Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla | Motor Accessibility

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is an action-adventure game with a large open world to explore and a variety of quests to complete. The game is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series consoles, PS4, PS5 and PC. In this video we will be covering the console versions of the game when played with a standard controller. The game’s controls are complex and full access requires the majority of the controller but there are several accessibility options that can potentially be helpful and we’ll be looking at these in this video. All footage in this video is captured on an Xbox Series S.  

You can access the options via the main menu, or at any time during gameplay by pausing the game and pressing left on the D-pad. Now go to Options.

To help with accessing menus there is the option to select how long you need to hold down a button in order to change the setting.  For example, to upgrade equipment in the Inventory Menu you usually have to hold the button down, but you can shorten how long this button is held down for.

You can toggle several in-game moves such as Crouching,  Aiming Down Sights and accessing the Quick Wheel. This means you can tap the button once to start the action, such as Crouching, and then tap it again to stop the action. This means there is less of a need to hold buttons down in certain aspects of gameplay.

There are multiple options for inverting certain joystick movements such as the Raven Vertical Controls, the X and Y axis in general gameplay and the X and Y axis when Aiming Down Sights.

It is possible to change the intensity of the controller vibration which can be helpful for some players.

There are several settings for swapping joysticks to make the Left Stick act as Right Stick and vice versa. You can do this when accessing the menus, you can swap sticks for when in gameplay and keep the menu controls as standard, and you can also swap sticks for both menus and gameplay. Whichever you choose, this only changes your controls when accessing the game and your controls will stay the same when accessing the console’s operating system.  As well as swapping joystick functions, it’s also possible to remap button presses and you can swap the majority of the controls around. Please note that you cannot map button presses to joystick movements or vice versa.  To swap a button go to the in-game action that you would like to swap and press A or Cross to select it. Now press the button that you would like to swap this action to. If you swap buttons that may create a conflict with another action a warning will appear onscreen. If you change your mind press Y or Triangle to reset the controls back to Default.

There are several settings that you can change in the Gameplay options that might be helpful. There is the option to change controls for Quick Time Events from repeated presses to a button hold, or a one-time press, or you can switch them off completely.

There are several settings for Difficulty, so that you can customise the experience.  Combat Difficulty varies from Easy to Very Hard. There are three settings for Aim Assist: Full, Partial or Off.  Stealth difficulty varies from Easy to Hard.

You can set Guaranteed Assassination on, which means that when using stealth even most of the powerful enemies can be assassinated using a single attack. Please note that this does not work on Zealots who cannot be killed via assassination and must either be avoided or killed in combat. 

The Exploration difficulty setting essentially adjusts how much information the game provides for you and how much you will need to discover manually through exploration. Adventurer guides the player the most and Pathfinder guides you the least.

The range of settings means that if you found combat difficult but wanted more of a challenge when playing stealthily, you can adjust the settings to suit you.

There is the option to have the Camera set to Close Camera which brings the viewpoint closer to the character, which some players may prefer.  The camera will return to the default view during certain situations such as when swimming or when in combat.

When in game there are a few options that can be really helpful for some players. When riding your horse you can hold down the X or Square button to follow the road so that the horse will automatically ride along that road. If you have a destination selected on your map you can now press Y or Triangle to ride towards that destination.  You can also automatically sail when in the long boat by holding down X or Square to follow a river and then press Y or Triangle to go towards your destination if you have one selected on your map. If your boat crashes at any point you may need to start this process again to continue. Following the road or the river and having either the horse or boat take you to your destination means that you do not need to do anything on the journey. This can be helpful if you need to rest during gameplay or find controlling the horse or boat difficult.

From the Main Menu you can also select Discovery Tour which is a mode that allows you to explore the world without combat or any risk of damage. The controls are quite reduced compared to the standard game and the lack of combat may suit many players. There are also story missions that you can participate in that allow you to learn about the time period and also the game itself. There is also the option to play in both third- and first-person viewpoints. Due to the reduced controls, there are less options to make changes but there are several things that you can alter and button remapping is still available.

Many thanks for watching this video. If you have any questions about video game accessibility please contact SpeciaEffect.