfacing stimuli and points to their origins
Audio Description for Cinematics – Cinematic will be audio descripted
Audio Cues/Audio Glossary – New signs and feedback allowing navigation and pathfinding with non-visual cues
Separate, isolated audio sliders

Navigation and Guidance

FTUE – First-time user experience flow is back, offering first-access critical options
Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
Tutorials Section – Tutorials can be found in the Codex section at any time
Menu Tutorials – Always alerts when there are new menu functions
Conversation Log – Every line can be perused from the start to the end of a dialogue

Controls

Control Remapping – Remap gameplay inputs and their action (hold, press, double-press)
Many inputs devices – Mouse and keyboard, controllers, combinations
Lock-On Camera – Lock the camera on an enemy
X and Y axis inversion – Ability to invert the axis for aiming actions
Stick inversion – Invert the analog-stick behavior

Gameplay

Stealth and combat each have four separate difficulty settings
Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
Canon Mode – Enable automatic selection of narrative decisions for the “canon” story to unfold
Melee Attack Mode – Simplifies the combat by using a single input instead of multiple buttons or complex combinations
Quick Timed Events – Type of input required to complete Quick Time Events can be simplified or skipped entirely
Aim Assistance – Four levels of aim assistance are offered (off, light, moderate, full)