Sniper Elite 5 – Accessibility Review for Rebellion

This talk is a review of Sniper Elite 5, which Rebellion commissioned from Antonio as part of their Global Accessibility Awareness Day events. Thanks to Rebellion for allowing us to post this transcription to offer this content in as many ways as possible.
Sniper Elite 5 cover depicting a soldier aiming through a rifle scope on a beach during war, with soldiers around him in what looks like the allied invasion on D-Day.

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day I was invited by Rebellion to review the motor accessibility aspect of Sniper Elite 5. This is a full transcript of the talk, including slide images. The full video with voice and subtitles is here on their YouTube channel and their related blog post is here.

Thanks to Rebellion for allowing us to post this transcription in an effort to offer this content in as many ways as possible.

Introduction

Cari Watterton: Hi, I’m Cari. I’m the Senior Designer of Accessibility at Rebellion. The following is a talk by Antonio Martinez, an amazing accessibility consultant with so much experience both lived and in consultancy and accessibility journalism. This talk is a review of Sniper Elite 5, which we commissioned from Antonio as part of our Global Accessibility Awareness Day events.

This talk is so valuable and is so packed full of learnings that we want to share it publicly in the name of knowledge sharing and contributing to the accessibility conversation. We hope that you enjoy it and learn as much. From it, as we did. Thank you.

Review

Short Intro

Antonio: So first of all, happy birthday Sniper Elite 5! It was nice meeting you and hope that you keep growing up! And this is the accessibility review that I was going to do for the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Thank you for giving me extra time to recover so we could do it the best of my abilities. So, let’s go on. Let’s start. First of all a sort of short intro. My name is Antonio Ignacio Martinez. I am a gamer with spinal muscular atrophy, Type 3. It’s a disability that reduces the strength and general mobility of all the muscles in my body, arms, legs, everything, and an accessibility advocate and consultant for gaming and the editor and reviewer for Game Accessibility Nexus for mobility, and I’m a big fan of World War 2 shooters and movies on all sorts of media, so this game was like the perfect match for me in terms of style.

About this Review

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Focused on Mobility / Motor Accessibility. Raise awareness on wins. Always room for improvement. Accessibility is a journey for everyone

Now with this review, I’m going to focus specifically on mobility and motor accessibility. It’s important that I’m going to talk only to raise awareness on the wins that you have made and help you to find room for improvement, because there is always room for improvement, no matter the size of your studio, no matter how much you have done. There is always way to grow and get better and make more people be able to experience the game in the way that you really want. And of course, never feel like there’s nothing wrong when I say like this could be improved because there is nothing wrong. It’s a fact, the fact that you can improve means that you are doing something right. And the first thing that you’re doing right is being here trying to learn, because we all need to learn at some point, including me, by the way.

My Setup

A page with white text on a dark grey background. There is a picture of a desktop with a small numeric keypad and a mouse. The bullet point list reads: Lightweight Mouse. Numeric Keypad. Voice Commands

Okay so my setup, just to if you are interested on how I play, I use a lightweight mouse with extra buttons on the side. I use a numeric keypad, as you can see here it’s small so my remapping is kind of limited on what I can do with my right hand because I can only play using my right hand. And I use voice commands, meaning that when I say specific words, they will trigger specific actions like kneeling or any other thing that I cannot do with my keys on the keyboard or on the mouse. This is the way that I usually move, open inventory and many more stuff. I will show you now.

How I Play

Okay, so how do I play? I’m going to show you a video of my hand movements and that kind of stuff with the gameplay, OK? I’m going to narrate through it. OK, so the first thing that I’m going to do is I’m going to show you that I am playing using my mouse and in this case I’m not using voice commands, so I will not do like kneeling and opening or sprinting. So as you can see, my right hand is kind of strange. And I’m showing you that I use the mouse button on the forward position to activate auto walk and the one in the back position to use items. This is more comfortable to me and gives me a better range. Now then for changing weapons I use mouse wheel up, and I don’t use the other mouse wheel down for any other weapons. What I do is I use mouse wheel down to open the radial menu because that way I have access to changing weapons, changing items or changing ammunitions very, very fast as I will, you will see in the screen in a moment. As you can see I can open it with just small flick of my finger and again changing ammunitions with the right click and if I want to change my weapon I can just move up and bam, there you go. Very few weapons, easy to do. So, if you have like 10 weapons, there would be a problem but in this game it’s like the perfect solution for me. And then I press the left mouse thumb button and as you see the character started to walk because that’s where I have auto walk assigned.

Now I’m going to show you some gameplay, first with sound and then without sound. When you are listening to the sound, you will listen my voice saying specific words. Those words are the trigger to do things like Sprint, Crouch, Reload, okay? And then I will mute it and explain anything else. That I could.

[birds singing, trees rustling]

[Antonio: Corre (Run in Spanish)]

That’s for sprinting.

[Antonio: Objetivo (Target in Spanish)]

That’s for the binoculars.

[Karl: Staff car. Must be one of the meeting attendees. Might be able to find some information here.]

By the way, I’m not using any kind of sniping assist.

[Antonio: Llave (Key in Spanish)]

That’s for changing the zoom, not the zoom the scope distance.

[slow motion bullet shot]

Oh, sorry, yeah.

[visceral gore sounds]

As you can see, precision is not an issue for me.

[plane sound overhead]

Another day in the job for The Shadow.

And I can run, get down there.

[Karl: This grass could make some useful cover.]

And now I’m going to go to the right to make sure that I show a bit of changing weapons and stuff like that.

[Antonio: Rodilla (Knee in Spanish)]

See, when I say “rodilla”, I kneel. Now I am using snap to target for looking over the shoulder because it’s better for me when it’s come down to like gun fights and stuff like that.

[car engine rattles past]

[German Infantry: speaking German] [gunshot]

Oh no.

[gunshots]

[Antonio: Recargar (Reload in Spanish)]

Right. And as you can see, I used the reload, active reload fine.

[visceral gore sounds.  Screaming.] And yeah, sorry, more blood.

OK, I’m going to mute it now. And now I’m going to explain you; as you can see, I’m only using the traversal assist, I’m not using any voice command for this, yeah? Because with just one click you have a lot of freedom for movement. You can walk forward, you can turn your camera and then with just a couple of voice commands, which is a couple of key presses, you can simply switch your pace. You will notice that here I had the opportunity to do like a stealth skill, but I don’t do stealth kills because they require a very concise timing window, so my voice commands have some delay. That means that if I say my voice command at the wrong time, well, I don’t get the kill and I get the guy alerted. This guy was a pain in the ass to get by the way. Again, I get the right active reload window.

And as you can see the traversal assist works fine, in that case it even allowed me to vault over the cover. That’s super helpful, by the way.

This is where things get a bit messy. I see that guy and I want to take him out with this, to be silent. But I didn’t reload, but… OK, now the problem is the sniper. So, as you can see, I am using the item. I am using the button on my thumb because that’s one that I can hold well. And then I just take out the sniper. On the second shot. And… I broke his heart, right?

As you can see, all the features that are implemented in the game work very well and they allow me to play my way. I don’t have any barrier. I don’t face any issues, and that’s makes me feel very empowered. In fact, the only time that I die in this game is because I get so cocky and so drunk with my own freedom that I started doing things that I shouldn’t. Which is probably the best way to die because it means that the game is very accessible. That means that the player feels absolutely empowered and powerful and free to do whatever they want. So big thumbs up for that.

The Launcher

A page with white text on a dark grey background. There is a picture of the game launcher for PC with options for different screen modes, motion blur and more. The bullet point list reads: Helps to avoid unintended barriers before going into the game. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now let’s talk about the review. First of all, the launcher. The launcher is something that we don’t see in many games these days, or at least not as often as in the past. But it’s a very good thing because they allow the player to avoid the intended barriers from even before going into the game for the first time. Like for example, you can choose the windowed mode and that way you can use your on screen keyboard. Or in if you had the option, you could remove the camera shake. In this case I remove motion blur because I suffer from motion sickness. In other cases, you can adjust the volume. There’s always room for these launchers to be useful in accessibility, so don’t back from them if you can because they are really useful for many people.

Sensitivity

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Good range of values, to increase and reduce. Separate sliders for each camera/aim category and X / Y axis. There's a picture of the sensitivity settings with sliders for sensitivity X, Y, scope sensitivity X and Y and ironsights sensitivity X and Y. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now is going to the game. Sensitivity is one of the things that this game does like really, really right. One of the most common issues with sensitivity is that for some people it might be too low because they’re using a touchpad on a computer, on a laptop, and they have a very limited range in their fingers. So what happened with this is that they need to increase the sensitivity a lot. The problem is that when the sensitivity is not high enough at the maximum level; they need to start tweaking the ini files and in this case it’s not that easy. So you have a really good range because I didn’t touch any sensitivity as you can see and it’s really, really sensitive. So at 100% would work fine. And also it’s great that you have separate sliders for each category for aiming, which is common in shooters these days, but it’s not so common in other games, and it’s great that you have that. My recommendation would be that this is great but one thing that could be done is if you have the same controls for controller. Always remember to have inner and external deadzone sliders aside from the sensitivity, because that way the player will be able to control how little they want to move the stick to initiate movement and how little they want to move it to make it like; OK, so this is the top and this way you can sprint. That’s a very important thing for people with controllers, something that we don’t see in that many games outside of something like Call of Duty, Far Cry 6 and big games like that.

Remapping

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Simple and effective process. UI for unbind is user friendly. There's a picture of the keyboard remapping screen with an X icon to unbind keys. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Remapping another great thing that you did here. It’s very simple and effective. That’s the main thing that really caught my eye. In some games they have got like really complex remapping systems, like you need to hold the key or you need to do this. Here’s just click, press, it’s done and it’s amazingly friendly for the user because you can even rebind the key with that little X on the right. Many games these days force you to like, select the key and then press another key on the on the keyboard to unbind. That’s absolutely terrible for mouse users, and this UI works like a charm for mouse users. it’s absolutely amazing. Because you can also use the mouse wheel to go up and down, you can click and drag on this side. I could spend days talking about the user, the UI, and more importantly, you can go back to from all the menus with the buttons on the bottom; that’s a top design quality item. Because I’ve seen games from big studios like AAA, hundreds of millions to make the game, and they don’t have that and then you get stuck in the menu. You don’t have that issue here.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: All vital gameplay actions are remappable, including Pause. Accepts all mouse inputs, including Mouse Wheel Up and Down. There's a picture of the keyboard remapping screen with the Mouse 4 button assigned to Use Item. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

More about remapping. All the gameplay actions in the game are remappable, including the pause menu, which is a really good feature and not many people are doing it so big thumbs up for you for doing that. Another thing that I really like is that it accepts all mouse inputs, including mouse wheel and mouse down, because that means that if you can use those inputs instead of things like pressing down the middle mouse button, which is like really hard for most people, you have two extra buttons for free, so this is amazing. Very good job.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Allows using the same keys for non-conflicting actions in most cases. There are two pictures showing the same inputs being used for different actions. A thumbs up symbol next to the text.

And finally, you can use the same keys for non-conflicting actions in most cases, which is a very smart use of your resources. This way the player can use the same key for two or more different actions that are not going to have a problem. You’re saving them the need to use extra keys, you’re saving me voice commands, you’re saving mouse button uses. So it’s amazing and it really works well. If you have it for controller too, so I hope that you can do that in the future, because it works really well.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Some keys are hardcoded (Photomode directions, Map controls, etc.). Some actions are combined into one key and require holds for alternative actions (Crouch/Prone). Remapping should be available for controllers too. There's a picture of the keyboard remapping screen with the Mouse 4 button assigned to Use Item. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

Remapping four, this is where we need to improve, as you can see by the icon. So some keys are hard coded, specifically in photo mode, the directions are not. Even if it is telling you like you can use the remapped keys for movement, it’s not. You have still to use WASD no matter what, so that should be remappable. Map controls, the same issue, you cannot pan the picture without using WASD even if you remap it to something else. Some actions, and for example for map controls you also, if you want to centre the picture, you need to press Shift even if you have remapped Run or Sprint to something else. That as we will see later, that’s not so bad, but it would be better if you could map the keys because hardcoded keys are not a good design feature.

Now some actions are combined to one key, that can be a double-edged sword. In one hand you have less inputs for the player and they can do more with less. But it should be always up to the player to decide whether they want to use that feature or not. Some games, in this case, for example, we have the Crouch/Prone feature. You press once you Crouch, you hold it down, you go Prone. If you cannot hold down the key, you cannot go prone in the game at all. So what many games are doing is they’re having two separate inputs, or they have it grouped and then they give you the option to separate them. Or they use one as a press, and one as a toggle here, but they let you choose how you want to use it, so players choice is always the best option for accessibility.

And of course, remapping should be available for controllers too, because when you have so much limited inputs, it’s even more important. If you can only use one hand, for example on a controller and you will not be able to reach the buttons on the top of the controller like the triggers and that kind of stuff. You really need to be able to remap those to the face buttons or anything else. And especially the L3 and R3 buttons on PlayStation controllers, for example, are one of the most difficult to press from a lot of people. So give players choice. Choice is power.

Toggles and Holds

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Options to toggle aim and radial menu. Crouch, Scope, Empty Lung and Auto-Run are a toggle by design. There's a picture of the controls options with toggles for Radial Menu and Aiming. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now toggles and holds. This is an interesting thing. The good thing is that you have options to toggle aim and the radial the menu, which means that you don’t have to hold. That’s a big win. That’s less energy wasted, more energy to play the game and give you better access to those features. And also crouch, scope, empty lung and auto run are a toggle by design, not by option, and that’s absolutely great. It means that it was specifically designed with accessibility in mind. So again, thumbs up.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Sprint and walk act as a toggle to start but not to end. Toggles for prone and focus mode would help. There's a picture of the keyboard controls showing Traversal / Cover, Crouch / Prone and Walk inputs. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

Now a couple of spaces that we can improve. Sprint and walk act as a toggle to start, but not to end. So what I mean is that you, let’s say you start running, pressing forward or with auto assist, with travel assist, and then you press the key that you have to toggle run. Now you start running. Now let’s say that you want to go back to jogging. Well, the logical thing would be; you just press it again and it toggles off, right? Well, it’s not happening. We have to actually stop moving for that to happen and this thing happens to work. Don’t feel worried about it because this happens in like 99% of the games in the industry right now, even in those have toggles for running, and only some of them are starting to fix it now. So now that you know, you can get ahead of them in the curve.

And also toggles for prone and focused mode would really help because they are very, very useful features that allow you to be more stealthy and to hear your opponents in another way. And there is absolutely no need or no specific reason for them to not be a toggle, because some people will not be able to hold the button at all.

Gameplay Customization

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Great customization with lots of granular control. All areas covered: precision, intense gunfights, endurance, detection, response times. There's a picture of the Campaign customization to adjust player resilience, enemy resilience, aggression, accuracy, skill and many more. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now gameplay customisation, this is one thing that I really loved about the game. The amount of customization that you can have when it comes down to things like particular difficulty, it’s amazing because some of them allow you to cover people with precision issues. For example, enemy accuracy is something that people might struggle with because they cannot avoid their shots or hide in time. You have ways to reduce that. Intense gunfights are very, very much more accessible thanks to the enemy perceptiveness and how aggressive they are, and also the way that you can customise the aim assist, by the way. Endurance as you can see, I have my player resilience increased just a bit so I don’t get wounded by any random shot. That was a big change for me. Playing on like normal I was getting crippled like all the time. Now I’m not and that gives me like, a lot of freedom. I still get wounded, I still use my bandages and all that stuff, but I don’t feel like any minor mistake that I make is going to make me pay dearly and lose my whole gameplay. And also the response times is very important and for the stealth sections too. The fact that I can now, I don’t have to worry about that guy is going to spot me in like half a second, I will not have time to go back, frees me from the pressure of feeling that my capabilities are getting in the way because they are not interacting with the game in the right way. This is telling me; “We understand that every person is different and every person has different capabilities and we want you to play the game in a way that is fun for you, but also accessible.” So very good job right now.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Many options would benefit from a graphic example of changes/features. Many values need more informative wording (Easy does not represent a quantity or quality). There's a picture of the Campaign customization to adjust HUD, extra information, defusal radius and many more. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

Now, something that could benefit here would be a graphic example of the changed features. Specifically, for example, for things like extra information; where it tells you that it’s going to show you more stuff, but it doesn’t show you exactly what. Like what are you showing me what, like visual indicators? How are they going to look? It’s always helpful to have a picture that shows those changes.

Another thing that also is important is to remember that many values require a small revaluation on how they are worded because, for example, when we come to the feature; Defusal Radius – Easy, that’s not telling me nothing. Increased, for example, would be more meaningful. That will tell me, oh, that’s more than what I have now. Because easy, normal and difficult, they are not amounts. They are not quality or quantity. Then don’t give me that information. So, we should try to move away from terms like easy in those specific categories.

Assistive Tech Usage

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Works well with voice commands and okayish with on-screen keyboard. Mouse clicks can be unbound, helping with assistive software like on-screen keyboards. There's a picture of the remapping keyboard menu using on-screen keyboard. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now Assistive Tech Usage, this is a mix. For example, it works very, very well with voice commands. That’s something that you should be absolutely proud because it’s making my gameplay absolutely a riot. It works kind of OK with on screen keyboard for Windows. My advice is for you to try playing one day with on screen keyboard. It’s not going to be like, very good for you, but it’s going to give you a little insight into how that works and it doesn’t have to do with disability specifically. Other people can play with that for any reasons and you will not face any difficulties. The only thing that you have to do is put the game in windowed mode, have your on-screen keyboard on your screen (which is free by the way, it comes with windows) and try to play the game. By the way, something very good is that the mouse clicks can be unbound, because that means that when I click on my on-screen keyboard, if you don’t allow me to unbind the left click for example, every time I left click on my on screen keyboard my character is going to shoot instead of pressing the key. So the fact that you give me that choice is giving me the chance to play the game my way. So good job on that.

But there are some issues here too. First of all, keys cannot be remapped using the on-screen keyboard because when you click, the game is taking the first input that it receives as the input that you want to use. So for example I want to use the #4 keypad key for moving to the left. I click on the key, I mean on the input on the menu, and when I try to click on my on screen keyboard the game is registering only the left mouse click, not the virtual input that the on-screen keyboard is sending. For this you will need to be to do something like make sure that you are getting not just the first input but also the second one and if the second one is a virtual input like this, in this case you take the second one. It’s not an easy thing to do, like being completely honest with you, there’s like only a handful of games that do allow you to do keyboard remapping with an on screen keyboard. So you are not behind any really, quite the contrary, you will be ahead if you implemented this.

Also, the mouse cursor isn’t unlocked from the window fully and the cursor isn’t always shown, so when I move my mouse out of that specific area on the bottom, I don’t know where it is and I cannot click on my keys. And also one more thing. Using the on screen keyboard affects the camera as you will see in this video. So as you see, I’m moving, trying to move around. I’m moving to the left, but every time I move the mouse cursor to change the key my on-screen camera is moving. And now I use WASD to move the camera, and now I go back to moving and I’m going to… see it’s moving all the time, the camera. So it’s absolutely impossible to get a really good shot with this.

User Interface and Menus

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: All menus are fully usable via mouse, making it extremely friendly for mouse users from setup to gameplay. Hardcoded keys issues are drastically reduced thanks to UI buttons for everything. There's a picture of the weapon customization screen with clickable buttons for everything. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now the User Interface and Menus. This is another thing where Sniper Elite 5 like absolutely kills it, and that’s not a joke, like because all menus are fully usable with the mouse. And extremely friendly for our user from setup to gameplay. There is not a single place in this game where I haven’t been able to do what I want or need to do just using my mouse. In this case, I’m showing you that you cannot just customise weapon, but you can toggle the stats, you can go back, you can click on inspect weapon and then use the mouse to rotate. Like, there’s not a single place in this game that is not mouse accessible, and I’ve seen games do way, way things in a way that are like absolutely inaccessible for mouse users. They’re supposed to be playable with mouse and keyboard, but the design for the UI is atrocious. This and the other side is like, I don’t know, like you deserve an Oscar, by the way. So whoever worked on UI and menus please let me know who they are because I want to shake their hand. And this also means that the hard coded keys issue that I talked about before for menus are drastically reduced because there is a button for everything. You want to go back? Click here. You want to do this? Click there. You want to open your multiplayer menu? Click there. There is not a single barrier in this game for that.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Having access to all menus from all screens would help reduce inputs. i.e: Having access to Tutorials, Collectibles and Photomode from Map. Map doesn’t use remapped movement keys, locking the view in place. There's a picture of the map screen with no way to move the map position on the UI. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

Now ways to improve! Having access to our menus from all screens would really help. For example, in this case we can have we have three tabs on the top: maps, skills and options. If we had collectibles and tutorial there too, for example and photo mode that will allow us to move from one to another very fast. That has another benefit; if I want to limit the use of a key then I can do that. For example, because let’s say that I can only use 10 keys, if I have a key to go into the map menu, then I have, I can go to skills options or wherever I want very easily, whereas on the other hand it would be forcing me to have other keys to access other areas of the game. That’s a way to improve the accessibility of the menus and yet again, as I mentioned before, even if in the in the bottom you can see that it’s telling you that it will use NUMPAD 246 and 8 for the directions for the pan, it’s not working. It’s hard coded to WASD, probably a bug in the remapping system or something, I don’t know. And again, I cannot centre my position unless I click on that button. That’s great, and also it’s great that I can show my objective by just clicking on that button on the top again. This is what a great UI design makes.

Traversal

Now traversal is like another really good thing. When I was, before the game released, asked, you know, that someone wanted to put that in one game, I had no info on what game, but someone asked me; “what would be a good traversal system?” and I gave them information I thought; “I don’t think they’re going to be able to do it because they’re asking at this point. There’s probably… They’re already probably like about to launch the game or something. They’re not going to be able to put it.” And you guys did it. I don’t know how they did it and I really have to say that my expectations were not that it will work this well. And it works almost as well as games that have been doing this for like years, like in like Assassin’s Creed or things like that. You have nailed the traversal assist. It’s extremely good because you can move very easily from one place to another, also the controls in the game are very simple, 4 directions for movement, no fancy stuff. That’s amazing and also very simple controls for climbing, going down, crouching. The fact that the character automatically takes cover when he reaches a wall, that’s great.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Movements are simple and easy to perform. Traversal Assist works great, saving inputs and energy. Vault, cover, mantle works great with auto-traverse. Switching cover is effortless and accessible. There's a picture of the character in cover behind a sandbag wall, and a prompt to change cover by just pressing a button. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Also the traversal assist is like absolutely amazing. It saves energy, I’m not using any command word for movement like at all, because all I need is the traversal assist that you implemented because with it I can just run, cover, mantle, as you saw in that gameplay video, all that was done using the traversal assist which is absolutely powerful. And switching cover is one of the coolest things that I’ve seen in the game. There are other games that like you to change cover with, you know, holding down the button or something like that. Here it’s very easy, you just get to a position and if there’s another cover nearby it will simply allow you to change cover with one simple press. That’s very, very accessible so again, whoever did that I owe you my life for a lot of times.

Now, there’s a little traversal assistance issue here, which is probably a bug. I’m going to describe it and show you later. So first, the strange behaviour on auto climb is on ledges. When you hold down left or right to activate, when you hold down, sorry, left or right, it automatically activates auto climb and now you have to both release that key and then press auto climb to stop, in that order. Let me show you. I’m going up. And so you’re like, I’m going to, like, go left. I said the word for going left. And I start going there. And now I want to stop and I press the stop auto climb. It’s not working. I have to use my voice command and then press the auto climb button. That’s really weird. It’s not how it’s supposed to happen. It should just be like, OK, I want to move left. I press left and then I click out auto walk and I go in that direction I press auto walk and it stops and it’s not happening that way. So that’s room for improvement but something simple.

Aim Assist

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Aim Assist and Snap to Target can be adjusted separately for each aim mode for better experience. Aim Assist helps with precision shots. Snap to Target helps a lot during gunfights. There's a picture of the control options with separate adjustments for aim assist in the form of sensitivity reduction and snap to target. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

And now we go to one of the big things in this game, Aim Assist, because I know that some people have some issues with Aim Assist “ruining”, and I want to put big quotes in ruining, on that word, because it doesn’t ruin anything. The thing that it does is let people play the game according to their capabilities. And the fact that you can use both Aim Assist and Snap separately, not just for different over the shoulder, for sniping, for iron sights, that’s something that I haven’t seen in any other game, and I play a lot of shooters, trust me. And that’s really, really good, because that way, for example, and as you can see here, this is how I’m playing the game right now. I don’t have Aim Assist for anything in terms of like magnetism, but I’m using the snap to target for over the shoulder because when I use my machine gun, for example, is when there are like two or three guys coming at me at the same time. Moving from one to another is going to be a big issue, so Aim Assist gives me the freedom to do that, and not feel like I’ve been overwhelmed by three guys. I can take on them all, and yeah, sure. But that’s not the issue. It’s very helpful because Aim Assist helps with precision shots. For example, if someone has involuntary movement in their hands, they will probably turn that on for sniping and for other features for whatever they want, and they will have the extra aid to tell them, hey, there is this guy here, let me allow you to… You know, let me make it better for you to keep your target in the way that you want, and if your hand is shaking for some reason, maybe you have dyspraxia, maybe you have any other kind of Parkinson’s. There’s a lot of stuff that could be happening there.

And the Snap To Target works very well during gunfights with people, like who have like more limited movement in their hands because with a little movement the game is going to put the target in their sights and tell them, kill that guy. And all you have to do is press the button and feel like they are doing the job. Which, by the way, is what they’re doing. Aim Assist is not killing the people, it is the player, and you are just giving them the tools to do it as they want.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: A way to pick body parts would help. There's a picture of the character aiming at an enemy behind cover. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

The only thing is that people are going to complain in every game with Aim Assist (I’m talking about people with disabilities by the way, not the gatekeepers, those will complain about everything) is that if you cannot pick body parts, you are going to have a disadvantage, which is that let’s say a guy is under cover. Well, now you might be shooting the cover, or maybe you’re shooting them in the stomach and you’re going to take like 5 bullets to kill them instead of 1 if you aimed for the head. How can we do this differently? Well some games like The Last of Us, is doing a system where you can, like, move the stick a bit to the top and it changes where the aim assist is going. And it chooses between, you know, like different hit boxes like; the body, the head, the leg. But that’s one idea. Another thing that I noticed is that this game is not that bad, because if my aiming reticle is, for example, at the height of the head, when I move it closer to the guy and snap to target like triggers, it will trigger, it will snap to the target at that specific height, meaning that I can choose my target better so I can just use snap to target to kill people in the head. This is getting a bit dark, but you know what I mean.

Gameplay Actions

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Many actions are a single press, helping save energy. Selecting Long Fuse for detonations gives extra time to move. There's a picture of the character carrying and enemy over the shoulder with a prompt to press a button. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now to Gameplay Actions. Many actions are single presses, helping save energy. That’s great, like hiding body, auto run, picking weapons from the ground, setting charges. That’s very, very useful because you don’t have to hold. Any hold that you remove from the game is a bit saving energy that the player can put into enjoying the game. If you’re going to play the game and get tired just by having to hold down a button forever, that’s not going to be accessible and people are not going to like it, so that’s a good thing that you have here. And also one of the things that I really love is that that selecting long fuse for detonations is a single press and it gives me extra time to move away. And in other games you put the bomb and it has like 5 seconds and if you cannot move for some reason, well, you die. The long fuse is a very good feature and it’s a good feature also because it’s a single press.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Too many actions require holds. Toggles for many actions would greatly reduce energy exhaustion (Search, Carry, Pick Lock, etc). There's a picture of the character crouching in front of a dead enemy and three different prompts that require holding down a button. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

Now room to improve. Well, we just talked about it; holds, holds and holds. There’s a ton of holds in this game; for searching people, carrying them, putting a grenade in their bodies. I’ve noticed that you have a lot of holds for doing things with dead bodies, maybe we should look into that? Because this caused me problems in one specific area in the game, if you want I will tell you the story later, but yeah. And it’s also very draining for your hands and especially because there are actions that are going to be like used all the time. It’s not like, oh, this is something that they’re going to use very rarely, it’s something that you use all the time. Searching bodies, carrying them around, picking a lock, throwing a grenade, using a med kit. All those actions that are essential require a hold and that’s a big energy drain.

Speed

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: The slowdown while using the radial menu is a great feature. More time for choosing items, thinking, lower pressure. There's a picture of the character with the Radial Menu open which causes the game to slow down. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

OK, speed. Speed kills, as you know. In this case, the good thing is that the slow down that you have implemented when you are using the mouse wheel, the radial menu, is a great feature not just in terms of like; “oh I have time to think,” but because it gives you time to choose items, it lowers the pressure on the player and it allows them to feel like they are more in control of the experience. And if they’re not able to change weapons with the key shortcuts or whatever, they can do it everything from here, and it’s absolutely accessible and they don’t have to feel like they have to do it in a rush because they’re going to die because that slow down is absolutely amazing. It’s very, very cool, by the way. It reminds me of the first time that I saw slow down aim in Max Payne, the first one, that was amazing.

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Incorporating an option to adjust game speed would help with response times. Active Reload needs longer time windows. Survival mode time to prepare is insufficient. Slowing down game could help a lot. There's a picture of the character playing Survival with a 28 seconds countdown. An arrow changing direction upwards symbol beneath the text.

Now, where can we improve? Well, if we could improve that as an option to adjust the game speed, like for example Jedi: Survivor does, that would be absolutely (I was going to say a bad word, sorry) absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing, because now people with problems with response times and timing windows, wouldn’t have that issue. I remember someone on the discord commenting that they like the game a lot, but that their preferred playstyle was using machine guns or maybe two pistols or something like that. Because there are people that like to, you know, they like the gunfight aspect of the game, but they have a lot of issues because their response time is, like, super long. The time that it takes them to get the information, process it and make the action. They claimed that it was like 10 seconds at least, which is a lot. In this game, of course, that means a big problem. But if you had the option to reduce the game speed like those games do; or Deathloop, for example does it too which is a shooter. Now you have the player playing the game at their own pace and they’re not feeling rushed, they are not feeling like they are slow, because they are not slow it’s just that the game is too fast for them. If you can let the player adjust, how fast do they want the game to be for them, you’re going to break that barrier. You’re going to absolutely destroy it, and they’re going to be able to play as they can and as they want.

Active reload needs maybe a longer time window. As you just saw I did it right two times. But that’s probably like the two times that I have got it right in the whole game. So maybe increase that a bit more if you can. And Survival mode is absolutely not good because there’s a problem there, which is that you have very little time to prepare, and as my movements are slower than those of other people, I need to move forward, I need to go to the place, I need to grab items, I need to go back and all that takes like way more time than for someone who’s moving using regular inputs. So, slowing down the game there would help a lot and also increasing those times for giving you some control. Of course, I’m talking about solo play, OK, not about multiplayer. I understand the issues there, but in Solo play it should be something that would really benefit a lot of people.

Kill Camera

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Simple camera control with mouse. Remapped keys for movement and more are used for better usability. There's a picture of kill camera showing a bullet flying towards its target. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now the Kill Camera. The Kill Camera is great because it has a very simple control to move the camera with the mouse. No need to hold down. No need to do nothing like that. Just move your mouse and you’ll move the camera. Also, all the remapped keys work here like flawlessly; you can increase, decrease, the control those work well. It’s really nice. And now for improvements on this. Oh, there are none because it’s perfect. There you have it. You did something perfect. Like a headshot.

Photo Mode

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The bullet point list reads: Great UI with mouse being usable for most actions. No need to hold and drag. Middle mouse button is not forced on the user. Simple way to enable camera control and toggle UI and grid. There's a picture of photomode with fully functional interface for mouse. A thumbs up symbol beneath the text.

Now Photo Mode. Photo Mode has one of the best UIs that I’ve seen for photo mode in any game that is out on the market. There is absolutely no need to hold and drag, which is one of the most inaccessible features for people when you’re playing because it’s tiring, it’s difficult to do. And it’s basically in like 80% of photo modes and you don’t have it here, which is like you just solved a problem before it actually happened so well done. Also the middle mouse button again is not forced on the user at all. Other photo mouse are like OK you need to hold down the middle mouse button to do this or do that, and that’s a barrier because if you don’t have access to the button, you cannot press it and now you lose features. Here, that’s not it. And there is a simple way to control the camera and toggle the UI grid. Sometimes in some photo mode when you decide to toggle the UI it disappears and then to make it come back you need to press a key. Here no, you can just toggle it, make it go, click on anywhere and it comes back. So this is probably the most accessible photo mode that I’ve seen in any game, and trust me, I have seen a lot of them.

And the reason that you improve is again, it’s just a bug with the remapping. OK, so. That’s all you have to do. Change that and we are golden.

Thank you

A page with white text on a dark grey background. The text reads Thank you for having me. There's a picture of the character sliding down a rope towards his enemies. Bullets fly everywhere, explosions engulf the ground but he is unstoppable.

And finally, thank you for inviting me. Thank you for having me. It was a blast playing the game. It is a blast playing this game, and I know that this is a long shot for making the game accessible for more people, but you have done so much already. I don’t know if all of this is because you were aware of it, because Cari has been giving you lessons, but she always talked about how great the team is, how much the team has done even before she arrived to the studio and I think that credit is very well deserved because what you’re doing here is like in this screenshot. And I chose this screenshot for a very specific reason. That’s me playing this game. I feel pumped. I feel that I can beat those stupid Nazis there that want me to die, and I’m breaking the barriers thanks to the tools that you’re giving me like this rope and this little thing to hang on there. You have the power to create these tools. You can create this world and you can make them accessible for everyone so everyone can feel a hero in their own game. So, thank you for making this and I hope that is of use for you.