Lamoine Williams
I already
know what you’re thinking. here we are again with another Ubisoft title that does
not hit the mark for blind gamers. However, don’t count Ubisoft out just yet.
Although Far Cry 6 is not totally playable for gamers who are totally blind,
Ubisoft is getting close. In fact, this might just be there most blind
accessible game yet.
One of
the type of games that blind gamers have yet to experience is an open world
title that is also accessible. With more and more games adding in accessible features,
we can only hope that a game will be coming soon that will scratch our itch for
exploration. Far Cry 6 contains one of Ubisoft’s largest maps with just about
everything you could want to do rolled up inside it. From driving to flying,
creeping to crafting, Far Cry 6 has you covered. Well, it does unless you’re a blind
gamer.
Although
Far Cry 6 has its shortcomings, compared to previous Ubisoft titles things are
coming along nicely. The menu narration is passable giving you access to
information needed to set the game up without sighted assistance. On a side note,
though, the menus seem to be designed weird and sometimes it’s not quite clear
how to get to options even when you know they are there. There are options for
changing the narration voice and also controlling the speed of narration, which
is a plus. Hopefully in the future there will be a fix for the narration
overrun when narration continues to speak even though the cursor has moved to a
different option.
One of
the biggest barriers that Far Cry 6 has for blind gamers is not having an
accessible navigation system for objectives. This single barrier is one that
can easily make or break a game. Think about it. If The Last of Us Part 2 had
not implemented a successful accessible navigational system, few to no blind
gamers would have been able to play it. So accessible navigation is definitely a
crucial tool for any game with open environments.
One
other thing that will prevent blind gamers from successfully playing Far Cry 6
without sighted assistance is the lack of accessible prompts within the game
world. Prompts that read with narration are crucial for knowing when doors can
be opened, when objectives are reached, and when items in the environment can
be interacted with to progress the story. Without these, gamers who depend on
the game’s narration features won’t progress and will be missing tons of
information that other gamers pick up easily. The simple rule for these
situations? If you can interact with it, make it so that the narrator reads all
crucial information regarding the prompt or object. This will fix most barriers
with identification so everyone can have as close to the same experience during
gameplay as possible.
So how
accessible is Far Cry 6 if your blind? Well, it’s not quite a game that can be
played without either sighted assistance or a tiny bit more work when it comes
to accessibility. I do have to give Ubisoft props for adding in more
accessibility and also not leaving out gamers who are totally blind. Playing
the game, I could tell that there was some thought put into the game to help
those who are totally blind and it is much appreciated. Overall, I think this
game will be more like a Grand Theft Auto 5 game for me, which means, a game
that is fun for a bit to run around in and see what I can do, but not
accessible enough for me to actually complete any part of the game on my own. Hopefully
with some time Ubisoft can implement some accessibility updates that might help
fix some of the barriers that Blind gamers are having in Far Cry 6. However,
trying to add in a system as large and complicated as accessible objective
based navigation at this point would be almost impossible without adding more
bugs to the game most likely.
Check
out the video that accompanies this article on the Blind Ohio Gamer channel on
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©2021 Lamoine Williams
