Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Enhanced Edition is an upcoming launch title for Sony's PSVR 2, which means it may be the first-ever VR experience for many newcomers who are just beginning their VR journey with the PS5. Since Star Wars is such a massive and iconic franchise, players from all walks of life and various levels of comfort will want to give the game a shot, so it's important as ever for the developers to consider accessibility during development.

Game Rant spoke to director Jose Perez III and experience design lead Jacob Edelen from Lucasfilm's ILMxLAB about the various features that take accessibility into consideration, and thankfully, it looks like just about anyone will be able to have a comfortable adventure through the Star Wars universe. This is all thanks to a plethora of useful features and game design decisions meant to ease players into the experience.

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Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge Developers Recognize That Star Wars Is Meant for Everyone

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Most gamers who experience VR for the first time have a similar mindblowing experience: they inevitably look at their hands and wave them around, they stand still admiring the environment around them, and spend a few minutes aimlessly throwing nearby objects and testing out the various interactions that are possible. The developers of Tales from the Galaxy's Edge understand this and made sure that the game's opening sequence gives players a chance to ease into VR gameplay. Specifically, Perez discussed how Star Wars is meant for a wide audience,

Star Wars is for everybody. I like to keep that in our hearts when we do this. We want everybody to get to play in this world and hear these stories and take it take a piece of it with them. So every project that we start, regardless of the other projects that we've created, we still try to look at it from the perspective of somebody that's stepping into this for the first time, knowing that you're going to put on the headset, and if it's your first time, you're going to go, "Boom!" You're gonna kind of go dumb for a second while you're like "I can see my hands!" so we try to take a lot of that into consideration and give you a nice slow ease into the experience.

At the beginning of the game, players are introduced to the basics of VR gameplay like interacting with buttons, pulling levers, and climbing ladders, all at a low-pressure pace that allows players to explore the environment without any immediate danger. As the game progresses, more and more features are gradually introduced so that eventually even newcomers to VR will be mastering Force powers, lightsaber throws, and dual-wielding blasters like a true Star Wars hero.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge Features a Wide Range of Accessibility Features

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Of course, a variety of accessibility features are included in the game to ensure that players can customize their experience according to their needs. Many standard VR quality-of-life features are available such as teleporting, smooth motion, and snap turns, while the game also goes a step further by allowing the player to customize their in-game body so that they can reach holstered weapons and other objects with more ease.

We think a lot about accessibility at ILMxLAB and at Lucasfilm in general, so we put a lot of work into accessibility options. If you pop open that menu and you dig through it, we've got all the things in there from your snap turns to your "play seated or standing" options, do you want to have teleport or no teleport, we have a way to move your body up or down or away from you based on body shape. Anything that you might not like such as haptics, you can turn the haptics off.

Again, Star Wars is for everybody. So when we make a project, we try to introduce you to the world as if you've never been there before. Star Wars always kind of does this anyway, it dumps you somewhere in the middle like "What's going on?" and then you figure it out.

Since even the developers themselves possess a variety of comfort levels in a VR setting, the studio had plenty of insight into what was needed when making the game as accessible as possible. The game's thoughtful inclusion of important comfort features and its gentle intensity curve regarding gameplay make Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Enhanced Edition a perfect first VR game for PSVR 2 adopters and Star Wars fans.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Enhanced Edition releases on February 22 for PlayStation VR2.

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