Santa Monica Studio has unveiled the full suite of accessibility options for God of War Ragnarok, which includes over 70 customizable features for the upcoming title.

Initially revealed earlier this year, the God of War Ragnarok development team has clearly taken cues from Naughty Dog and their options, first introduced in The Last of Us Part II. Sony’s first-party studios seem to be making this a standard in their games, so it’ll be a big step towards lowering barriers so that everyone can enjoy these titles.

“Furthering accessibility in gaming is an industry-wide pursuit. What we have been able to implement in God of War Ragnarök would not be possible without the knowledge and guidance of our many partners. We would like to recognize the worldwide PlayStation Studios whose knowledge has been invaluable and an inspiration – especially the teams at Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games.” shares UX Designer Mila Pavlin.

“We’d also like to thank our accessibility consultants for their guidance during the development of the game: Joshua Straub, Paul Amadeus Lane, James Rath, Alanah Pearce, Jason Bolte, SightlessKombat, Christopher Robinson.”

Check out the full list of God of War Ragnarok accessibility options below:

Accessibility Presets

God of War Ragnarök has four new preset menus, each with a “some” or “full” option. When chosen, these presets apply a set of options in the menu, giving them new values. Each altered setting will appear in blue in the menu. You can reset all the altered values to default by applying the “off” preset or using the reset all hold button.

• Vision accessibility preset
• Hearing accessibility preset
• Motion reduction preset
• Apply motor accessibility preset

Alternative Controls

Santa Monica Studio took player feedback to heart and rebuilt the control customization, adding new ways to access key abilities and alternates for some hard-to-use actions. With the addition of touchpad shortcuts, control input styles, control presets, and custom layouts – you are truly in control of your play.

• Control customize
• Control scheme
• Controller vibration
• Touchpad button (menu entry)
• Touchpad swipe shortcuts
• Left stick and right stick
• Climbing movement
• Quick turn
• Spartan rage
• Stun grab enemies
• Skills navigation
• Weapon sheathing

Hold and Presses

Santa Monica Studio has taken great care to expand options to reduce fatigue from difficult actions, ensuring that a wide variety of actions have alternate inputs that reduce the need for extended holds and quick presses.

• Repeated button presses
• Block style
• Aiming style
• Evade style
• Neutral evade
• Evade assist
• Sprint
• Delay auto sprint
• Menu holds

Assistance

Explore a variety of gameplay assists for common actions – from combat assists to keep you on target to puzzle assists to turn split-second puzzle moments into a more flexible aim time. Auto Pickup and Auto Equip features have also been added to let you manage equipment and loot with ease.

• Aim assist
• Puzzle aim assist
• Lock-on camera
• Strafe assist
• Motion sensor function aiming activation
• Puzzle timing
• Horizontal/vertical speed – motion sensor function aiming
• Acceleration – motion sensor function aiming
• Reduce small motions – motion sensor function aiming
• Mini-game style
• Miniboss checkpoints
• Auto equip feature
• Auto pick-up
• Recenter camera on attack

Subtitles and Captions

Following best practices from film and television, subtitles and captions options ensure that players can experience a high-fidelity of experience with or without sound.

• Subtitles
• Subtitle and caption blur
• Subtitle and caption background
• Direction indicators
• Speaker names
• Caption color
• Speaker color
• Subtitle color
• Captions
• Subtitle and caption size

Visual Aids

God of War Ragnarök offers settings that easily allow players to maintain visual clarity of important on-screen elements even while sitting far away from the screen or playing with low vision. Whether that’s reading the dialogue subtitles, engaging in combat against multiple enemies, or searching for valuable collectibles – a variety of settings help key information on the screen clear.

• Icon size
• UI text size
• UI color correction
• Axe reflect visual
• Filter strength
• Visualization contrast
• High contrast HUD
• High contrast cinematics
• Reduce flashing
• Individual color selectors for 10 categories
• Color filter
• Controller visualization
• High contrast display preset

Motion Reduction

By eliminating camera shake in gameplay or turning on a persistent dot, God of War Ragnarök has settings that aid in a smoother gameplay experience.

• Camera shake
• Ambient camera sway
• Motion blur
• Film grain
• Persistent center dot
• Persistent center dot color
• Cinematic smoothing

Navigation

Getting around the world is critical to discovery and adventure. With the new Navigation Assist and Traversal Assist options, you can move around the world with confidence.

• Navigation assist
• Traversal assist

Audio Cues and Screen Reader

New to the God of War series are two features that support low-vision play. Audio Cues can indicate on-screen prompts that allow players to quickly identify that an action is available in both general and combat gameplay. The Screen Reader feature (English only) assists players in navigating through a selection of menus to assist in learning the fundamentals of the game.

• Audio cues
• Screen reader for select key menus (English only)

Audio Tuning

Adjust the audio experience for your gaming experience to your personal setup, like voice boosting or center panning dialogue, to ensure that the game sounds great to your specifications.

• Global
• Effects
• Dialog
• Music
• Controller speaker
• Accessibility audio cues
• Screen reader volume
• Audio cue glossary
• Audio panning
• Center pan dialog
• Voice boost
• Mono-audio system integrated support

HUD

HUD customization options were retained from God of War (2018) and now allow you to customize toggling these elements on and off with a swipe.

• Compass
• Enemy health bars
• Boss health bars
• Enemy off-screen indicator
• Combat HUD
• Gameplay notifications
• Aim reticle

Game Difficulty

Finally, Santa Monica Studio has expanded the combat difficulty selection to add a new level to allow for more flexibility.

• Challenge
• Lessons learned codex

God of War Ragnarok will be available for the PS4 and PS5 on November 9, 2022.