Over the past month or so here on Access-Ability, emotional subtext subtitles have been a bit of a recurring discussion theme.
In early March we published an episode of Access-Ability focused on ways that video games could be made more accessible for autistic players in the future, and one of the examples I focused on was Marvel’s Avengers, which included a scene where non verbal subtext between two characters was, in one specific scene, communicated to players using on screen subtitle text.
Within a few weeks of that episode, we saw the release of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, a game which I recently praised for including optional emotion tags as a toggleable option in the games subtitles. When activated, the option placed a one word description of the intended emotional tone of a line of dialogue in brackets after the speaker name on the top line of the in-game subtitle display.
The execution wasn’t perfect, emotion tags could only be used if paired with speaker names and main dialogue subtitle text, couldn’t be highlighted to stand out from other text, and didn’t include certain emotional context information that was conveyed in the audio description track for the game. Still the execution, and its inclusion as a dedicated toggle option, did feel like a big deal in terms of advancing normalisation of the idea that this is a useful consideration that more games could benefit from emulating as an accessibility feature.
Well, we’re back again this week talking about two more video games including emotion tags to help communicate unspoken non verbal context that might not be clear to players with various disabilities, ranging from Deaf players to those with cognitive disabilities.
First up, Atomfall, a recent new release by Rebellion, the studio behind the Sniper Elite series. The game is a first person survival game set in an alternate reality 1960’s in which much of Northern England has become a nuclear exclusion zone in the aftermath of a catastrophic nuclear disaster.
Overall Accessibility in Atomfall
Before getting to the game’s implementation of emotional subtext tags, I want to talk a little about the more broad accessibility options seen in Atomfall, as I think they’re worth highlighting, and this week is likely my best opportunity to shine a spotlight on the interesting things the game is attempting.
Upon first boot of the game, Atomfall shows an initial setup page where UI text is scaled to 200% size. While the recommended option is to change this back to 100% scale, 200% can be selected from this initial large and clear menu. Presenting this menu at 200% scale with two very large boxes to select from is a great way to handle visual setup options for low vision players, or those on smaller or distant screens who may otherwise not be able to read smaller text in order to setup UI scaling.
The player is then guided through text scale, UI Opacity, and NPC danger colour setups, again to ensure visibility during the rest of the initial setup process.
Atomfall also features a dedicated accessibility settings menu. One of the most impactful features offered in this menu is NPC Highlights, this game’s equivalent term for High Contrast Mode colour blocking. While there is no option to grayscale the game world, as seen in some other high contrast modes, players can select to highlight NPCs in bright single tone colours to identify if they are neutral or enemy characters, as well as highlighting interactables and making all of these more visible.
Other options available to players include traversal indicators, enemy icons, a permanently visible health bar, HUD scaling, and motion sickness reduction settings such as camera bob, recoil and sway, camera shake, motion blur, and a field of view slider.
Features such as forward movement, traversal over small walls, continuous firing, and centring camera view behind the player can all be set to be automated, and players with reduced vision can turn on audio cues for things like aiming at enemies and locating NPCs. The audio cues for firing weapons in particular are interesting, as they take strong inspiration from the audio aiming system seen in Sea of Thieves. Paired with snap to aim features that also help players with co-ordination or motor control disabilities, and there’s a good robust set of tools for helping players to engage with gunfire combat.
In the audio manu, players can adjust overall audio level balance, but can also find useful features such as adding directional indicators to subtitles, and tweaking the dynamic range of audio.
Lastly, players also have the option to increase the frequency of autosaving, and toggle options such as auto reload for weapons, and pausing the game when in tutorials or menus.
Atomfall’s Emotional Tone Accessibility.
While Atomfall doesn’t feature emotional tone tags for lines of NPC dialogue as seen in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, or subtitles for physical non-verbal subtext as seen in Marvel’s Avengers, the game does feature one word tone tags in another equally useful place, player dialogue option selection.
When selecting dialogue options to speak to NPCs, the player is offered a one word description of the tone of the response, alongside the text of their character’s reply. In combination, this helps to reduce potential ambiguity in the wording of dialogue text, and crucially makes it explicit what emotion the NPC will interpret in your answer in cases of uncertainty.
This kind of accessibility support is broadly useful outside of its application for disabled players, it’s not uncommon for gamers of all kinds to complain about the fact that it’s often possible in games to pick a dialogue option then later realise your read of the selected dialogue didn’t line up with the way the NPC understood the exchange. This solves a common complaint made by gamers across the board, while also specifically being useful for players like myself who, because of cognitive disabilities such as autism, struggle to intuit the unspoken tone of words being exchanged.
Atomfall’s approach isn’t a toggleable option, simply being active at all times. While I did see some discourse around Assassin’s Creed: Shadows suggesting that its tone tags needed to be able to be toggled off, I suspect Atomfall likely won’t see the same arguments being made around it. Where Shadows’ tags were explicitly there for the benefit of disabled players who might either not hear the tone of a line of voice acting or struggle to understand the tone of what they’re hearing, Atomfall’s approach benefits non-disabled players in a way that I suspect will lead to it being differently perceived.
Atomfall’s tone tags exist largely because the dialogue options on screen for the player to select from are text only, and not voice acted. Text by its very nature is open to interpretation of tone, meaning that even non disabled players who can usually interpret emotion from tone of voice are left without that context tool. Players used to intuiting tone from context expect that tone to be made explicit when dealing with text, it’s why books generally explain the tone with which their dialogue is being delivered. The fact that these tone tags are particularly useful for players like myself who are autistic is likely an unintended side effect of that support, but remains a feature I appreciate regardless of its origin.
I don’t think Atomfall’s approach to emotional tone tags is better or worse than the support seen in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows or Marvel’s Avengers. I think it’s complimentary, another piece of the puzzle for what ideal implementation of emotional tone tags in video games could look like.
A game that tone tagged its dialogue choices like Atomfall, featured tone tags for subtitles like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, and included non-verbal physical subtext like Marvel’s Avengers subtitles or Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ audio description track would be the next logical step forward for accessibility in this space, taking what these games have individually done and incorporating them into a single title.
Emotional Tone Tags in Midnight Asphalt
Another game that I became aware of this past week making use of tone tags, Midnight Asphalt is an upcoming game from indie developer Archangel Softworks.
A third person driving game with a black and white aesthetic highlighted by pops of bright colours, the game’s narrative text boxes feature emotional tone tags similar to those seen implemented in Assassin’s Creed Shadows a few weeks ago.
However, there are a couple of specifics to the execution seen in Midnight Asphalt that I want to highlight, as they seem to be acting upon critiques I had of Shadows’ approach to this accessibility option.
One of my biggest issues with the execution of these subtitle tone tags in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was that tone tags were only accessible if the player had both dialogue subtitles and speaker names turned on. With dialogue subtitles inactive all other subtitle toggles were also made inactive, and if speaker name tags were untoggled, emotional tone tags (while still able to be selected in menu) would not appear on screen.
Midnight Asphalt has a similar system, but allows these elements to be toggled separately, meaning that players who for example may prefer to listen to voice acting and keep the subtitle area as uncluttered as possible, simply seeing a tone tag on screen for quick and easy cognitive processing, have that option.
While I think Assassin’s Creed Shadows did a lot right in terms of its tone tags implementation, there was room for improvement. Very quickly, Midnight Asphalt has demonstrated an approach that in my opinion fixes many of the complaints I had about the execution of those features in Shadows, and is a great example of how execution of this feature could still be improved.
I would still love to see a developer offer options for resizing or colour highlighting these tone tags to make them easier to spot in a more full subtitle section, but this example is progress toward the type of execution I would love to see in future.
As stated in recent videos, for around four and a half years now I’ve been actively advocating to see emotional indicators and non verbal subtext subtitles explored as an avenue of disabled player accessibility. After spending years struggling to find many good examples, I honestly feel delighted to see that in such a short time frame I’m being inundated with examples of attempts at the feature making its way into games.
I think there’s still room for growth toward finding the best form this feature could eventually take in video games, but progress on this front is hugely reassuring to see.
Also, I rarely self promote here, but if you’re a game developer interested in supporting autistic players via non verbal subtext and emotion subtitles, please do reach out to me. I’m a credited accessibility consultant, and would love to have the opportunity to help work on implementation of a feature that I have spent years hoping we might see start to make its way into more video games.
LauraKBuzzOfficial@Gmail.com is the email to reach out to if you want to chat.
I know it’s cheesey, but forgive me, this is my job and it doesn’t hurt to ocassionally self promote.