Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s accessibility options and controls detailed

Before Star Wars Jedi Survivor’s April 28 release date, Respawn Entertainment is outlining the customization options aimed at making the game more accessible. The developer published the options to the Electronic Arts site on Tuesday. It also shared what the company learned during its release in 2019. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Publisher Electronic Arts has made a pledge outlining its commitment to making more accessible games, noting that the team hosted its first “in-house playtests” dedicated to accessibility and design for Star Wars Jedi Survivor.

Respawn added accessibility and both difficulty controls to the game. Survivor — everything from subtitles to something the developer is calling “slow mode.” Slow mode is a toggle in the options menu that “allows players to slow down the action of the world in order to ease the challenge of both combat and platforming,” Respawn said in the post. This affects the combat, timing, and platforming elements.

“The Slow Mode has been a particularly exciting feature to work on because of its versatility,” Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Senior director of development Jonas Lundqvist stated in the blog post. “It primarily started out as a feature that we thought would be helpful in combat, but quickly realized that it could be beneficial for anything that had a timing component. It opens up some of our platforming to be more accessible, allows for different reaction times and helps make the game generally more accessible to a larger audience.”

Here’s the list of options, straight from Respawn:

Control CustomizationYou can change the control layout to fit your needs.

Subtitles & Closed Captions: Jedi: Survivor There are many toggles that allow you to control the level of detail for both closed captions and subtitles. They also let you choose whether you want them on during gameplay. They can be toggled on for only cutscenes, or even during battles and conversations. Directional indicators are also available.

VisualsAt launch, a number of visual options will be offered, such as HUD scaling and color profile settings, stabilizing the UI dot options, options for color-blind users, field of vision, adjustment of camera shake, etc.

Easy and Difficult OptionsThe game offers four different levels of difficulty, allowing players to choose the challenge level they desire from their enemies.

Story Mode — For those who wish to enjoy Cal and crew’s adventure with little resistance from foes. There are no restrictions on parrying and enemies deal minimal damage.

Jedi Padawan — More of a challenge than Story Mode but gentler than Jedi Knight. While the parry times in Story Mode are generous, enemies still deal more damage.

Jedi Knight — A challenging adventure. The players must be able to use their reflexes in order to defeat the enemies.

Jedi Master — Offers even more of a challenge than Jedi Knight, with enemy aggressiveness dialed up to keep you on your toes.

Jedi Grand Master — The most difficult option. There are few windows to parry and the enemies are merciless. You will be tested to the limit with this difficulty level.

Players can choose the level of difficulty that best suits their gaming experience, knowing that the rewards in-game are the same and they can change modes as long as they’re not fighting.

Gameplay ModifiersThis game has many options for adjusting gameplay. These can be done at almost any stage of the game. These include:

Auto-targeting camera options

You can choose between a variety of button-mash options

– Toggle Hold/Pull

– Navigation Assist (including audio ping)

Slow Mode One of the options that we’re most excited for our players to discover is our Slow Mode toggle, which allows players to slow down the action of the world in order to ease the challenge of both combat and platforming.

Beyond what’s available at Star Wars Jedi Survivor’s launch date, Respawn has more coming, including “a high contrast mode and menu narration.”

“We are far from being finished, but these types of design choices Respawn made are illustrative of how we want to approach making games for all our players,” Electronic Arts accessibility lead Morgan Baker said.

More studios are pledging to make games inclusive. In the last few years, accessibility has been a big deal.