Far Cry 6 may not have garnered much favour with us in our review, but one area in which it has excelled is accessibility.
With several blanket accessibility presets that can be fine-tuned on a granular level, Far Cry 6 might just be one of the most accessible Ubisoft games to date. Here’s an explanation of the accessibility features included in Far Cry 6.
Vision Preset
When you first boot up Far Cry 6, you’re presented with an accessibility preset menu. The first is the Vision Preset, which has menu narration enabled by default. This enables hard of sight players to navigate menus right from the start. There’s options to change the narration speed as well as volume.
Below that, there’s an option to adjust the UI font and scaling. This will increase or decrease the size of UI elements throughout the game. That includes aspects like the minimap and mission objectives during gameplay.
An enemy outline can be toggled on or off with an option to change the colour to one of 19 options. The same can also be said for item pickups, which I found incredibly useful as a player with Nystagmus. It makes objects and enemies far easier to pick out in the otherwise cluttered environment of Far Cry 6.
Subtitles operate separately from traditional UI scaling. They can be toggled on or off, and there are three size options to choose from. You can also decide to enable speaker names in the subtitles, and they can be displayed in either one colour or multiple to distinguish who’s talking. An option to enable either an opaque or semi transparent background is also present.
Next up, there’s an option to customize the thickness of weapon reticles. This will make the centre crosshair easier to identify in the centre of the screen. You can customise the reticle colour in the upcoming Colour menu. Aiming assists are also found here with options to change the sensitivity.
Last up, you can change how much the camera shakes during explosions. There’s also a toggle for the poisoned and drunk effects that cloud the screen when intoxicated. These are great additions for those prone to motion sickness.
Hearing Preset
Next up is the Hearing Preset. In here, you can find granular control for all of the audio tracks present in the game. Underneath a Master volume slider, you’ll find options for Radio Music, Dialog, Score Music, and Sound Effects. These options are great for those that find it difficult to isolate particular types of noise. It’s also helpful for those that find loud noises harsh.
Below the volume sliders are a repeat of the subtitle settings found in the Vision preset. However, a neat addition here is the Sound Subtitles option. Enabling this will create 3D pop ups in the world that indicate important sounds and where they’re coming from. For example, an exploding car will be marked as ‘Explosion’ with a distance indicator to show the direction and how far away it is. These subtitles use the same size, colour, and transparency settings dictated by the speech subtitles.
If you’re playing in co-op with a friend, there’s an option to enable Speech-To-Text. This will subtitle what your co-op partner’s character is saying. If you’d rather communicate manually, there’s also an option to toggle a Chat Wheel function. Bringing this up will allow you to communicate via several preset emotes, including a ‘thanks’, ‘help’, and ‘request ammo’.
Motor Preset
Moving onto the Motor Preset, we have a few settings that can make Far Cry much more accessible for those with motor disabilities. You can completely disable weapon sway to make the process of aiming weapons far easier. Additionally, you can make the repeated presses of quicktime events a single button press. The setting below reduces the amount of camera shake shown on screen.
Under the Keyboard and Mouse subheading, you’ll find an option to change between hold and toggle aim functions. Setting this to toggle will mean that you’ll only need to right click the mouse to aim down sights. The same can be said for the weapon wheel interaction which can be changed from requiring a hold action to a simple press. Last up here, you can enable or disable the driving and shooting aim assist setting. It can be quite tricky to track targets while on the move, so we recommend switching this on.
There’s more auto-aim customisation found under the Controller subheading, too. There, you’ll also find toggle settings for actions like crouching and sprinting. The biggest features here are the options to customise the DualSense trigger functions. The PC port of Far Cry 6 supports DualSense functionality, but the intensity can be disabled or toned down to your personal preference.
Cognitive and Motion Preset
These menu headings largely contain repeated settings from the previous presets. While slightly confusing for someone flicking through each menu individually, it’s appreciated that Ubisoft groups these settings in a distinct and clear way.
The only additional settings found here are the Audio Dynamic Range function and the Motion Blur toggle. Altering the audio dynamic range changes the amplitude between the loudest and quietest sounds. Changing this to Night mode will make for a very uniform listening experience with a small range between volumes. Motion blur is an aesthetic personal preference for some, but turning it off can be essential for those with visual impairments.
Colours
The last menu on the list has to do with the colour presentation of Far Cry 6. In this menu, you can alter the colour of almost all of the UI elements in the game. There are options to alter whole colour groups using a single blanket setting.
There are also options to customise UI elements relating to gameplay, subtitles, enemy outlines, and even roads and routes marked on the map. It’s a shame that there aren’t dedicated colour blind categories, like Protanopia and Deuteranopia. But the control that Far Cry 6 gives the player is some of the most impressive that I’ve seen from a modern AAA game.
How useful have you found the Far Cry 6 accessibility settings? Let us know across our social channels.
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[Featured Image Credit: Ubisoft]