Star Wars Outlaws – Accessibility Hands-On Impressions

A few days back, our site was invited to an early presentation and hands-on of Star Wars Outlaws, the upcoming published by Ubisoft and developed by Massive Entertainment as lead studio. Ubisoft revealed a long list of features in their recent blog post Star Wars Outlaws Accessibility Spotlight. Being a fan of this iconic universe since I was a kid and a few questions about the features revealed, I was eager to try the game and report my findings and experience.

Please note a few things:

• This article contains no spoilers.
• I will not focus on any glitch/bug as the build was a work in progress. I might mention very specific things but I’m sure they will be addressed in the final release.
• With limited time I couldn’t test in detail every feature, for that, we will do full reviews closer to the game’s release.
• If you miss screenshots of features we could not post them for external reasons.

Introduction

In case you have been living in Dagobah and don’t know anything about this title, it’s an open world action-adventure game set during the time between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The Empire has dealt a heavy blow to the Rebel Alliance and its rule is more oppressive than ever. Crime syndicates are in full bloom and competing hard with each other to expand and gain more from their illicit. The Pykes, Crimson Dawn, the Hutts Cartel and the Ashiga Clan. Of course, some Empire officials are also using their power for personal benefit, because tyrannical power is good (for them, of course) but power and money are even better.

In this scenario our main character is a young woman called Kay Vess, a skilled and resourceful thief. She is accompanied by Nix, a small, smart and lovely creature. Kay’s and Nix relation is that of family, they have been together for a long time and trust and care for each other. Their symbiotic relationship is not only an aspect of narrative and gameplay elements, but as I will explain later, also of the game’s accessibility.

The gameplay has all the elements of a good Star Wars adventure: sneaking in and out of well-guarded places and challenging gunfights with all sorts of enemies (including the legendarily bad shooters Stormtroopers). You will also discover new places, travelling vast landscapes on your Speeder to reach your destination. As you meet exotic and dangerous characters, some will become companions (but Nix’s the best, okay?), enemies or provide you with work. And of course, you will pilot your own starship, the Trailblazer, to travel between planets and engage in space combat. There is much more, but it’s time we jump into the accessibility of the experience, so let’s punch it!

Settings

Being a Ubisoft game we would normally have an initial screen to configure the most important aspects of accessibility, however in this demo that part was not present since the game was preconfigured by default. Most of the changes I made to the options were during the course of the demo, adapting and testing as needed or the situation required it.

Accessibility Presets

The first option takes us to the Accessibility Presets menu. Here we will find five profiles that correspond to the following five aspects: playability, cognitive, colors, vision and hearing.

Presets can be deactivated, activated or customized. When selecting one of these options with the cursor, we will be presented on the right with a list of the accessibility features that will be activated or deactivated, highlighting in orange those that are going to change with respect to those that are currently active. For example, during my tests I manually turned-on menu narration but left the speed on normal. When you hover over to activate the Vision accessibility preset, the speed option is highlighted in orange and the value changes to faster. This is a very useful function since it allows us to know exactly what changes are going to be made to our current configuration, something very necessary to understand what we are doing, avoid errors and then having to go from one menu to another to see what has been done.

Personally, I find the customize option much more useful than turning everything on or off at once, since then I can customize everything to my liking and at the same time get the benefit of having the options I need grouped in one place. That said, I miss a motor preset, since most of the options related to this aspect were in the Gameplay preset. I understand that this preset covers broader needs and that often the barriers are not limited to physical interactions, but it was still a little confusing for me to find what I was looking for, the Toggle Aim feature.

Gameplay

The Gameplay menu offers a vast list of features. From options to granularly customize the difficulty of enemies, the player’s health all the way to automatically cool down the weapon.

For movement we can always have sprinting active and activate fall protection.

Under visual we can adjust the intensity of the screen shake, adjust the angle of view or field of view, both in general perspective and when aiming.

For minigames we can modify their presentation and adjust several parameters to adjust them to our needs or preferences. This and more options are here but it’s too much to mention it all. The only thing I can say is that this is a game that is very customizable to the capabilities and needs of each player in many areas.  As I always say, customization is power to the player.

Controls

We arrive at the Controls menu. Here we can edit our keys. There are three tabs, one for the On foot, one for Speeder, and one for Starship. Each action allows up to two keys and remapping is very simple, with warnings when there is a conflict, and you can also return the keys to their default value in two ways: all at once or just the one you want. The only thing I’m missing here is the ability to remake the Pause/Menu key. It seems that Escape has allied himself with the Empire and is returning to its evil deeds, or as some would say The Escape Strikes Back. Likewise, the keys used in menus, or the map cannot be remapped. Since I haven’t tried Photomode I don’t know what keys are used there, but I hope they can be remapped in the final version.

As for controllers, we can see the control scheme but not make changes. I remember that the article Star Wars Outlaws Accessibility Spotlight only mentioned key remapping, and at least in this build that functionality does not exist for the controller. I hope that it will be implemented soon because it is essential for many players and would represent a blocker in many cases, specially as multiple simultaneous inputs are needed throughout the game.

We can also activate Aim Assist, and make sprinting a toggle instead of hold. I activated this option, but it didn’t seem to work since to run I still had to hold down the key. I’m sure it will be fixed in the final version.

Then we can adjust the inversion of the X and Y axes independently. We have these settings not only for the camera but also for movement and separately for each type of gameplay: on foot, on a speeder or starship. Very complete. And we can activate the Speeder mouse steering.

At the bottom of the screen, we can adjust the general Mouse sensitivity, on the Speeder and the Starship. We have ten adjustment levels, with five being the default value. Here I must say that they seem few to me, as these steps are too few and their changes too big. In my case, 5 was way too much, with 4 showing little difference and 3 being a tiny bit too low. I wish there were more granular controls for better adjustment as this caused me serious problems driving the Speeder with mouse steering.

Advanced Controls contain even more adjustments. Aiming, Hip fire, Look and Speeder controller sensitivity. Surprisingly this last option only has five levels. The option that caught my eye here is Change hold actions to presses, and while the description is clear, its exact coverage isn’t clear at all. Does it mean ALL holds, including aiming, sprinting, couch, opening equipment or action menus? I think more information would be welcome and necessary.

Regarding this, crouch was a toggle but aiming wasn’t. I found out later that the option to Toggle Aim is only present in the Accessibility preset for Gameplay. Honestly, it was pure luck finding it, as it’s usually under Controls. I can imagine if someone who thinks they don’t need accessibility features wants to use it, they will probably miss it.

Display and Graphics

In Display and Graphics, we have our common options for resolution, quality and such. The only ones I will mention are Chromatic Aberration, Motion Blur Intensity, Camera Motion Blur Intensity and Per-Object Motion Blur Intensity, all of which I turned down to zero to avoid motion sickness. Depth of Field is present too, but you can’t disable it, only turn it down to Low, which I promptly did.

Oh wait, there is one more option here, High Contrast Mode! This feature helps highlight important gameplay elements by shading them in different colors, like blue for your character, red for enemies and such. If memory serves me right, Prince of Persia The Lost Crown and this game are the only two games Ubisoft has released with this great feature. The feature has three modes, off, Full and Full+World. Full sets the shaders on and Full+World sets the shaders and also desaturates the world, making the important elements stand out even more. I would love to show you the feature working but due to a glitch in the build I played it wasn’t working properly. Still, I am sure when the game is released it will work fine and will benefit a lot of players.

User Interface

We arrive at the User Interface menu. I want to highlight at this point that customizing the HUD not only allows us to increase the information received or change its presentation but also hide what we want, which is equally important so that each person has the best possible experience.

For starters we can adjust its size and change the font of the headings to one that is easier to read. This option is very interesting since certain elements of the menus and HUD use the iconic Star Wars font, which although visually very attractive, may not be very legible. Personally, I do not have vision or reading problems and yet it is an option that I activated since it improved my experience in these first moments with the game and even more so having limited playing time. You can also activate an option for important words to appear in capital letters, making them stand out.

As usual, we have profiles for different types of color blindness and an option to increase the contrast of colors in the user interface and menus. I had the latter active all the time as it greatly improved the readability of the menus, which was good by default, but with the solid black backgrounds it was even better.

In the HUD section we can adjust the frequency with which it will appear on the screen, increase the size of the icons that appear on it, such as objective markers and so on. I must mention that this option allows you to increase the size up to 150 percent, and that between this and the previously mentioned increase in contrast, it makes the icons really visible. We can also activate a solid background for the HUD, which not only improves the contrast of the texts but especially that of the compass at the top of the screen, allowing everything that appears on it to be distinguished much better.  In the same way, we can activate a persistent dot in the center of the screen, which helps people who, like me, suffer from Motion Sickness, and the size of the point can be increased.

Our loyal companion Nix can help us with certain tasks, and the HUD tells us which specific elements. To do this you can show an icon, a dot, or nothing. Personally, I find the icon easier to identify. Markers allows us to choose whether the objective and activity indicators will appear on the compass alone or also in the world.

Then we have classic options, but no less important, such as the distance measurement unit and on-screen control reminders. We can also activate the threat sense that shows a slight white glow on the edge of the screen when an enemy is nearby in that direction. Finally, we can activate or deactivate icons that appear on enemies to indicate their status (searching, detected). These icons use double coding, since they have different colors and symbols.

There are some other options, but I’ll highlight the last and most important one: Menu Narration. By entering this option, we access a submenu. The first option is to activate it. Once done a voice will read the information to us in the following way: option number, name of the option, current value, its description and controls to change its value, exit and so on. We can choose between two voices, adjust the volume of the narration and its speed.

The best thing is that this feature seems to work in almost the entire game. Inventory menus, reputation screen, map, missions, stores, item descriptions… And it works not only in menus, but even when collect an item, receive a reward, complete a mission objective, have a control reminder, when we discover an opportunity or event…

But wait, it doesn’t all end here. One more functionality it has is that it tells you where you are when changing areas, who owns said territory and your relationship with them. What it doesn’t tell you, at least in this build, is whether it’s a restricted area, which is important.

At this point someone may think, “Okay, but how do I get to my goal?” Well, don’t worry because the narrator also reads the distance and what direction it is in relation to you. For example, “Objective 82 meters away Objective marker is minus 112 degrees to your left.” Furthermore, all of these aspects can be customized, allowing you to filter what you want to read and what not so as not to overload the player with information.

I must say that it was a very pleasant surprise that it was so complete and I can’t wait for more players to try it out.

Language and Subtitles

We arrive at the Language and Subtitles menu. We can choose our language for voice and user interface.

Now, Subtitles. There is A LOT you can do here. Speech Subtitles can be turned off, have subtitles for Huttese translations or for everything. Do you remember watching Return of the Jedi and having to wait for C3-PO to explain what Jabba had said? No more. Now when there’s audio in that language anywhere in the world, you’ll get subtitles for it which are essential for information and immersion.

Of course you can set a background for your subtitles. The difference is now you don’t get a few colors, but a full color graded palette to choose. Feeling bold? Go for pink. This is not the pink you are looking for? Don’t let Jedi mind tricks fool you, pick exactly what you want. You can also change the saturation, brightness and opacity. Really good customization, I’m very impressed.

 We can also customize Dialogue Text and Speaker Name Color.

There’s also Background Subtitles for banter around the world, like when NPCs are talking nearby. Again, the same customizations are available separately. I think this can be very useful to distinguish information not just by position but by color, helping a lot with context.

Sound Subtitles are also available for when nearby sounds occur, like explosions, door opens and such. Not just in the world, but also during conversations. I guess the term sound captions might feel more familiar. Background and text color are customizable too.

Last but not least, you can choose between three sizes. Small, Medium and Large. And an option that I love, Directional Indicators to know where the person who talked or sound effect came from which helps with awareness. No more shooting the wrong Rodian bounty-hunter in a cantina out of a simple confusion.

Audio

In the Audio menu we have the Focus Mode option to play All Played sound or skip the less important ones and allow the player to focus on those that are critical to the gameplay. We can also adjust the Audio Mix type, Dynamic Range, Channel Setup and Music Frequency.

In the same way, we can activate the Audio Description for the cinematic sequences, so that a voice will narrate what happens during them. This feature works very well and will allow more players to know exactly every detail of the game, exponentially increasing immersion. Of course, the Audio Description has its own volume control.

And since we are talking about volume controls, it should be noted that the game allows us to adjust the volume independently for music, sound effects, hit feedback, voices, cinematic sequences and the controller speaker. I am surprised by the lack of control for the ambient volume. This is probably where the focus option plays an important role. In any case, it is a very complete menu and I want to mention again in particular the volume adjustment for the sound of the impacts when they hit their target, something highly requested by blind and low vision players for example.

Gameplay Experience

The game began for me with a demonstration of the Adrenaline Rush ability, which stops time for you to mark a number of enemies, and once done the action is resumed and Kay accurately shoots said enemies. This function is activated in moments of stress as indicated by the game, although I hope that over time it can be used at any time. It is a function that not only makes you feel like a real badass but is also tremendously useful in situations where we are overwhelmed by the number of enemies, which by the way is quite common. Of course, the keys to mark enemies and shoot are remappable, which further increases its usefulness as an accessibility feature beyond its value as gameplay. This is where you start to see that Inclusive Design is an factor in the accessibility of this game.

After this first appetizer of combat, I remapped all my keys, reduced the camera sensitivity a little, adjusted the volume and subtitles as well as a few other options and got going. 

When I started the Speeder, the vehicle with which you travel around the world, I immediately noticed that the sensitivity was too high since I kept going sideways and crashing with everything.  I went down from four to three, two and even one. On levels one and two it was absolutely impossible to make a turn in time, and in three, although it was a little better, it still fell short in tight curves like canyons and so on. I must say that it is quite frustrating not being able to find the exact point of sensitivity that you need, especially because as the vehicle gains speed it becomes more difficult to turn with precision.  I think it would also be helpful that the visual indicator for steering with a mouse could be made a little more visible since while you are driving you cannot keep an eye on what is in front of you, if you are turning properly and seeing if you are moving too much or not the symbol that appears on display on the HUD.  I also imagine that it takes time time, but in the three hours that I was playing I never felt comfortable on the Speeder beyond the moments when it was just driving in a straight line or turning in places without major obstacles.

Something I like is that during ambushes that may occur while riding the Speeder you can also use the Adrenaline Rush ability, which becomes even more useful if possible in these high-speed situations where it is very difficult to hit the enemies.

Once in the city, where you can get around on foot the experience is much better. You can walk by holding down the direction you want or use the auto-walk function and you simply must rotate the camera with the mouse to direct the character. One press to start walking and another to stop, simple and effective.

There are a couple of differences between this feature and manual movement. The first is that when the character is using auto-walk and touches a wall, person object or anything else it automatically stops and you have to start the movement again manually. The second is that if you are walking in one direction and you turn the camera but there is no space because there is a wall very close, the character will continue walking in the same direction, sometimes being the wrong one. Finally, it does not work to go up or down ladders since it automatically stops when you reach them and in the case of going down you have to manually press up or down since, as with the camera problem indicated before, this function does not seem to understand or remember the direction you were moving.  In any case it is a useful function that I used very often when the movements did not have to be very precise nor change direction with great speed in closed spaces.  It really helps a lot to save energy.

My biggest barrier, that became an actual blocker, was swinging with the grapple. Launching the grapple is fine and easy but timing the back and forth movements and holding down the necessary keys proved unfeasible.

Another element that I found especially comfortable is the interaction with menus, mini-games and so on since everything can be done with the mouse if you wish. The user interface is really well thought out and that helps a lot since every barrier avoided helps the immersion and enjoyment of the experience. In all the time I played I did not find a menu or interaction that I could not perform with the mouse, although I want to clarify that I was not able to investigate 100 percent of the elements.

Special mentions here for the tutorials and mini-game screens where you can access the instructions with a simple click and activate or deactivate help functions. Also, I’m especially happy that going back from a menu is as simple as pressing the right mouse button and that any indicator for which key to press to perform an action at the bottom of the screen is also a clickable button. It may seem like a very small detail, but it makes a huge difference.

I only found problems in two places. The first was on the menu to improve my weapon where I couldn’t see where I had to press to finish the action. The second is the activity to slice doors or devices where for no apparent reason the mouse did not work consistently all the time to select. I had to use the WASD keys even though I had remapped my controls to other keys and they worked perfectly on the rest of the game. I imagine that this is a bug and that it will be fixed in the final version.

Here I want to mention that the options for numbers to appear instead of symbols in so many minigames help a lot, since it is much more comfortable for me to remember combinations of numbers than symbols and I am sure that many other people will do the same, even more so with the Simple fonts feature. I also want to mention that for some reason the menu narration or screen reader did not read the numbers in these games, although I imagine it is simply a bug in the build.

Another element that I want to highlight is the simplicity of the interactions. A single keypress to activate, deactivate, pick up stuff and talk to NPCs.  Likewise, it is very easy to use the mouse to select responses to NPCs, my only drawback being the fact that you have to hold down the button for a long time to complete the choice. I understand that these are important actions, but I think having an option that allows it to be confirmed instead of having to hold the button for a while could help a lot of players.

Another detail that I really enjoyed was that the map allowed you to perform so many actions with it.  It can be moved easily, although holding and dragging is not exactly something I’m a fan of and I would prefer some more alternatives to pressing the directional keys. Special mention for the map navigator function that displays a list of all the elements that appear on it such as stores, activities, missions and personal markers. This function will help a lot to all the people who at any given time want to go to a place and need to mark it quickly and efficiently or if for some reason they cannot see the map. By the way, the screen reader also works with the navigator, which amplifies its functionality even further.

As the combat became more complicated later on, this was aggravated as I couldn’t find a way to put the aiming mode on toggle. Once again, I want to reiterate that I think the fact that this option is only included in the Gameplay accessibility preset makes it very difficult to discover. The granularity of the game’s difficulty is appreciated, both in combat and in puzzles and other activities, which allow many aspects of them to be adjusted from time to available attempts and even in many cases simply can be omitted.

I have to say that I quite enjoyed the lockpicking and slicing minigames and I really appreciate the options that exist to make them more accessible to many different needs.

Navigating the world is possibly one of the things that was easiest for me, not only on a motor level but also on a cognitive level. The use of colored elements that highlight stairs, buttons, vents or surfaces to hold on to climb helps a lot, especially in the first moments when you are trying to get familiar with the game environment. These elements can not only be deactivated for those who want them, but even when activated, they are quite subtle and are implemented in a very natural way in the scenarios. Sometimes those little details that help you and you don’t notice, are the sign that it is done in the best possible way.

At this point we are going to talk about space. Accustomed to playing games like X-Wing or Tie Fighter as a teen, it was a pleasant surprise to remember those moments when piloting the Trailblazer. The mouse controls work perfectly, there are no problems with accelerating or decelerating, and navigating space is as simple and accessible as one can imagine, with a smooth movement of the mouse. The only complain I have is having to hold down the key to scan.

Also, not having to press and hold the button to shoot but there is an option to make it a toggle is very useful. And I take my hat off to the option to mark a target with a simple right click and have the ship subtly follow the target, in addition to the visual aiming indicator that allows you to aim exactly where you need to hit the enemy when it passes by the indicated point. Leading shots weren’t easy in previous games and yet here it is comfortable and very enjoyable.

Once again special mention to the user interface when you arrive at a planet and it brings up the menu to choose where you want to land, which again is completely usable with the mouse.

Not only do the controls create a great experience, but also the visual indicators that guide you to your objectives and allow you to know where your enemies are always. Special mention here for the narration that once again reads the distance to our objective, what target we are pointing at and other useful information.

Finally, I want to talk about Nix, since as I mentioned at the beginning of the article, he is not only a companion but is always there to help you in many ways.

Using his abilities to detect enemies and objects is very useful in stealth situations or when you are looking for an object and can’t find it because the setting is very dark.  Likewise, the fact that he can distract enemies allows us to avoid being detected while we sneak behind to pass or knock them out.

Likewise in situations where there is more than one enemy on screen it is very helpful for Nix to attack one temporarily, leaving him incapacitated while we take care of the other one.

Likewise, Nix’s ability to pick up objects helps a lot for those that cannot be reached due to obstacles in the way but also because we may be a little tired and it is always good to have a helping hand. Good teamwork is not only about knocking out imperial soldiers in a duo, but also in helping you when your energy is a little short. I also want to highlight how accessible it is to use its abilities with a simple click or by pointing the mouse and pressing a button to direct it wherever we want.

And of course, I can’t fail to mention the fact that we can pet him anytime. I know it is not an accessibility feature but, after a tough battle, there is nothing like giving our dear Nix a little scratch to say good job or simply to remember that we fight for more than just getting rich.

Final Thoughts

As you can probably notice from this article, I greatly enjoyed the experience of playing this preview of Star Wars Outlaws. Beyond the difficulties with certain parts such as the sensitivity of the Speeder when driving and little else, it was a tremendously accessible and immersive experience. Again the swings are my biggest blocker.

It is true that I am a big fan of Star Wars, but precisely for this reason I always expect more and better from any product that bears this name, and I must say that my expectations have been vastly exceeded. I am not only referring to my accessibility needs from a motor point of view, but to the number of features such as the very complete menu narrator, navigation assistance, subtitle customization and other gameplay adjustments that eliminate barriers of various types.

I’m looking forward more than ever to August 30th so more people can get the game in their hands and experience the magic of this universe, accompanying Kay and Nix on this adventure that shows that the galaxy is now open to more people.