Ragnarök Prophecy brings changes to all Kingdoms, and with that, we’re excited to announce a number of new accessibility features that will be in God of War Ragnarök.
Not only have we redesigned our user interface to allow for more flexibility and readability, but We’ve also rebuilt the controller mapping from the ground up and added even more customization to our combat and interaction systems. We’ve retained all of our accessibility features from God of War 2018 and expanded them to include over 60 ways to tailor gameplay to best suit your style and needs.
Here are some new and notable features.
God of War PC Features (2018) – Added to God of War Ragnarök
For God of War (2018) on PC, we made sure to improve and continue to iterate on popular features from the first PlayStation release. We’re excited to continue supporting these features in God of War Ragnarök on PS4 and PS5:
Sprint Auto Sprint: You will sprint while the cane is held and stop when released. When Auto Sprint is active, you can initiate a sprint by pressing the bar that moves forward for a short period of time in one direction. You can configure the length of time required to participate in the Auto Sprint.
Continuous dot (Always on cell): If you need additional focal points to reduce motion sickness or just want a constant reminder of the center of the screen, we offer the ability to enable a central dot in three different sizes and seven different colors .
Style Goals: You can choose to use hold or enable/disable the aiming pose.
Block style: You can choose to use hold or enable/disable shield stance.
New to the God of War Ragnarök
Subtitle improvements
We’ve invested heavily in improving our captioning system to allow for even more customization and information.
Subtitle and caption sizes: We have increased the minimum text size and added a new scale. This includes an extra large text size to make subtitles and captions easier to read. We’ve also reserved a larger text area to accommodate TV and movie subtitle standards.
Subtitle and caption colors: You can adjust the color of the speaker’s name, subtitle content, and captions individually. You will be able to choose between seven different colors.
Speaker’s name (Options retained from 2018): As in God of War (2018), you can show or hide the speaker’s name. You can set this size independent of UI text size.
Note: With extended sound effects captions, we’ve added several new ways to understand in-game audio. We’ve added captions to both the video and the game to provide a rich understanding of the world’s audio landscape. You can also enable subtitles for important game information to aid in puzzle solving and narrative comprehension.
Blur the background of subtitles and subtitles: We’ve included options to blur the background behind the subtitles to make them easier to read in complex scenes.
Subtitle background (Options retained from 2018): In addition to blur, we’ve included options to darken the background behind the subtitles for better readability in the snow. The high-contrast background layer includes a variety of opacity settings to choose from.
Command: Critical game sounds now have an optional direction indicator indicating the direction the sound was coming from. To assist with puzzles with audio cues, this indicator will help orient you towards an important source of sound.
Text Size / Icon Size
The highly requested feature from God of War (2018) is back and better than ever! You asked for a comfortable reading experience while playing on the couch, so we listened. With a completely redesigned and responsive user interface, along with a larger minimum text size that can be scaled significantly, reading text on the screen is easier than ever.
Here’s a look at our Default and XX-Large game Wide UI Text scaling for reference.
Top: Default UI Text Size, Bottom: XX-Large UI Text Size
We also have two examples to share of in-game icon scaling with the smallest and largest options available to choose from.
Left: Small UI Icon Size, Right: X-Large UI Icon Size
Control Remapping
We’ve rebuilt our controller remapping system to allow you to customize your button configuration in God of War Ragnarök. There will be a range of preset layouts, as well as support for custom controller remapping. The individual buttons can be swapped and, for some complex actions, you can choose alternate profiles from a list of presets.
We offer multiple ways for you to customize your experience for certain actions that require a lot of buttons, including Touch Pad Shortcuts for things like Spartan Rage, Navigation Assistant, and Quick Dial.
High Contrast Mode
Our new high-contrast color mode lets you apply color to in-game objects such as targets, enemies, and other characters, in addition to a wide variety of items. When active, this applies a layer of color to the characters making them more visible against the background. You can optionally desaturate the background to further increase the contrast. Horizontal paint, looted items, and special effects are also more visible in this mode.
Customize High Contrast Enabled: Choose off, on, or always on for games only (this will exclude movie clips). High contrast mode can be set to turn on and off from a single swipe for easy access. This mode will automatically turn off when in the settings menu or character menu.
High contrast color customization: Choose a color scheme that suits your playstyle and adjust the individual colors for characters, enemies, and items.
Customize high contrast background: Separately select the contrast levels of mid-tones or dark backgrounds.
Navigation assistance: New to God of War, this camera navigation system allows you to orient your sights on your compass target. When not in combat, pressing the Navigation Assistant button will direct your line of sight in the direction of the next story objective.
Support transmission: It is now possible to automate distance jumping, arch jumping, overlay, and other movement features based on the direction you press.
Support +: Add interaction-based moves like climb, crawl, and pass.
Cues sound: We’ve linked the audio cues to each of the interactive on-screen prompts, so that when using this feature, you can hear when the interactive icon is nearby and when the button prompt is active.
Audio cues extend to additional combat signals such as unstoppable attack rings, targeting cues, and weapon swap signals. The volume of the audio signal can be adjusted separately from the other volume sliders, so you can adjust it to your liking.
God of War Ragnarok Reveal Trailer – Audio Description Version
In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we also wanted to provide a described audio version of the Ragnarök God of War reveal trailer that debuted last year! *
More to come!
We hope you enjoy browsing through this selection of over 60 accessibility features that will be available in God of War Ragnarök.
We’re committed to improving accessibility and customizability for everyone. We can’t wait to let you know the details of our other accessibility feature categories such as combat/target assist, puzzle/minigame assist, HUD tuning, camera adjustments, auto-receiving, and more.
We appreciate the support from our accessibility consultants and the larger accessibility community for sharing their thoughts on making Ragnarök the God of War an easy God of War. most accessible ever. We can’t wait to share more with you as we launch.
Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day!
* Audio description is not recorded in the game.
