Insomniac Games is doing something few studios appear willing to do: share accessibility features in their games before release.
You may recall that this is a commitment the studio made in the summer of 2021 when they shared a full accessibility dev blog for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Today, the studio’s Advanced Senior UX Researcher, Michele Zorrilla, is teaming up with the PlayStation Blog to look at how Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 [October 20] will help us be more accessible together!
Challenge Level Modifiers and Gameplay Assists
In his over 60-year history, Spider-Man has been beaten down more than a few times.
However, he’s always come at the challenges in his way… and almost always come out on top!
Insomniac Games wants players to be able to do the same, which is why the team is adding Challenge Level Modifiers to their existing Difficulty Levels.
Challenge Level Modifiers allow players to toggle three aspects of gameplay: Enemy Health, Enemy Damage, and Stealth Awareness.
Want to sneak around a little better like a real spider? Sure!
Want to become One Punch Man? Great!
Want to get up and keep going at it like a spider that a boot has crushed a couple of times? You can do it!
Chase Assist, which became a popular part of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, is back to help you swing across the city and stop running targets at your speed. But it now also works with the brand-new Web Wings traversal systems!
Another returning favourite is the Quick Time Event (QTE) Autocomplete feature, which allows players to change repeated inputs to taps or holds. Web-Shooter Burst also returns to help those with motor fatigue [hey, that’s me!] keep up the web-shooting.
Shortcuts and Game Speed
A big part of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was the ability to add Shortcuts for those who needed quick inputs or couldn’t access all of the various required inputs. Shortcuts will return in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and can be toggled to the left or right D-pad buttons to be used while you are swinging through Marvel’s New York!
Game Speed will allow you to take things on your beat, just like Miles Morales! You can now turn the game’s overall speed down to 70%, 50% and even 30% of the stock speed!
The blog even offers a great universal design feature of Game Speed. It’s sure to help all those creative in-game photographers get the best Spider-Man pictures!
Audio Frequency Controls
Audio Frequency Controls work as a sort of frequency normalizer in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Soften higher frequencies like ringing in the ears, or bring up low frequencies like explosions to find an audio comfort level suited to your sweet super-suit adventures!
Notch Frequency Filter promises to let you hear Peter’s witty remarks better over the sounds of the city and crime. He wants you to use that feature! He works hard on his quips!
Post Launch Accessibility
These are some of the accessibility features that will be available on the web on October 20th! But Insomniac Games will be working hard after launch to add even more great tools like:
Audio Descriptions: for visual context and a narration-style voice-over to cinematics and even QTEs. Insomniac Games hopes that this will help players who are blind or partially blind to experience the crew’s adventures better. And that it may even help all players better absorb context. To ensure this is handled with the utmost care, the devs have partnered with Descriptive Video Works, who have 20 years of experience in film and television, as well as some recent game experience with The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog.
Screen Reader: Also for those with lower vision, Screen Reader will read out several things to aid players in navigating onscreen items such as tutorials, in-game menus such as the Settings menu, and our TouchPad menus like the map, Abilities, Gadgets, Collectibles, Suits, Moves List, and more. There will also be options to specify how often Screen Reader readouts happen and how long and fast they go with Repeat Delay.
Highly customizable captions are also on the way to put deaf and partially deaf players in the game! Harness the power to change the size, colour, background opacity, and background colour separately from subtitles.
Finally, there has been much consultation between Sony and Insomniac Games on ensuring that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will pair perfectly with the PlayStation Access Controller — to be greater together. Players can map multiple inputs to a single button, pair controllers to help improve input access and use the switchable Profiles on the Access Controller to have different load-outs for Abilities and Gadgets.
