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Hi everyone. My name is Laura Kate Dale, otherwise known as LauraKBuzz, and last week I got to announce that I worked as an accessibility consultant on Life is Strange: Double Exposure.
While I can’t publish a traditional accessibility review of this game, due to having a conflict of interest having worked on it, I did want to take a little bit of time this week to showcase the accessibility menu present in the Episode 1 and Episode 2 preview, and show off what some of these features mean in practice.
Do not expect a traditional breakdown of my opinion on the features available, but feel free to stick around if you want to see the game’s accessibility options and how they work firsthand, featuring gameplay limited to early spoiler minimal scenes.
When you open the settings menu in Life is Strange: Double Exposure, the accessibility submenu is the first tab opened by default.
For players who struggle with quickly reacting to choice based timers, the “Longer Choice Times” setting increases timer length for small inconsequential conversation choices to around 45 seconds, and makes it so that any narratively important or plot branching choices feature zero timer at all.
Camera Assist is a toggle which allows players to automate camera movement, locking the camera behind main character Max rather than relying on dual analogue control for camera movement.
The camera shake toggle minimises how much the camera rumbles and shakes during dramatic moments.
Simple Power Effects reduces the brightness of the visual effect when Max shifts between parallel realities.
Major Choice Confirmation causes the game to bring up a dialogue box after major choices, requiring a second confirmation to reduce the likelihood of an accidental button press committing you as a player to a choice you can’t easily undo.
Skip Gameplay allows the player to skip certain gameplay sequences which may require either multiple simultaneous inputs, rely heavily on visuals, or otherwise be difficult to progress past.
Hotspot Pinging allows the player to press the L2 button to reveal all interaction points in a scene. If using stereo headphones, audio pings will help players to locate where they are in relation to nearby interaction points.
One note about this setting, if you press L2 during the opening abandoned bowling alley sequence, it will highlight interactables and play the hotspot ping stereo audio, but it will also play a line of dialogue where Max references that this used to be the button to activate her old time rewinding power, which she no longer has access to. This does stop occurring after the first location is progressed through.
Hotspot Sound in Range, as its name suggests, plays a sound when you are both close enough to an object to interact with it, and have your cursor correctly aimed to interact.
Alternate Power Controls removes the need for button holds or multiple simultaneous button presses when using Max’s new powers.
Power UI Indicator creates a new UI element for spots in the world where you can shift between realities.
As default while playing, when shifting to a new timeline the game will for a few seconds display which timeline you’re now present in. This is also subtly indicated by a change in the colour grading of scenes. If you prefer, you can change the Display Timelines setting to show which reality you are in at all times at the top of the screen, with the exception being it’s not displayed during cutscenes.
Enable Focal Circle creates a circular reticle in the centre of the screen, helping to identify where you’re aiming at as you look around.
Adaptive Triggers can be switched off as an in game setting on PlayStation 5.
For players who struggle with sudden bright lights or loud noises, a setting from True Colours returns, offering players warnings before those moments occur. In True Colours these warnings automatically paused gameplay, but in Double Exposure they can either pause the game or simply appear on screen without pausing the flow of a dramatic scene.
The same is true of Double Exposure’s content warning system. Players can select whether to display content warnings for blood, violence, suicide, abuse, drugs, sex, and transphobia, with separate toggles for each subject, and the ability to either display the warning in real time, or pause for a confirmation before continuing.
In other menus, players can alter the default font to a dyslexia friendly alternative (the one they’ve chosen isn’t Open Dyslexic), as well as increase text size, turn on captions for background sounds including music, include speaker names in subtitles, add a subtitle background, change subtitle colours, and alter background opacity.
Lastly of note, you can change the frequency with which Life is Strange: Double Exposure gives the player hints on how to progress, including turning them off entierly.
Obviously I’m not here to give an opinion on these accessibility settings and features, given my conflict of interest on the topic and involvement in the game’s development, but I did want to take a little bit of time this week just to show off what’s present in the game’s two chapter demo, ahead of the full game releasing next week.
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