Halo Infinite accessibility features detailed by 343 Industries

Along with Xbox reiterating its commitment to making games more accessible to the “estimated 400+ million gamers with disabilities worldwide,” 343 Industries has previewed some of the accessibility features coming to Halo Infinite. .

These updates and many more were part of Microsoft’s Xbox Accessibility Showcase, and Paige Johnson of 343 Industries stopped by to share some of the accessible and customizable features that will be a part of Halo Infinite when it launches on December 8, 2021.

The team’s goal was “to make the latest trip to the Halo universe more accessible to as many players as possible.” This includes series veterans and those who “had trouble playing due to previously overlooked barriers.”

Some of these new features, detailed by 343 Industries, include;

• For subtitles:
  • Adjust background opacity
  • Enable dialog color coding per speaker
  • Choose whether you want captions for all dialogues or only narrative-related dialogues in Campaign
• Customize the font size of the menu and game
• Menu narration with adjustable narration speed for those who often use screen readers
• A new mode called “Linear Navigation” that allows users to navigate through the user interface without the need to visually see how controls are positioned on the screen to access them.
• Option to change friend and foe colors to include more options than just red versus blue
• More UI settings such as HUD (Heads-up Display) and graticule opacity for easier identification of information on the HUD
• Text-to-speech and speech-to-text options for players who want to participate in voice chat and need to send synthesized voice or receive voice chat as synthesized text
• New customizations for players to control their sound experience with different volume sliders for a variety of in-game sounds.
• Customization capabilities for both the controller and keyboard and mouse to re-bind keys, adjust sensitivity, and switch to taps and toggle versus holds
• A new motion-assisted steering feature, allowing you to use additional controls to help steer wheeled vehicles instead of the classic “look to steer” mechanic

343 also strongly believes that “representation in the game is important.” To live up to that mantra, he has worked with organizations such as Committed fighter to “offer new prosthetic options for players to customize their Spartans.”

According to 343, “accessibility is a journey,” and he promises to continue updating Halo Infinite “in a way that allows as many people as possible to fight alongside the Master Chief.”

Microsoft also revealed some of its plans to improve accessibility on Xbox, including adding new game accessibility feature tags to the Microsoft Store to help the gaming and disability community know which games have any of the 20 accessibility features. implemented. These include “Narrated Game Menus, Subtitle Options, Input Remapping, Full Keyboard Support, and Single Stick Gameplay.”

There will also be other new features launching soon on Xbox, including quick settings, color filters, night mode display, globalization of voice-to-text / text-to-speech chat settings, and more.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and in Twitch.