Sniper Elite 5 is set to release next week on May 26th and ahead of its release, one of the Senior Designers at Rebellion has shared some insights into the game’s accessibility first approach. It’s fair to say that the gaming world is making much more effort to improve accessibility features and options than it has done previously.
In a new blog post shared on Xbox Wire, Cari Watterton, Rebellion’s Accessibility Designer on Sniper Elite 5 has given players a first look at the game’s accessibility options and explained that the team’s commitment to removing barriers and making Sniper Elite 5 more inclusive for all is a priority.
In an accessibility first approach, Watterton explains that players will get the opportunity to adjust the game’s accessibility and subtitle settings straight away when they load up Sniper Elite 5 for the first time, alongside the usual screen adjustments. Other accessibility features that will play a part in Sniper Elite 5 are to do with difficulty, tutorials, subtitles and text, audio customisation, adjustments for colour blindness, controls and input and some additional visual settings.
In terms of difficulty settings, players will be able to customise the game’s difficulty in various ways to ensure everyone can enjoy the gameplay. There’ll be five pre-set modes to choose from, with Civilian mode being the game’s very easy/story only mode. Combat, sniping and other difficulty adjustments can also be made and adjusted at any point throughout the game. Sniper Elite 5 will also include enhanced tutorials that can be revisited and reset at any time.
Subtitles will be in place for the full game, with customisable options for their colour, size and background opacity. Additionally, subtitles are an option for the quick chat wheel options in multiplayer mode. In terms of audio, players will have greater control over audio levels for different in-game effects and there’s also a setting to help tone down the noises of explosions. In multiplayer, the game’s voice chat volume can be adjusted or turned off entirely.
Adjustments have also been made for players with colour blindness, with four predefined colour palettes; original and 3 colour blind accessible variants for enemy awareness and location markers.
There are plenty of settings for aim assist and the game will also feature full control remapping options on the keyboard and mouse. On top of this, those using controllers can select from six presets, three layouts each with left and right-handed variants, which swap the functionality of the stick.
For the full list of accessibility features that players can look forward to using in Sniper Elite 5, you can check out Rebellion’s blog post in full over at Xbox Wire.
Sniper Elite 5 will launch on Thursday, May 26th. It’ll be available simultaneously on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 4 & 5, Steam and Windows Store for PC.