As reported bySky News, a blind gamer who goes by SightlessKombat, is currently playing throughGod of War Ragnarok, and due to the title’s extensive accessibility features, he can do it mostly unassisted. SightlessKombat, also referred to as Ben, is not just partially impaired. He affirms he’s “never had any sight whatsoever,” and thus was, for a long time, unaware of how games even worked.
He began toying around with more audio-dependent games that weren’t very input-heavy, then moved toward more traditional console experiences, wherein he needed the assistance of other sighted individuals if he wanted to make any decent amount of progress. “It was completely via audio and educated guesswork,” Ben explained, “a strategy that still persists to this day in titles that don’t have enough accessibility.”
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God of War Ragnarok has a lot of visual adjustments you can make to better your experience as a partially blind person. You can add color-coating to nearly every character or object, such as enemies, bosses, hazards, backgrounds, and more. But Ben, being fully blind, gets no benefit from these features. He instead relies on the game’s input accessibility.
Remapping the controller is a simple but useful option that Ben finds helpful. Furthermore, there are motor accessibility settings that automate a lot of in-game tasks, or make their button inputs remarkably simple, meaning Ben doesn’t have to be particularly precise with his actions. There’s also a navigation assist feature that can tell Ben where he needs to turn at certain moments.
All of these factors combined let him play “large stretches of the game without any need for secondary input,” which he describes as a “brilliantly freeing experience.” The only situation where he needs help consistently is with puzzles, to which there are unfortunately few workarounds, if any, for blind individuals.
SightlessKombat further explained onRedditthat he also struggles with skill trees and menus, and requires sighted assistance for that, though he hopes that a future patch introduces some way to overcome that barrier. Only a few weeks ago, God of War Ragnarok won the Game Award forInnovation in Accessibility, and anotherPlayStationfirst-party title,The Last of Us Part 1, had also been nominated. It’s clear that PlayStation is putting in a lot of effort to make its games as accessible as possible. If you’re interested to see him in action, check out SightlessKombathere!
