While this might be months late to the party, it’s still news that’s worth sharing for the purposes of accessibility. Metro Exodus launched back in 2019 and a review on Can I Play That? a website that focuses on accessibility in video games, resulted in 4A Games making changes to the accessibility features in an incredibly detailed way.
Courtney Craven, co-founder, and editor-in-chief of Can I Play That? had reviewed the game at launch, but noticed last week that there appeared to be impressive changes implemented since the review was posted.
Originally the game allowed speaker names to be shown, backgrounds on subtitles, subtitle sizes, and quick-time event control options, Players can now choose to have the option to turn tinnitus sounds off, and a ‘Subtitles for the hearing impaired’ option which offers detailed captions.
I vaguely recall reviewing Metro Exodus and I don’t remember there being this many accessibility options…is this new? pic.twitter.com/51ifkzIN2r
— Courtney Craven (@CyclopediaBrain) February 16, 2020
The detailed captions seem to offer incredible information for the player, resulting in telling the player what entity is making a sound, the direction it is in (in military form), and how far away it is. Below is an example of the captions in action. The top captions indicate the creature currently ripping into Courtney’s face, the below indicates there’s another creature nearby slightly to their right.
It’s attacking, you say? I couldn’t tell.
Seriously, every open world game ever, copy this. This is the coolest implementation of subtitles implemented specifically for deaf/hoh players since Far Cry’s sound subtitles. pic.twitter.com/krybQ6PDif
— Courtney Craven (@CyclopediaBrain) February 16, 2020
According to Huw Beynon, director at Deep Silver, the changes were implemented into the game through the Two Colonels patch that went live in August 2019 after reading the website’s review on the accessibility features.
Can I Play That? often updates their reviews based on updates, and after stumbling across the changes made to the game last year, the review has been updated to a perfect score for deaf accessibility. Huw Beynon tweeted that 4A Games added the features to address the concerns raised in the review, and that adding the features matter.
Last year, we noticed that Metro Exodus came in for a few criticisms from https://t.co/b33D6h8owQ with regard to deaf/hoh accessibility. @4AGames added a raft of features in a patch to address them, and I’m proud to report we’ve now got a perfect score. This stuff matters. https://t.co/XNtXneTfTX
— Huw Beynon (@Bi50N) February 16, 2020
Personally, Beynon is right, these features do matter. I’m deaf myself and captions going this in-depth are fantastic to see. I do have a small irritation that these features were only added post-launch, but the fact they’ve been added at all, and with such detail is enough for me to forgive and forget.
Metro Exodus is available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. A new Sam’s Story DLC arrived last week.
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