Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is out December 7 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, and PC through Ubisoft Connect. Developer Massive Entertainment, a Ubisoft Studio, wants to ensure that its adventure can be played by as many people as possible through a variety of accessibility options.
Ubisoft News spoke with Senior UX Designer Sandra Madsen to learn more about the team’s approach to accessibility.
The Avatar universe has a huge fanbase. When approaching accessibility for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, how did you aim to reach as much of this fanbase as possible?
Sandra Madsen: Working on an IP with such a diverse fanbase does come with certain expectations, as we want as many people as possible to live out their personal Avatar fantasy without friction.
We discussed accessibility early in development on a project level, as well as within our teams and with the internal accessibility team at Ubisoft. Mixed with frequent testing, we have kept a close eye on features as they were developed, with a mindset that we need to be able to provide a good gameplay experience for all players who want to pick up the game, without needing to engage in layers of complexity.
How granular are your accessibility options in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora? Could you give us an example of a feature where players have multiple options?
SM: Some of our most extensive accessibility work has been placed on being able to adjust the controls of the game – allowing players to remap controller and keyboard controls, with various states such as clicks, short or long holds or chords. In addition, we offer various controls presets, inversion options for our camera controls, aim assists, and controls sensitivity options.
Many of our settings are situational, for example when flying, but we believe that it provides the player with better opportunities to adjust the game to their liking or needs.
Does first-person perspective offer up any unique accessibility challenges?
SM: We embraced the first-person perspective to maximize immersion, and therefore needed to tackle head-on motion sickness which is a common denominator for many first-person games. In particular, navigating the world as an agile Na’vi could have been a challenge, but as we went through various iterations, we paid attention to play testers’ feedback and addressed any potential trigger.
Since all people are unique and have different sensitivities, in addition to the default gameplay, we also offer various settings, such as making camera transitions instantaneous when navigating menus and disabling motion blur.
What are you most proud of when it comes to accessibility?
SM: If I were to mention some specific features, I feel proud that we can offer alternative options for our exotic and immersive interactions such as harvesting and memory painting. For these features to alter the gameplay, the feature entirely should become a motor-controls barrier. It is important to us that we can offer all our players the full, intended experience.
I also feel very proud of all the teams working on this project and our commitment to offer a lot of customization to the game experience in order to break barriers and decrease friction.
Development on this game has taught us a lot about incorporating accessibility early, as part of the game’s development. about accessibility, in large part through the dedicated accessibility team at Ubisoft. We accessibility into account as part of our core design principles when working on something - and I think that is something we all can be very proud of.
Here is a list of some of the accessibility options available in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Gameplay
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Combat difficulty – Incoming and outgoing damage can be tweaked in single player.
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Navigation experience – Select between default mode which has UI to guide the player, or a more immersive experience which offers less UI.
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Puzzles/harvesting – Can be set to autocomplete on interact or set an alternative gameplay experience that offers a set of controls/skillset.
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Aim Assist – with granular sub-options to adjust in detail.
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Motion Blur can be turned off.
Controls
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Vibration levels can be configured for various situations.
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Controller Deadzone can be tweaked to be more/less sensitive.
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Controller/Mouse and Keyboard remapping.
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Controls preset for right/left-handed swaps.
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Controls sensitivity options
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Hold-action to toggles can be turned on for various specific actions.
UI & Language
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Subtitles are on by default, with various background and size customizations that can be previewed before starting the game.
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Speaker direction – Indicator to show where the speaker is located.
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UI Color Customization can be configured, with general colorblind presets as well as individual color selections.
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Customizable HUD – Remove or adjust HUD elements to be shown or hidden for a more immersive experience.
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Camera Transition Intensity can be lowered for a much faster transition animation.
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Scalable UI text for the most important gameplay elements.
Audio
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Tinnitus Effects can be turned off.
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Menu Narration is supported for the most essential screens at launch, with options to adjust volume and speed.
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Audio modes – such as Night Mode mix and Focus Mix which focuses on gameplay critical audio.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has gone gold. For more info on the game, read about AMD's PC features, visit avatarfrontiersofpandora.com, and follow the official social accounts on Instagram, X (Formerly Twitter), Facebook and Discord.
