God of War Ragnarök | Motor Accessibility Video

God of War Ragnarök is a third-person action-adventure game that’s available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. You play as Kratos as he and his son, Atreus, make their way through mystical realms based on Nordic mythology. In this video, we will take a look at some of the settings and options that may improve the motor accessibility of the game for some players, such as toggle options, auto pick up items, and controller remapping. Footage has been captured directly off a PS5 console from the PS5 version of the game.

Accessibility Presets: Motor Accessibility 

When you start the game for the first time, you can select a motor accessibility preset which will turn on a variety of motor accessibility settings that may assist players to access the game more easily. You can choose between Some or Full. You can also select the preset from the title screen and in-game by pausing and going into the Accessibility Menu.

Difficulty 

You start the game by selecting your difficulty. Changing the difficulty adjusts how much damage enemies do, and how resistant they are to damage from Kratos. Story is the easiest difficulty and God of War is the most difficult. You can change the difficulty of the game at any point by going into Settings, then Gameplay. However, you can only choose God of War difficulty at the start of a new game, then change to a lower difficulty if you so wish and not change up to this difficulty part way through a game.

Accessibility Menu: Combat

Aim Assist has two options, Classic and Classic+. Classic points the camera to the closest  target already relative to the aim reticle. Classic+ points the camera to the closest target  to the aim reticle from anywhere on-screen.

Lock-On Camera allows you to keep an enemy in the centre of the screen until defeated. By turning on Classic, the camera unlocks when a target is defeated or when aiming. Auto-Target remains locked on to enemies while aiming and switches to a new on-screen target after one is defeated. You can still use the Right Stick to target parts of certain enemies with this option turned on. Auto-Target+ is the same as Auto-Target but includes off-screen enemies. 

You can recentre the camera  when using melee attacks. Classic recentres the camera when hitting an enemy with a melee attack. Priority recentres the camera toward the nearest on-screen enemy when swinging a weapon. The camera also recentres when parrying. Priority+ is the same as Priority but includes off-screen enemies. 

There are several ways you can dodge by changing  the input of the Evade Style. In Default, you press Cross to sidestep, and double tap Cross to follow up the sidestep with a single roll. Default+ is the same as Default, except you can continuously hold down Cross to continue sidestepping and rolling. Releasing Cross will perform a  single roll. With Tap Roll, you press Cross to sidestep then roll automatically. However, this removes the ability to sidestep without rolling. 

Evade Assist provides increased immunity while evading. However, this option is not available in No Mercy or God of War difficulties. 

If you are defeated by a Miniboss, such as a Troll or an Ancient, the Miniboss Checkpoints option allows you to the fight the Miniboss with reduced health when you respawn, but only if it was damaged below a certain  percentage before death. This option is not available in No Mercy or God of War difficulties and not applicable for Main Boss fights.

Accessibility Menu: Navigation & Puzzles

Turning on Navigation Assist lets you press R3 to orient the camera in the direction of your current story or map-selected objective.

By adjusting the Puzzle Timing, you can increase a certain puzzle element depending on the puzzle. This may include slowing down puzzle objects or extending the allotted time window for solving the puzzles. You can choose between Default, Extended or Extended+. 

Puzzle Aim Assist allows you to snap the aim reticle to a nearby puzzle target when aiming.

Accessibility Menu: Playstyle 

You can alter the minigame style and how you complete certain minigames. You can choose between Precision where you use Left Stick, Single button where you press Circle, or Auto where the minigame completes automatically. 

You can choose how to complete sequences which require Repeated Button Presses. You can set this to either a Tap or a Hold. 

Auto Pick Up allows you to pick up items and resources without pressing any buttons. Essentials will automatically pick up health and rage stones when needed. Economy automatically picks up hacksilver, resources and loot drops when out of combat. Full automatically picks up everything that is picked up in both Essentials and Economy. 

You can increase the speed of the Menu Holds so you can perform shop or inventory hold actions faster than the default setting. This means holding down the assigned button for less time. 

Throughout the game, you will have to traverse over many obstacles, including gaps, walls and ledges. Traversal Assist can complete these actions automatically when turned on. Auto will automatically perform vaulting, mantling,  jumping gaps and descending ledges automatically. Auto+ performs the same actions as Auto, but also includes crawls, presses, and climbs.

Accessibility Menu: Controller Settings 

For the Aim L2 Style and Block L1 Style, you can choose between a Hold or a Toggle. 

You can change the way the joystick moves Kratos during Climbing segments. When set to Default, the player will climb in the direction pressed, so pressing down will move Kratos down regardless of the camera position. When set to Camera, the player will move in the direction the camera is pointed. For example, looking at the ground and pressing forwards would move down, looking up and pressing forward would move up. 

You can choose between two inputs of how you perform a Quick Turn. You can either Hold L1 + D-pad Down or hold down on Left Stick + L3. 

For the Skills Tree Menu, you can change how to navigate it via Skills Navigation. You can use a cursor via Left  Stick or the D-pad buttons. 

To Sprint, you have the choice  of pressing L3, holding Cross, or having Kratos sprint automatically. If set to Auto, you can adjust a delay as to when the auto sprint will activate via the Delay Auto Sprint option, ranging from 0-5 seconds. 

Stun Grab Enemies can be performed by either pressing R3, holding Circle, or moving Left Stick up. 

Spartan Rage can be activated by either pressing Cross + Circle or L3 + R3. 

You can adjust how you sheath your weapons. By default, you Press D-pad Down to sheath  whatever weapon you have equipped. Weapon Toggle allows you to press the  weapon buttons to equip and sheath weapons. Pressing D-pad Left will equip your Blades of Chaos and pressing again will sheath them. Pressing D-pad Right will equip your Leviathan Axe and pressing again will sheath it. D-pad Down will still act as sheathing whatever weapon  you have equipped with this option turned on.

Gameplay Menu: Playstyle

By default, Interact is Circle and Evade is Cross. You can choose whether to swap the  Interact and Evade button assignments over, so that Evade is Circle and Interact is Cross. 

You can change the way you interact with the touchpad to bring up the Map and the Weapons Menu. By choosing Left/Right, pressing  the touchpad’s left side opens Map and pressing the right side opens the Weapons Menu. By selecting Press/Hold, pressing the touchpad brings up the Map and holding it down opens the Weapons Menu. You can also assign the touchpad press so it only opens either the Weapons Menu or the Map. 

You can assign certain actions as touchpad shortcuts. They can be activated by swiping Up, Down, Left or Right. The motor actions you can assign to touchpad swipes include Navigation Assist,  Spartan Rage, Quick Turn, and Shield Strike.

Controller Remapping: Controller Layout

Controller Remapping allows you to choose between various control schemes, including a left-handed and right-handed controller scheme, as well as custom schemes. You can save up to three different custom schemes. You can remap most buttons with the exception of individual stick directions, touchpad, Options, and the Create/Share button. 

Controller Remapping: Controller Settings

Turning on Neutral Evade will enable Kratos to  evade backwards without input from the Left Stick. This option is unavailable if Sprint is set to Hold Cross. 

You can swap the Left and Right Stick functions by switching on Inverted, so Right Stick acts as character  movement and Left Stick moves the camera. 

Swapping the stick functions over also swaps the assigned stick function for certain actions, such as Quick Turn, Stun Grab Enemies and certain minigames.

Camera 

You can invert the up/down and left/right camera movements. By default, moving the Right Stick up moves it up, and down moves it down. Turning on Invert Vertical Control swaps these movements around so that moving the Right Stick up will move the camera down and pushing it down will move it up. You can also invert the camera movements for the left and right camera movements by turning on Invert Horizontal Control. 

The sensitivity of the camera movements can be adjusted. You can adjust the Horizontal Rotation Speed and Vertical Rotation Speed separately, ranging from 0-10.

You can also adjust the aiming sensitivity by adjusting  the Aim Horizontal Sensitivity and Aim Vertical Sensitivity, also ranging from 0-10.

We hope you found this video useful. If you have any further questions about the motor accessibility of this game, please get in touch with SpecialEffect.

For game developers who are interested in more video examples of how developers have improved the motor accessibility of their games for players, please visit the SpecialEffect  DevKit at specialeffectdevkit.info