Accessibility in the games industry has been a huge point of emphasis for many developers over the past few years. Companies like Microsoft have championed the idea that everyone should be able to play, rolling out various accessibility features in both its games and Xbox hardware. In fact, development studios are seemingly even more conscience of games needing accessibility options, including purposely difficult games like Sifu and Dead Cells looking to add more options in future updates.

Guerrilla Games, who recently just launched the hit title, Horizon: Forbidden West, was also keenly aware of adding in settings and options to let every player tailor the experience to what suits them. A blog post in early February highlighted the massive number of Accessibility features within Horizon: Forbidden West. While these do include standard options like difficulty and subtitles, the game goes much further by adding in settings for an Easy Loot system, fully mappable controls, reducing sounds that could trigger those with Tinnitus, and so much more.

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As it turns out, some Horizon: Forbidden West players like Reddit user AbusedBanana1 have found that some of these settings can further improve the experience. Guidance provided by Aloy's Focus tool can be customized as well. By default, players need to click the R3 button in order to send out a pulse, which highlights things in the world Aloy can interact with like chests or plants for a short time. For those who don't wish to continue clicking over and over, players can change the Interaction Markers setting from Settings, General, HUD Visibility, and then Custom HUD Settings to keep the markers visible.

horizon forbidden west accessibility

Much was also made of the PlayStation 5's ability to reduce load times thanks to its SSD. Games like Ghost of Tsushima, and now Horizon: Forbidden West actually had to find ways around that as their loading screens offered tips and tricks that players would otherwise miss. In terms of Horizon: Forbidden West, players can select the 'X' button to continue from a load screen. As mentioned by Reddit user ThaBen, players can switch the Stand By Screen Mode to Immediate from the General game settings to force it to load immediately without requiring input.

Accessibility options for games continues to be a big topic of discussion, so much so, that games launching without them face immediate scrutiny. Deathloop, a highly rated game in 2021, launched without much in the way of accessibility options, which was quickly pointed out by the director of AbleGamers. Even the massively popular Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which has set plenty of sales records for Nintendo, received plenty of criticism from fans who felt left out due to a lack of true accessibility settings.

Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.

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Source: Reddit