Star Wars Outlaws™ Accessibility Spotlight

Star Wars Outlaws™ is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC via Ubisoft Connect on August 30 (or on August 27 for Ubisoft+ Premium subscribers and owners of the Gold Edition or Ultimate Edition, which you can preorder now.) This open-world Star Wars™ game lets you play as cunning scoundrel Kay Vess, who, along with her loyal companion Nix, becomes one of the galaxy's most wanted after a job gone wrong and must fight, steal, and outwit her way through the Outer Rim's criminal syndicates.  The Star Wars Outlaws development team, led by Massive Entertainment* in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, is providing a first look at some of the accessibility features that will be available to players.  

To find out more about accessibility in Star Wars Outlaws, we spoke with Audio Director Simon Koudriavtsev at Massive Entertainment, Lead Gameplay Designer Fredrik Thylander at Massive Entertainment, and Presentation Director Damien Belleville at Ubisoft Annecy.  

What was your approach to accessibility on Star Wars Outlaws?

Damien Belleville: Star Wars is for everyone, so we tried to design the game in a way that as many people as possible can enjoy. 

From our experiences on previous games we already had some clear goals from the very start of development, and were able to tie those in with the creative vision for the game. We built upon them through collaboration across disciplines, and by learning directly from players with disabilities through workshops, specialist external consultants, and user research.    

We worked to ensure that aspects of our gameplay, audio, visuals and interface were as accessible as possible by default, but being a game with several overlapping gameplay styles and features, it was not always possible to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution. That's why, from the very beginning, we worked to include a lot of options for the player to tinker with, making sure that they can tailor the experience to their tastes or needs as much as possible.  

For example, based on your needs (or how immersive you like your games) you can edit the player guidance by putting markers in the world, in the compass, or a mix of both. If some gameplay beats require precise inputs and that's not your strong suit? No problem: You can tweak their difficulty and required precision, or turn them off altogether. If you're having trouble reading or navigating the world, you can recolor some textures or lights in game, or you can enable configurable gameplay high-contrast modes that allow players with a wide variety of visual impairments to enjoy the game. Our subtitling system is also something that we've put a lot of work into, and subtitles are on by default, but if there is some aspect of what is shown or how it's presented that you would like to customize, then you can do that too.  

We really tried to cater to as many people as possible to ensure that players could enjoy Star Wars Outlaws in a way that's comfortable for them.   

Audio descriptions for cinematics are a major accessibility feature in Star Wars Outlaws, providing narrated tracks to describe to the player what is happening in cinematics. Who is this feature intended for, and what was the production process like?

Simon Koudriavtsev: Audio descriptions for cinematics were identified as one of the most sought-after features during an accessibility workshop we had during development. Star Wars Outlaws will be the first Ubisoft game, and among the very first titles in the industry, to support this feature.     

Audio descriptions are an optional extra narration track describing what is happening visually on screen. It can easily be enabled in the audio settings menu, and the volume will be adjustable by the user. It can be used by a wide range of people, from situational reasons like not missing out on what's happening if you have to look away from the screen for a moment, to making it more accessible to people with low vision or people with some cognitive disabilities who may benefit from having the action described as well as shown. While the gameplay isn't fully accessible to people without sight, the audio descriptions may be useful to any blind players who are choosing to play with sighted assistance..    

The production process was essentially a very close collaboration with a company called Descriptive Video Works. They assisted us in casting a great voice actor, provided description scripts for us to review, and after approval, recorded the narration based on videos that we sent over.   

Tell us more about the user interface in the game - how adjustable are the menus, font size, contrast, and other UI features?

Damien Belleville: We tried to build the game with the least obtrusive UI possible. That being said, we didn't want that to happen at the detriment of accessibility.  

That's why, by default, the menu structure is built with a simple but deep hierarchy, allowing each screen to show just the right amount of information with clear purpose, making sure we don't have to write too many things in too small or too cluttered a manner. Our menu navigation is also based not just on color, but mostly on luminosity, so much so that you could even interact with and understand the menus if they were in black and white. 

Palette-wise, the colors we picked are accessible to common forms of colorblindness by default. However, you also have access to a wide range of parameters and presets to make sure the game stays readable if you need to tweak it further to meet your needs.  

Regarding the HUD, you can opt in for stronger backgrounds behind elements to make sure you can get optimal contrast. You can also customize the layout and what appears - for instance you can hide or show controller layout reminders, have a center-screen dot, or have markers appear in-world, on the compass or a mix of both.   

There are also three sizes of text you can choose from, ranging from smaller fonts if you're playing very close to your screen, to huge ones if reading feels more comfortable that way. You can also swap the most "decorative" typeface to a super-readable one if preferred.

Finally, let's talk about gameplay. Star Wars Outlaws features multiple forms of gameplay with different controls for exploration, stealth, combat, flying a ship, and riding a speeder. What assist features have you included that specifically address each of these types of gameplay?

Fredrik Thylander: We want Star Wars Outlaws to be an accessible and intuitive game across all the different types of adventures, vehicles, and experiences players will encounter across the Outer Rim, so ease of use and accessibility were at the forefront of all control layout decisions that we made.

Firstly, for the speeder, we have made sure that the controls are intuitive for anyone who has played a driving game, with throttle and steering where you would expect them. On PC, we support both mouse and keyboard steering, or even switching to a controller when using the speeder.  

For space, we knew that the challenge was greater due to the freedom of movement, and our approach to making this as intuitive as possible was inspired by Star Wars films: Use a horizon. We always help orient the player to return to a comfortable upright direction, and don't require the separate use of yaw, pitch, and roll that one would find in a simulation, but rather let the players intuitively point the ship where they want it to go, and it will perform the actions on screen to achieve that. This means it plays very similarly to the boots-on-ground character controls. There are of course separate inputs available for manually rolling the ship should the player wish to do so. Likewise, players that want a more freeform flight experience can turn off the horizon auto-alignment.  

On top of that, we have assists that:  

• Help the speeder, Kay, and the ship avoid obstacles rather than get caught on them if they snag on objects they pass.  

• Help steer the ship to stay on target in pursuit mode (left trigger) when trying to shoot at enemy ships, while still requiring the player to adjust the targeting to ensure the blasters hit.  

• Aim assist for the blaster on a controller. In fact, this feature also helps Kay stay on target when free-firing (not aiming down sights) in a way that lets her fight in a more characteristic scoundrel run-and-gun style.  

So, all in all, we relied on intuitive and recognizable control schemes for different aspects of the game, which should make it as frictionless as possible for even novices to get used to speeder, ship and on-foot controls. For those that want to customize their experience further, we have options for that too.   

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST

VISUALS 

• High contrast settings - remove all color from the background, apply colors to important gameplay elements (e.g., ally, hostile aware/unaware, interactable, climbable surfaces), and with a choice of colors and transparency. 
• [NEW] High Contrast Mode - World color - a choice of color and transparency to apply to the world when high contrast mode is turned on.
• Colorblind accessible by design wherever possible. 
• Visual intensity configurable through a range of settings, including screen shake, depth of field, motion blur (general, camera, and per-object), and chromatic aberration.  
• View angle (FOV) configurable separately for default and while aiming. 

AUDIO 

• No audio reliance - important information is communicated by other channels in addition to sound. 
• Subtitles for dialogue and background chatter, with speaker names and optional directional arrows, and configurable size, background, and colors.  
• [NEW] Captions for sound effects.  
• [NEW] Focus mode - hide the less important sounds to let you focus on the ones that are critical.
• Configurable dynamic range for control over the volume difference between loudest and quietest sounds.  
• Choice of audio channels - stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.4 (support for ATMOS overhead speakers).  
• Separate volume sliders for master, music, effects, voice, cinematics, controller, and menu narration.  
• Dynamic audio mix with rules to ensure there are not too many sounds playing at once, for example by removing lower-priority sounds from the mix when in cinematics or during dialogue, and enemy weapon sounds prioritized based on threat level; and audio - level drop-off for persistent sounds such as speeder and ship engines.  
• Audio descriptions for cinematics - an optional narrated voiceover describing what is happening visually (English language only). 
• Positional audio cues showing the direction of nearby discovery opportunities, such as loot or side quests. 

CONTROLS 

• Auto-walk to keep moving forward until a button is pressed. 
• PC supports keyboard & mouse, controller, and virtual keyboard via windowed mode.  
• Keyboard & mouse remapping.  
• Controller presets.  
• Sensitivity individually adjustable across mouse, controller, camera look, hip-firing, speeder, and ship. 
• Camera inversion across X and Y axis, configurable separately for on-foot, speeder, and ship. 
• Configurable deadzones - both inner and outer for both sticks. 
• Adaptive trigger intensity (Dualsense only). 
• Motion aiming (Dualsense only) - aim using the controller's gyroscope, with settings for inversion, sensitivity, smoothing strength, and aim option to use roll for horizontal look. 
• Auto-align camera to horizon and movement direction. 
• Toggle sprint.   
• Fine control over vibration strength, with sliders for each type of information (e.g. weapons, melee, Nix, damage).  
• Change holds to presses - an overall setting that affects a wide range of gameplay holds.   

STEALTH & COMBAT

• Multiple difficulty presets with an extremely forgiving 'story' setting. 
• Individual difficulty settings for enemy difficulty, player health, and wanted difficulty. 
• Aim assist toggle, strong by default 
• Option to hold rather than repeatedly press to fire blaster. 
• Different playstyles supported through unlockable blaster-fire modes 
• Adrenaline rush feature to allow targeting of enemies with low precision and time pressure. 
• Auto-perfect reloading option.   
• Stealth assists- threat sense, awareness icons, and visualization of enemy footsteps (on by default but can be turned off)   

NAVIGATION & TRAVERSAL 

• Fast travel between discovered locations. 
• Safe climbing - not possible to accidentally fall. 
• Auto ledge grab, with no overly long distances to jump.  
• Straightforward grappling with large hit areas and auto-dismount.   
• Auto object avoidance and ledge guard on foot and speeder. 
• Health regeneration for environmental speeder damage. 
• In-world map markers can be toggled on permanently. 
• [NEW] Explorer mode - choose to have a guiding color on important elements in the world, or remove it for a more immersive experience.

SPACE  

• Damage from colliding with objects can be turned off. 
• Stuns from ion weapons can be turned off. 
• Self-righting to automatically bring ship back to the horizon. 
• Incremental throttle - tap up/down instead of holding. 
• Choice between hold or toggle for speed boost and shooting. 
• Flexible combat style including strong aim assist and pursuit mode to adjust view and speed to follow targets. 
• Motion-sickness considerations through design of enemy maneuvers and speed adjustments. 

MINIGAMES  

• Individual difficulty settings for the timing, precision, and level of visual assistance for each minigame.   

NIX

• Additional vocal and visual cues from Nix for nearby enemies, loot, etc. 
• Nix orders allow automated interacting, pickpocketing, attacking, and picking up, including during stealth, through large low-precision target areas. 
• [NEW] Nix sense highlights all nearby interactibles and enemies, including through walls.

MENUS & HUD

• Accessibility presets for finding and turning on common combinations of accessibility settings. 
• Menu narration for menus and HUD including HUD readout of distance and compass direction to current objective with configurable speed, voice, volume, and which elements to read out. 
• Colorblindness presets to adjust the colors of interface and gameplay elements that use color (usually alongside other methods) to communicate information.   
• Clear default fonts.  
• Larger and smaller text options.  
• [NEW] Button prompts are affected by text size options. 
• [NEW] HUD icon size can be increased.
• Replace stylized titles with regular font.  
• Increased contrast option, for higher-contrast background and colors.  
• Replace holds with taps across the interface.
• Control reminders of some important controls directly on the HUD. 
• Configurable HUD with control over how often elements are shown; whether to show compass, map orientation, center dot size; and whether to add a plain contrasting background behind all HUD elements. 

POST-LAUNCH

While controller remapping and a larger maximum subtitle size will not be available at launch, we want to assure you that our team is actively working on implementing these features. They will be introduced at a later date, as we are committed to enhancing the gaming experience for as many players as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we strive to make our game more accessible.

Star Wars Outlaws is launching on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC via Ubisoft Connect on August 30, and can be played up to three days early with a Ubisoft+ Premium subscription or by preordering the Gold Edition or Ultimate Edition. You can preorder now at the Ubisoft Store and receive the Kessel Runner Bonus Pack, which includes cosmetics for Kay's speeder and her ship, the Trailblazer, plus access to an exclusive mission with Jabba the Hutt called "Jabba's Gambit." For more on Star Wars Outlaws, check out ourinterview with the narrative director.

*Development partners include Ubisoft Annecy, Bucharest, Chengdu, Milan, Montpellier, Paris, Redlynx, Shanghai, Stockholm, Toronto