Alongside Xbox reiterating its commitment to making games more accessible for the "estimated more than 400 million gamers with disabilities across the globe," 343 Industries has given a sneak peek at some of the accessibility features coming to Halo Infinite.
These updates and many more were part of Microsoft's Xbox Accessibility Showcase, and 343 Industries' Paige Johnson stopped by to share some of the accessible and customizable features that will be part of Halo Infinite when it is released on December 8, 2021.
The team's goal was to "make the newest journey into the Halo universe more accessible to as many gamers as possible." This includes veterans of the series and those who "struggled to play due to barriers that hadn't previously been accounted for."
Some of these new features, as detailed by 343 Industries, include;
- For Subtitles:
- Adjust the font size
- Adjust the background opacity
- Enable color coding of dialogue per speaker
- Choose whether you’d like subtitles for all dialogue or just dialogue related to the narrative in Campaign
- Customize menu and gameplay font size
- Menu narration with adjustable narration speed for those who commonly utilize screen readers
- A new mode called “Linear Navigation” that lets users navigate through the UI without the need to visually see how controls are positioned on-screen to access them
- Option of changing the friendly and enemy colors to include more options than just red versus blue
- More UI settings, such as HUD (Heads-up Display) and reticle opacity to make it easier to identify information in the HUD
- Text-to-speech and speech-to-text options for players that want to participate in Voice Chat and either need to send synthesized voice or receive voice chat as synthesized text
- New customizations for players to control their sound experience with different volume sliders for a variety of sounds in the game
- Customizability for both controller and Keyboard and Mouse to rebind keys, adjust sensitivity, and change to taps and toggles versus holds
- A new Movement Assisted Steering feature, which lets you use additional controls to help steer wheeled vehicles rather than just the classic “look-to-steer” mechanic
343 also strongly believes that "representation in gaming matters." To live up to that mantra, it has worked with such organizations as Warfighter Engaged to "offer new prosthetic options for gamers to customize their Spartans."
According to 343, "accessibility is a journey," and it promises to continue to update Halo Infinite "in ways that empower as many people as possible to battle alongside the Master Chief."
Microsoft also revealed some of its plans to improve accessibility on Xbox, including adding new Game Accessibility Feature Tags on the Microsoft Store to help the Gaming & Disability community know what games have any of a list of 20 accessibility features implemented. These include "Narrated Game Menus, Subtitle options, Input Remapping, Full keyboard support, and Single Stick Gameplay."
There will also be other new features launching on Xbox soon, including Quick Settings, Color Filters, Night Mode Display, Globalization of Speech-to-Text / Text-to-Speech Chat Settings, and more.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.